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Business & Travel Writing & Communication

Why Travel more as a Storyteller?

Wherever you are Authoring Scripts, Novels, Poetry, Textbooks or other Non-Fiction you need to constantly expose yourself to new arrays of Ideas.

Wherever you are a Teacher, a Manager, a Marketing professional, a Parent you draw your ideas from Life.

  • Where are you the most exposed to this Life you need to create?
  • What form does this Life takes?
  • How much diversity do you need to evolve as an Artist?
  • Do you need to travel very far to find Life?

Here’s where you could start:

  • Learning to work with limitations
  • Get organized & Play more, with Mind Maps
  • Compose a travel Diary
  • Buying Memories
  • Landmarks, the Soul of a Nation
  • Restaurants & Cafes, refuel your Body & think
  • Write a Continental Epic
  • Artistic Awareness, rekindle your Soul
  • Parks – Rest, Remember & Restart

Learning to work with limitations

  • Limited Material & Tools
    • You don’t need a desk to be productive.
    • No internet is the best way to come up with new designs & Ideas.
    • A 200 pages moleskin journal is enough.
  • Limited Time
    • Having less time to create your next project will force better result.
    • Less time means less time to hesitate.
    • Think crucial features through & implement.
    • Between 120-150’/day for your main project.
    • Between 10-20’/day for a side project.
  • Focus on 1 project or have multiple one?
    • How long is your trip?
    • You’re visiting Italy for a week , can you make a Book out of it?
    • How many settings are you visiting? 1 piece = 1 setting?
    • Should you create a Pamphlet for this City, this Country?

Your essentials:

  • A small notebook
  • Multiple 4-colors pens (for Mind mapping)
  • A Camera (if you need it)
  • Your phone (Interviews, post on social & check you mails)
  • Your laptop (Books & Graphic design)
  • A 512GB Flash drive

Get organized & Play more, with Mind Maps.

  • Mind maps are by far the easiest way to concentrate data.
  • Wherever you are interviewing someone or taking notes about a specific setting it is the way to go
  • After practicing for 4 years you could put 500 pages books onto 4 sheets of paper without losing any substantial information.
  • The Process:
    • Take a piece of paper horizontally, separate it with 2 diagonals.
    • Trace 4 circles/ovals/squares/the shape your prefer with 4 different colors, (a 4-color Bic is the easy way to go).
    • Choose 4 topics you want to study.
    • Or the main 4 parts of your next project.

Compose a Travel Diary

  • Why not start Epigrams in postcards form of the places you visit?
  • Or compose your poem & then record your words.
  • Your diary will become fuller & more diverse with every day passing.
  • Develop a clear unique style.
    • Short sentences, not more than 3 words
    • Impactant nouns & verbs
    • Use allegories
  • You can’t write much?
  • Why not try a Haiku or a Haibun?
  • It will help you synthesize your thoughts in an usual way.
  • You could also draw the place you are in with words.
  • Try Concrete poems.
    • If you are in front of a lake, describe it in the shape of a lake
  • Get inspired by the place you’re in to design appealing shapes.
  • Use the name of the place to write an acrostic.
  • If you’re in Tuscany, take T.U.S.C.A.N.Y and compose a 7 verse poem all beginning by the corresponding letter.
  • Do the same with every landmark & landscape that inspires you.
  • Produce a piece a day.
  • Post daily.
  • People may soon contact you to buy your content.

Buying Memories

photo of closed Sony PS1 with DualShock 1
  • Looking for Rare Items?
  • Antique shops will give you the inspiration you need.
  • Buyback your Childhood memories.
  • Look for foreign objects.
  • Look for useless objects with great design.
  • What’s that small box that can contain nothing?
  • You can’t put nothing inside it, because it’s already full of circuits!
  • You could also go for Brocantes or Brokers.
  • Both have uniques items to sell, if you are willing to ask?
    • What’s the most expensive item you have?
    • What’s the most useless item you have?
    • What’s the most ludicrous item you have?
    • Will you sell it to me?
    • Can I have 30% off of this PS1?
  • Get in with your own stuff & see if you can trade.
  • Visit Bookstores.
  • Look for rare pieces, 1st editions, limited editions on a discount.
  • Look for Books you couldn’t find anywhere else than in the country your in.
    • If you’re in Florence look for an original version of La Divina Commedia or early works of la Commedia dell’arte movements
    • If you’re in Frankfurt why not pick an original of Faust?
  • Visit Discount Bookstores.
  • You won’t be able to find these things online.
  • Look for a new Journal, a special pen.
  • Look for a 6 color pen, that exists.
  • Look for tools & material that makes you want to write, to sketch, to design, to invent.
  • Ask to try the items.
  • Meet fellow Storytellers.
  • Ask for recommendations.

