Do you remember a book or a blog post that made your heart beat faster? The one that touched your soul strings and inspired you to act.
It’s how inspirational writing works.
You read words, and they influence and change you somehow. You start seeing the world from a different perspective, willing to try new things, visit new places, or reshape your lifestyle or attitude toward something. Words can be your weapon to charge others with your passion for travel and motivate them to open new horizons.
Inspirational writing is not that burdensome to master. As Hemingway said, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” With the below writing tips from customwritings, you won’t have to bleed; instead, you’ll get the instruments to communicate your love for travels to others so they couldn’t help but plan their next trip immediately.
So, below are your writing techniques to motivate others to travel.
Write For One Person
The first rule for every content writer to remember:
Ensure you know your target audience inside out. Before writing a text that evokes particular emotions and motivates action, you should understand a reader’s character traits, pain points, desires, and frustrations. It will help you choose proper hooks, lexical items, and word combinations that “hit the target.”
Who will read your text? Focus on one ideal reader whom you want to inspire. What is their travel experience and cultural background? What can influence their motivations and decisions?
Imagine yourself talking to that person. How would you share your travel story so that they want to follow your lead?
Write the way you speak, using a friendly and conversational tone. There’s no need to try to brag with sophisticated words or complex sentences; they impair readability and annoy the reader.
Appeal To Instincts
Inspirational writing works when it triggers emotions and subconscious needs, aka instincts. When your text appeals to those instincts, readers get engaged even if they don’t understand why.
Basic instincts are three:
- Self-preservation (the need for safety, health, and a secure environment)
- Social (the need for approval, status, and achievements)
- Sexual (the need for adrenaline, attraction, and connection)
They appear in the human brain’s limbic system and are responsible for motivation, behavior, and emotions. Travel writing is a perfect niche to trigger those instincts from readers and influence them:
Describe local foods with “yummy” words and images (self-preservation instinct); write “lust” words (forbidden, spicy, seductive, brazen, etc.) to grab attention (sexual instinct); invite readers to take action with the “you can do it!” mantra (social instinct, the need for achievements).
Use Emotional Writing Tactics
Emotional writing is about using specific lexical items and visual hooks in content to get readers immersed and willing to respond. While it’s more typical for fiction stories, travel writing is also about triggering feelings and evoking the response. So, why not try several emotional tactics in your texts?
For instance, write texts with power words, i.e., persuasive and descriptive lexical items that trigger an emotional response. They are active verbs and adjectives that make readers feel encouraged, curious, safe, scared (hello, Stephen King), aroused, etc.
Also, say no to passive voice. It makes your writing sound weak and uncertain, which is the opposite of inspiration and motivation.
Remember Stephen King (hello again!) saying that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs”? When writing, do your best to avoid redundant adverbs (very, actually, really, significantly, etc.); choose stronger verbs instead.
Tell Stories
Inspirational writing is about storytelling. When reading your articles about travels, people don’t look for dry facts, names, numbers, and other Wikipedia-like information about a place you describe. Make them feel the atmosphere: Share personal stories that happened to you or your companions, emotions you felt, impressions you got, and lessons you learned.
Organize your story as a hero’s journey. It’s a classical storytelling technique you’ll see in most bestselling books and movies:
Why do stories work so well?
Since a story activates brain areas responsible for experiences, the human brain retains 70% of information through it. When telling a story, you create emotional connections with readers, making them want to listen to you.
For your text to become a story, include five elements to it:
- Exposition (the context of your story, i.e., its setting and background)
- Plot (the sequence of events happening in your story)
- Characters (you and other people in your story)
- Conflict (the turning point of your story, its central meaning)
- Conclusion (the moral of your story)
When writing, pay attention to such a powerful instrument as dialogue. It adds engagement and gives personality to characters. Dialogues are faster for readers to consume, telling much more about the atmosphere than standard descriptions of a place or a person.
Conversations with locals or fellow travelers will make your texts more authentic and compelling.
Let’s compare this:
- “Wow! Just look over there: It’s a tiger behind that bush on the left!” whispered John. “Oh no,” — I shuddered. — “He seems to be ready to jump out…”
To this:
- “We saw a tiger behind the bush.”
Which one sounds better? Remember that inspirational writing is about experience and emotions; communicate them in your texts.
Help Them Visualize Your Writing
Descriptive adjectives handle this task well enough, but here’s the problem:
In travel writing, most of such words have turned into a cliche already. Let’s face it: How many times did you meet “crystal blue waters” when reading about beaches? And what about “breathtaking mountains” or “grand monuments”?
You have an instrument to avoid such cliches in your texts and make your travel writings stand out. Focus on evocative details and use sensory words to represent them in your stories.
Sensory words are adjectives appealing to our five physical senses and thus helping us “see, hear, smell, taste, or touch” a story we read. These words activate a particular part of our brain, allowing us to “paint” scenes in our imagination. As a result, we process such words faster than other lexical items.
Ready To Motivate Others With Your Writing?
Inspirational writing is a powerful tool for communicating your message to the audience. Proper words and tone evoke desired emotions, influence decisions, and encourage actions. Such writing resonates with people: They put themselves in the author’s (character’s) shoes and empathize with the story you tell.
You can use this tool to convey your love of travel to others and motivate them to discover new places, languages, and cultures. May the writing techniques from this article guide you on the way to crafting texts that inspire, bring value, and have a positive impact on others.
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