The Everywhere blog

Last week Paul offered some tips on how to get your travel photos published in Everywhere, so this week I thought I'd follow up with some thoughts on what works best on the prose side of the equation — in other words, what you can do to make it more likely that your stories will get published.

TIP 1: Observe Magazine Architecture 101
When it comes to selecting which pieces to publish in a magazine -- any magazine -- all stories are not created equal. If you look closely at the structure of most magazines (including Everywhere), you'll notice that they actually consist of several different sections, each of which tells different kinds of stories in different kinds of ways. The front section, for example, is often about shorter pieces that are easy to skim. The middle of the magazine is usually reserved for longer, feature-length pieces. And so on.

Readers know this intuitively: It's how you know what you're looking at as you casually flip through the pages of a magazine. Nevertheless, it's astonishing how often writers (both amateurs and the pros) forget this most basic fact of magazine design. Yes yes, everyone wants to write feature stories. But there are relatively few feature pieces in any given magazine, so competition for these coveted slots tends to be more intense. On the other hand, there are literally dozens of publication opportunities scattered throughout the other sections of a magazine, and those slots often go begging because writers don't give them enough attention. To get published, it helps to notice how a magazine is structured, and to tailor your piece to fit within a specific section.

TIP 2: Write for Specific Sections of Everywhere
There's no other travel magazine in the world like Everywhere, because Everywhere is made from community contributions submitted on this website. It's pretty radical, actually. Yet the architecture of the magazine itself is relatively conventional. (If you haven't seen the print version, be sure check out the pdf of Issue 01.) Here's a quick overview of the sections in each issue, and what they're all about:

Points of Interest: Short pieces about specific places, accompanied by lots of photos. Almost any short article about a specific place will work here, and if you've ever written a blog post, you probably have what it takes to crank out a a Points of Interest story. Notice that there are also some recurring themes within Points of Interest, including Hotel Window (window views from the world's most interesting hotels), Local Flavor (sampling local cuisine), Jet Set Weekend (exotic weekend getaways), and Grand Openings (Brand-new destinations, hotels, restaurants, or attractions).

Postcards: These are "travel photos with a story to tell." Basically, this is a section of fun travel snapshots, each of which must include an extended caption telling the story of what's going on in the photo. To write for this section, be sure to include a detailed caption with your photo, describing your experience at the place shown.

Trips: These are loose itineraries of five or six specific destinations within a place or region, all of which are united by a common theme, and each of which includes a photo. So, for example, "Ghost Towns in Arizona" could be a Trip, if you'd visited five or six ghost towns there, and taken a photo of each. Or, "Flea Markets of Paris" could be a Trip. So could "Cliffdiving Spots in Acapulco." The basic structure of a Trip is: One paragraph introduction, plus five or six destinations within the region, with a paragraph on each telling us what it's all about and why we should visit. Once again, it's essential to include a photograph of each of your five or six destinations.

Features: Every issue of Everywhere includes four features: Two featured places, and two featured themes. (For issue 03, for example, the featured places are Copenhagen and Miami, while the featured themes are Art Tourism and Slow Travel.) Almost anything can work in an Everywhere feature -- a great photo with a detailed caption, long-form essays, shorter comments (in the form of Postcards submitted to specific Places on the everywheremag.com website), photo essays, and so on. Basically, when we do a feature, we look at all the material that's been submitted, pick the best, and then figure out a way to make it all work together -- sort of like a mosaic. From that mosaic, we seek to create a representation of a place or a theme.

My Obsession: This page is devoted to the particular things one notices while traveling, and the ways in which we document those things. On page 82 of Issue 01, for example, Esther Dyson wrote about her obsession with swimming, and how that leads her into hotel pools all over the world. Do you like taking photos of taxis all around the world? Are you fascinated by the graphics found on magnetic hotel key cards? Do you like to sample convenience store snack foods in distant foreign lands? This is the place to let your personal travel enthusiasms run wild.

Essentials: This is an open-ended category devoted to how-to travel articles (loosely defined). Truth is, everyone is an expert about something, and this is the place to share you unique expertise. HINT: Essentials pieces often work well as bulleted lists, step-by-step directions, or annotated graphics. (See below for more tips on how to think graphically when writing a how-to article.)

Tried and True: Do you have favorite tools, services, tunes, books, or pieces of technology that make traveling more enjoyable? This is the place to tell us about them. These aren't reviews, really -- we only want endorsements of things things that you already own and already love. Your personal enthusiasm is the most important part of a Tried and True piece.

TIP 3: Focus on the Particular
As a general rule, we prefer pieces that focus in on a particular aspect of a place, rather than survey-type pieces that provide a broad overview of a destination. The particulars are always more interesting, and they provide a more useful (and colorful) perspective for understanding a place. After all, that's how most of us describe our travels when we talk about them with friends or family; instead of speaking in broad generalizations, we often focus in on one particular place, or story, or experience as a way of conveying what the place a whole was like. Travel writing works much the same way. Start from the particular -- the unique way the citizens of Tokyo give directions, or the simple pleasures of driving in Los Angeles, or the oh-so-French way the man at the coffee shop in Paris held his cigarette -- and then use those particulars to convey the overall character of a place.

TIP 4: Think Graphically
As if to prove the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, readers love big, graphic stories with small text annotations explaining what's going on in the picture. For example, I've gotten lots of comments about the "What's Inside Dan Gilmore's Gadget Bag" piece that appeared on page 88 of Everywhere 01. Likewise, Yusuf Özkızıl submitted a fabulous article for Issue 02 about how to make sense of the various ingredients that go into a typical Turkish breakfast. (As you'll see, it looks super on the printed page.) We love stories like that, so if your piece is about a topic that's better seen than described, go for it: Let your photo do the talking, and then use small bits of text to provide additional detail about what's going on in the photo.

TIP 5: Tell Us More, Not Less
If you've always wanted to be a travel writer, you've come to the right place. Don't be intimidated. Don't feel like you need to emulate Rudyard Kipling, Ian Buruma, John McPhee, or Pico Iyer; instead, just relax and let your natural voice come out. Everywhere is about passion and authenticity, and we're confident you have lots of that. The most important thing is to provide plenty of detail in your articles, essays, and photo captions, so that we can get a sense of *all* the insight and experience you have -- rather than trying to fill in the blanks on our own. That's another way of saying, we'd rather have you write pieces that are too long rather than too short. It's easy for us to shorten a story if it's too long, but if you don't provide sufficient detail, we may never know why your story deserves to be published in the first place.

Okay, hope that helps. If you have any other questions about writing for Everywhere, just ask. (If you're logged in to Everywhere, feel free to send me a message here.) I'm happy to help, and I like nothing more than giving you the opportunity to see your name in print.