This week I set off on a journey and as I settled to write this week’s newsletter I realised just how often I write about “the journey”.
Whether it’s someone travelling home; someone escaping home; someone on a lone journey or a new location or new home…
There’s such emotion linked with “home” (or a new home) including reconnecting with people or places; facing the past; a discovery or rediscovery of self.
I can list some of the stories I’ve had published in the past year with these themes:
All The Small Things
A woman chooses redundancy and buys a tiny caravan to travel the highlands of Scotland
Escape To Rome
A lone female traveller decides she can go on her planned trip to Rome, even without the boyfriend who was meant to travel with her.
Finishing Touch
A woman returns to her parents house to renovate it and meets someone from her past now living next door
Another August (still to be published!)
A woman returns home to attend a family wedding whilst she is enroute to an interview for a new job – and unexpectedly meets someone
The Secret Ingredient
Parents who travel with special gifts to visit their student daughter in the city
The Sweetest Thing (story and pocket novel)
Italian Bianca finds herself at the most remote chocolate shop in Scotland and discovers herself and a lot more
In The Groove
A retired British cruiseship entertainer meets an American who’s travelled to Scotland for a wedding and they discover what they have in common
Why is the theme of journey so compelling to us as writers, and readers?
Character journey: The act of travel (or being somewhere out of the familiar), gives the character time and space to reflect, change and grow.
Structure: The journey itself offers a built-in arc – leaving, struggling, arriving.
Emotion: The tension of not knowing what they’ll find raises the emotional stakes.
Writing about a journey, teaches and transforms.
That’s why we enjoy writing it – and reading it.
The first bridge we will go over on our journey south! The red Forth Railway Bridge.
I realise I’ve been reading about “journeys” and watching movies about “journeys” all my life – I’m sure you have too!
As my children grew up, it’s amazing to look back and see how many movies (particularly Disney) are concerned with literal and metaphorical journeys:
The Land Before Time -oh that scene with the mummy dinosaur in the clouds…it still makes me cry
Pocohontas (which way the river goes…still makes me cry)
Home Alone (funny and poignant)
Little Miss Sunshine (not quite a childrens movie though!)
And of course books like The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, Lord of the Rings, and movies like Homeward Bound (oh those dogs!!)
There’s an added twist for me – and that’s my caravan (as of today, a motorhome) which means I am often travelling and discovering new places. The places along the way become a story for me – if not instantly, then later.
Let me count the places I’ve travelled to then written about! The latest pubished ones have included the highlands of Scotland (many locations!), Cornwall, England, and Rome, Italy.
The stops on a journey can demonstrate the power of transformation for the character.
Landscapes can reflect internal states eg a stormy coast in my own: The Sweetest Thing
Places can become characters themselves: a crowded train; an empty railway platform; an old inn; the wilderness of nature.
Home (or a new one) isn’t just where we end up in the story – it can be the places we pause, the people we meet, the emotions we observe in ourselves. Moments in motion contain the promise for rich stories.
Sometimes it’s the person you meet halfway, or meeting a new version of yourself along the way – the new you who travels the road.
The movie I loved best for this was Lost in Translation – it was quiet and masterful. Another quiet and masterful one is The Way (El Camino de Santiago) and the autobiographical elements of that one make it both a tearjerker and a joy.
Writers Prompts:
Your character is called back to their childhood village by a mysterious letter, but each travel delay reveals something they had buried
A pilgrimage to a family grave, with a stranger as a travelling companion
Use the motion of travel to mirror character emotion and transformation (a train, a ferry, a winding road)
A layover in a foreign city reminds your character of something they’ve tried to forget
A wrong turn leads to things turning out right
Write about a strange place where you felt totally at home
Some Reading Linked to travel, journey, and home.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn – a real-life walk of healing
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin – a return that tests love and identity
The Road Trip by Beth O Leary – quirky, tangled paths towards love
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George – a floating book barge journey through French canals offers healing and insight
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher – features travel between London and Cornwall and an emotional return
What can we learn from our own journey, and from observing others on their journey?
Perhaps it is something you can play around with.
I know I have done so in small ways with my story writing.
Happy writing from Jackie in the Little Writing Corner x x
On the road for a few days (what might we see in the rear mirror?)
Share this post