Each detail rendered must be purposeful, an element in a scheme designed to surprise, delight, captivate, illuminate, sadden, or confound. Though the trip itself may have been random, nothing in the manuscript is left to chance. Success is achieved when readers let their minds wander at ease through a landscape their bodies may never know, or when they eagerly revisit a known site, only too glad to see it in a new light, or from a different angle. To eschew banality, to somehow rise above the literary pack, is the travel writer's greatest challenge. But in the effort to be original, the author must be wary of stretching too far, of becoming a poseur.
Truth is essential.
If any word in any account breathes insincerity, readers will turn suspicious, even hostile. They'll reject a writer they suspect of posturing. Readers have no sympathy for adventurers who boast of facing danger when the thrills described seem cheap, the bravado contrived, and the threats unreal. Certainly, though, the writer who tosses humor and cockiness into an account can afford to flavor it with a bit of braggadocio. But even in this mixture, at its base, there must be honesty, the most fundamental ingredient.