Landmarks, the Soul of a Nation

  • Make a list of the landmarks you want to visit the most.
  • And then go for your 1st draft.
  • What does the Monument looks like, from the outside?
  • From the inside?
  • Observe people around you, are they happy to be there?
  • Are they tourists or locals?
  • Asking for the Landmark’s history is the best way to know the place.
  • Ask for a Guided tour to fill the blanks & you’re ready to go.
  • Make Contextual Stories.
  • Who lived in this place?
  • Why did they lived there?
  • Were they happy or miserable?
  • Does your Story belong to the location you’re in?
  • Just ask to locals about the City/Town’s symbol or motto.
  • Focusing on travel-related themes: Adventure, Exploration, Epics & Sagas.
  • But also the Mundane, the Daily, the authentic.
  • You can write a ballad on the shores of the sea, or a as you walk in royal gardens.
  • Do you prefer the Extravagant?
    • Go for it.
  • Would you rather relate the tales of sailboats & seagulls?
  • Would you compose your next elegy under cypresses at dusk?

Restaurants & Cafes, refuel your Body & think

  • Find inspiration in a restaurant?
  • Do you have a favorite dish?
  • An evergreen treat?
  • Then, treat yourself.
  • That’s part of the creation process.
  • You need to refuel this jauge called motivation.
  • By thinking about new projects?
  • By imagining your next composition on that little piece of napkin.
  • Or just by resting…

As usual, look around:

  • Observe the people to identify character traits.
  • Listen for dialogue opportunities.
  • Watch at the Setting & Environment and describe it.
    • Write down good design choices around you
  • Today was a journey, tomorrow will be too.
  • What are the after effects of this journey?
  • What have you learned today?
  • What will you do tomorrow?

Write a Continental Epic

  • Your journey begins before you quit home.
  • Plan your schedule beforehand to optimize your travel time.
  • You can get access to valuable places and people to collect unique information.
  • And start.
  • Traveling by land is cheaper.
  • It’s also generally easier if you don’t need a visa or have to learn a new language every time you move.
    • Though it could be a missed opportunity.
  • Speak with the inhabitants.
  • Collect legends & fables you couldn’t find in books.
  • Ask for local versions of a popular tale.
  • Ask for corrections, most movie adaptions didn’t get that specific element that could make your own book famous today.

Plan to write a Pentalogy:

  • If you are living in the US, it may be easy to make a chapter for every state.
  • 5 * 10 chapters = 5 Books
  • You may also have some favorite cities or monuments.
  • Take a landmark/landscape you like and just add some Thematic contrast.
  • It may be temporal, spatial, or just vocabulary.

Plan a trilogy:

  • Same thing if you’re living in Europe.
  • The Latin culture in the west, the Germanic culture in the north & the Slavic one in the east.
    • That’s 3 volumes
  • Start your trip in Lisbon and then all the way to Minsk.
  • As you go around mix & match cultures, monuments, plants, wildlife and so on.
  • That’s the way to create new unique environments & characters.

If you don’t feel like writing down a 1000+ pages series, just make a short story (1 to 2 pages) for each state/city you visit.

Artistic Awareness, rekindle your Soul

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  • Do you want to create Characters?
  • Do you want to create People?
  • Do you want them to know the world was waiting for them?
  • Do you want to create settings?
  • Or places of legacy?
  • Do you want to make planets?

  • Why did you begin to create?
  • When did you begin to create?
  • Where did you begin to create?
  • Maybe in your own room, in your bed or on your desk.
  • But the impulse came from outside.
  • A most distant land you can barely remember.
  • Maybe it didn’t really exist.
  • The memory persists.
  • Where can you rediscover this place?
  • Will it be in the red Mountains, made of Fire & Rocks?
  • While running in the Plains, coursed with Wind & Light?
  • Under the Seas, on lone Islands, where flow wonderful Waters & dismal Currents?
  • Deep in the Forest’s domain, where reign Earth, Wood & Shades?

Parks – Rest, Remember & Restart

  • Parks are the ideal location to rest & focus at the same time.
  • Train your eyes.
    • Observe the mimics.
    • Train your speed by lashing drafts on paper.
    • Write without thinking much, only about writing.
  • Listen
    • Go around.
    • Record Background sounds, dialogues, conversations, take quick pictures of animals & people.
    • Do you have some experience with CGI or Video edition/SFX?
    • Why not capture some footage for a future animated text?
  • Feel.
    • The Climate variations
    • The Atmosphere shifts.
    • Try trees & grass texture.
    • Put your hands in the water.
    • And wash them afterwards.
  • Meet fellow Storytellers
    • They will be here for similar reasons.
    • It’s a time as good as any to exchange a few words on your upcoming project & maybe contacts.
  • Dream.
  • Dream under a tree.
  • Remember these images that push you to the page.
  • Were they reveries or nightmares?
  • Elusive phantasms…
  • Or persistant apparitions?
  • Presences leading you back to the page with deepest stories you could have hoped for while awake.
  • You don’t need to actually sleep.
  • Just let the pen go around the page.
  • Write in reverse, in front of a mirror, or simply with your non-dominant hand.
  • You can create many writing games.
  • Dream awake.
  • Travel is supposed to be fun.
  • It is also supposed to be the moment when we rest.
  • As in, ‘Do we really have fun?’, think.
  • Did I really rest?
  • Did you rest?
  • Start another project.

Have you ever wondered why we feel at ease in Parks?