I once asked some fellow travellers about their trip of a lifetime to South America.
Travel has always fascinated me, and South America has been on my bucket list for years, so I asked them the killer question, “What was your favourite part of the trip?”
“Dunno!” they replied in unison.
Unperturbed, I continued questioning: about why they went there, what they did, what they liked, disliked, and learned. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any further towards understanding what made this a trip of a lifetime, other than it was a journey to a wonderfully exotic and mysterious location from which they returned with a billion photos of lakes and llamas, which they showed to me one by one.
What this serves to illustrate is that, although we are all able to talk and write, not everyone can tell a great story…
Writing a book would be easy if all you had to do was grab a dictionary and rearrange the words…
One of my favourite humour writers is Patrick Campbell. Those of a certain age will recall this statuesque Irish peer appearing on television programmes such as Call My Bluff. I particularly appreciate his books, such as the P-P-Penguin, in which he recounts tales of his daily life.
As you might suspect from the title, Patrick makes no apology about his stammer, and one tale, The Hot Box, explores the occasion he got stuck in a tiny room with two other men who stammered. Others recount a game of tennis, or how he locked himself out of his friend’s house one afternoon.
None sound quite as interesting a premise for a story as a trip-of-a-lifetime to South America. But give them to a raconteur and wordsmith like Campbell, and he can transform such mundane moments into the most hilarious tales you’ve ever heard. Ones I love to read and re-read.
There is no such thing as an ordinary life.
Everyone has a multitude of unique experiences, anecdotes, perspectives – and unlimited imagination – to draw on. So, I do believe everyone has a book in them.
However, they need to be able to work all that together into something interesting and compelling…
Undoubtedly, there are always those endowed with some natural talent, but equally, there is a craft to storytelling which will benefit even those who are so blessed. Through centuries of verbal tradition, minstrels, playwrights, orators, and authors have honed it, by observing and refining what works, and discarding what doesn’t. As with painting or any other form of art, writing and storytelling are based on fundamental skills – and they can be learned.
You may never become Picasso, but it’s achievable to master pencil sketching, watercolour, pastels, oils, sculpture, or throwing pots (particularly if they don’t come out the way you’d hoped.) And if you practise, you will improve.
Great storytelling is as much an art form as anything else. As writers, our job is to paint pictures with words.
But we have more than just colours in our arsenal. We have the ability to evoke scents, describe tastes, bring to life textures or sounds, and even hint at things that are hidden, such as emotion or subterfuge, or different points of view. Then we can weave it all into a rich tapestry.
Done well, a story can leap off the page and all but punch the reader in the face.
As a travel writer, the ultimate compliment a reader can pay me, “I felt like I was there.”
Even if you have the talent of Shakespeare, you will still benefit from studying the craft of writing. But unlike Shakespeare, in the modern age, you have open access to read books by the most outstanding writers who ever lived, plus writers’ groups, creative writing courses, books on just about every aspect of the written word, online newsletters, blogs, authors’ groups… and probably lots of other resources I haven’t thought of.
You can also learn grammar.
For me, there are few things more offputting than poor speling and Grammatikal. mishtaykes. In published wherks.
In the memoir I read recently, a TV personality writes candidly about his infertility. Unfortunately, something he said lifted me right out of the pain and distress he was trying to convey and led me to wonder, Is it because he’s the only man in the world whose tes-ticles are hyphenated?
A study by Birmingham University published in the Journal of Neurolinguistics demonstrated a clear connection between poor grammar and actual physical distress in the reader!
So don’t forget that.
But most importantly, if you want to write, write.
Don’t let the books and the courses and the ‘how to’, planning, or thinking about it distract you.
At some point, every aspiring writer had to sit down with a blank page and start.
When you’ve committed the first of the fifty- to one-hundred-thousand words paper, you’re no longer ‘aspiring’. You’re a writer.
What comes out might not be great, but there’s always revision and editing.
Even the most brilliant authors don’t write impeccable first drafts. As Stephen King once said, “Don’t write it right, just write it – then make it right later.”
Sometimes, the entire process might take years or possibly decades – but you certainly can’t make anything right if you didn’t write the words in the first place.
The best way to write a good story is to write a bad one.
Then fix it.
Everyone has a book in them.
However, writing is hard, and writing something good is harder. It demands skill, persistence, and discipline, which explains a statistic I read the other day.
It said that, although many people dream of writing a book, fewer than one per cent will ultimately realise that goal.
Are you one of them?
I’m in the one percent! I wrote seven books ON HOW TO LIVE YOUR DREAM LIFE WITHOUT BEING A MILLIONAIRE OR LOTTERY WINNER!
find them here:
I delivered a talk on Mastering Travel Storytelling: Top Tips for Digital Creators at the Campervan Campout Show 2025. It looked at techniques to tickle up travel tales, regardless of the medium Along with the other seminars from the show, it should be available online shortly.
Posts You Might Have Missed on Jacqueline Lambert.co.uk
- a beginner’s guide to self publishing a book & selling it on amazon – gives an indication of costs involved in publishing your book independently
- coddiwomple – a purposeful mosey through the english language
- what goes into a book launch campaign?
- publish and be damned: how I got scammed, learned my lesson, and came out fighting: a guest post by author peter barber
Never Miss A Post Again! Follow my Page for updates as soon as they are published.
Join the Pack! – Follow Us for News & Inspiration!
No Spam – Guaranteed & Unsubscribe at any time
The Fab Four at Highcliffe Beach, Dorset, UK
Jacqueline Lambert 