22 April, 6:30PM

5-week Travel Memoir Course

When: Wednesay evening classes (once a week for five weeks, from Tuesday 22 April to Tuesday May 20 2013)

Time: 6.30pm – 8.30pm

At: Sydney Writers Centre

Ground Floor

55 Lavender Street

Milsons Point NSW 2061

(street level, enter by terrace overlooking Lavender Bay)

Cost: $395 (includes GST)

**Details: www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/travelmemoir.htm

Course Description

Are you planning a fabulous trip overseas and think there’s a book in it? Do you travel regularly for work and believe you have a story to share with the world? Are you dreaming of moving to Bali and reinventing your life?

Google Maps may mean the world is shrinking, but the genre of travel writing just keeps getting bigger. Go into any bookstore and you’ll find a wide range of titles from literary to humorous, from a sea change in Tuscany to travelling the Andes on a donkey. Travel memoir in particular has a strong foothold in the publishing market. Take for example Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love – it’s sold over 7 million copies!

Publishers and the reading public love this genre. It appeals to our own sense of adventure. From the comfort of our armchair we are given a glimpse into another world.

Whether you travel for business or pleasure, whether you’re a writing traveller, or a travelling w riter — what’s most important is learning to be a good storyteller. Unlike travel journalism, literary travel writing uses many of the narrative techniques common in fiction.

It isn’t enough to string together disparate trips and hope it will become the next runaway bestseller: you need to craft a compelling story with credible characters, dialogue, atmosphere and revelation. This course will teach you how.

Packed with plenty of exercises, this intensive course will cover:

• how to structure your travel memoir and make your journey unique from the first page
• ways to transform dog-eared travel journals into a must-read manuscript
• writing about place with new eyes and describing characters without clichés
• popular genres of travel writing
• how to write a compelling book proposal to get your work published
• what to do before you leave and how to write on the road

Suited to first-time or seasoned writers, this Travel Memoir course invites you to get out of the armchair and write your own travel narrative. And by the way, your journey doesn’t have to be exotic. Local to you, is exotic to somebody else.