Travel writing can quickly become a competition between writers looking for the most outrageous trip. Do you see a benefit in such competition? Make your best argument.
I think that this competition aspect of travel writing can have both negative and positive consequences. If travel writers go out of their way to have grand adventures that they wouldn’t normally have without this “competition,” it will make for a much more interesting read. However, writing competitively can take away from the whole purpose of travel writing itself. While there is no true “purpose” of travel writing, and there can be different reasons for reading and writing in this genre, I highly doubt that anyone believes that the whole point is to have the coolest story.
For me, travel writing is all about learning something that you never would have known about had you not gone to a certain place. What you learn can be about the culture, about yourself, where you come from, or where you’re going.
Making this form of writing into a competition could challenge writers to cross borders that they would not normally cross, but it should not affect the intended purpose of the piece. Travel writers should tell a story, but it is always important to learn a moral or lesson about a different culture (or about oneself) from that story.
So yes, writers should challenge each other to push boundaries - but this should never affect the intended purpose of their work.
I agree with everything! Travel writing has an undefined purpose and an easily understandable part of that is to tell a story. I hadn't thought about competition in terms of pushing each other to cross boundaries, but it's true. If there was no one you were trying to keep up with, we would all stay in our comfort zones most likely. Great analysis from my judgement.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about this in my post as well. I believe that competition will push travel writers to go to new heights and explore new things that they have not done yet. If this means that these writers will take new chances and attempt to cross more extreme borders that would obviously make for much more excitement in travel writing. The new travel experiences that writers could encounter due to competition would make for much more excitement in the readings and it would push writers to always do "bigger and better things."
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