Participate! The best way to get the story

Jennifer Neves of Travel Writers Exchange.com offers advice to travelers on how to get the biggest bang for his or her traveling buck. The author, a professional travel writer, offers this tidbit as her most important way to get the biggest bang for your buck:

“Participate!  If you are always observing, you may be able to write about an event in great detail.  The colors, the smells, the action, but you will never be able to write about how it feels.  Reflecting on what you have experienced is more powerful than a hundred pages of descriptions about the things you have not experienced – and more interesting to read.  Your readers want to relate to you.  They want to relate to the people in the places you describe.”

Akin to the advice offered in Chapter 1 Neves urges travelers to take a leap of faith and get in there and participate. As a travel writer one should be eager to get her hands dirty and become like one of the locals. Do what they do. Neves asks the writer to actually experience the destination so others can experience it through the writings.