HOW TO CREATE ENGAGING PERSONAL TRAVEL WRITING: A CASE OF TECHNIQUES EMPLOYED IN WRITING CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Abstract

Travel writing is a creative non-fiction that has real places as its focus accounts. However. 'Any form of travel text is always a constructed, crafted artefact, which should never be read naively as just a transparent window on the world (Carl, 2011:30). According to Davis and Robinson-McCarthy (2012a:8) 'most travel writing [...] tends to consists of two parts-the narrative of experience and the greater theme mediated that the experience serves to enunciate'. Swick in his article, 'Road Not taken' (2001:65) makes several claims about what constitutes good travel writing. In other words, he says that there will be good travel writing pieces if they do not lack of some significant elements which can engage the readers. Swick (2001: 65-67) mentions seven missing elements which often occur in boring travel writing pieces: negative, experience, imagination, interpretation, humour, dialogue, and people. A textual analysis of two well-known travel writing works, Peter Davis's Bollywood Blockbuster and Benjamin Law's Tourism, was conducted. This paper discuss the techniques used by these travel writers to convey their travel experiences. to transform incident they have experienced into narratives. and to engage the reader in their works particularly in the type of personal narrative based on the reference to Swick's article (2001) - on why so much travel writing is so boring. The conclusion of this paper is that Davis's Bollywood Blockbuster and Law's Tourism can be classified as good travel writing pieces as rvell as personal narratives. These travel writing pieces can inspire readers to take a trip through the authors' personal discovery.