This post is all about how we can get writing inspiration from travel and how visiting new places can boost your creativity.
Whether it’s a two-month journey around the world or just a half-day trip close to home, traveling brings a sense of adventure to your writing and makes writing feel exciting again. It provides endless ideas for plots, characters, and obviously for world-building. Moreover, traveling stimulates your brain, ignites your curiosity, and reignites your joy for writing.
In this post, I’m sharing with you the different ways in which travel sparks creativity, boosts your motivation to write, and even helps you become a better writer.
So if you feel like your writing muse has gone on vacation, it might be time for you to take one too. And when you return from your travels, you’ll see that your muse is waiting for you and excited to get back to work. Let’s explore five ways we can get writing inspiration from travel.
If you prefer the video version, check out the YouTube video below to discover how to get writing inspiration from travel.
1. Travel boosts creativity
When you’re always in the same environment, it can sometimes be difficult to come up with new ideas. There’s simply nothing new to stimulate the creative part of your brain.
To be creative, your brain needs novelty, and traveling is one of the best ways to provide novelty for your brain. When you travel, especially to places you haven’t seen before, you’re surrounded by new stimuli and fresh ideas everywhere you look. Everything feels new: the towns, the landscapes, the people, and the cultures—all new and ready to spark inspiration for your novels.
So whenever you feel stuck in your writing, try going somewhere new. It doesn’t have to be a one-month vacation. Even a simple day trip somewhere you haven’t been before can be enough to wake up your creativity. You’ll be surprised how quickly story ideas start flowing again.
And the best part? You’re having a great time, which you can technically say it’s work.
2. Travel provides writing prompts
One of the best ways to get writing inspiration from travel is through the constant stream of fresh ideas and writing prompts you encounter along the way.
When you travel, writing prompts are everywhere. From the mysterious stranger you meet on the train, to the loving old couple who run the cozy bed & breakfast you booked in a remote mountain location, to the cheerful group of girls who can’t stop laughing during a girls’ night out at the local pub, each of them can become inspiration for one or more characters in your next novel.
They all have lots of interesting stories to tell. Be a good listener, and they will offer endless writing inspiration. Even if they don’t provide the entire plot of a novel, they can still inspire part of the plot, a scene, a character, or a meaningful conversation between characters.
Be curious and be open to listening to and learning from people and cultures very different from your own. Their stories won’t just inspire your writing, they will enrich your life as well.
Has traveling ever sparked a story idea or creative inspiration for you? If yes, where were you?
For me, it happened during my trip to Rapa Nui, the island more commonly known as Easter Ialsnd. That’s where I got the idea for my very first novel. Not only did it inspire me to write a book, but it eventually led me to leave my job in academia to fully embrace a creative life.
You never know just how much your next trip could impact your writing and maybe even your life.
3. Traveling increases writing motivation
Think about that feeling when you return from a holiday: relaxed, refreshed, and full of energy. You’re so excited, full of energy and ideas that you don’t even know where to start. All you want to do is get back to writing.
That’s the magic of traveling. It’s not just about seeing new places and interacting with new people. When you’re always in the same environment, you sometimes feel stuck. The same ideas keep repeating, plot problems feel impossible to solve, and the harder you think about them, the further the answers seem to drift away.
But when you travel, you disconnect from that cycle. It frees your mind and gives you clarity, and as a result, you see solutions you simply weren’t able to see before. And the freer your mind becomes, the more ideas start to emerge and plots finally start to materialize.
That’s why your writing motivation feels so strong when you return from a holiday. So the conclusion is simple: take as much time as possible to travel so you can be as creative as possible.
4. Traveling helps with “Show, Don’t Tell”
Traveling naturally sharpens your observation skills because when you travel, you’re engaging all the senses to experience everything to the maximum. We’ve talked in a previous post about how a walk in nature can help you improve your “Show, Don’t Tell” writing by activating all your senses. Travel simply takes this idea one step further.
RELATED POST: How to Get Writing Inspiration from Nature
When you travel, you use all your senses to fully immerse yourself in everything the holiday has to offer. Every experience you have, both on your travels and at home, combines multiple sensory details that you can later use to describe scenes more vividly in your novel. The problem is that at home we’re not always paying close attention to them.
But when we travel, we want to soak everything in. We slow down, pay close attention to everything around us, and use all our senses to mindfully experience the new environment. Think of the soft glow of streetlights in a quiet town after everyone has gone to bed, or the delicious tastes and scents during the chocolate-making course you’re taking together with other chocolate lovers, or the fresh, chilling air on your hike up the mountain where everything around you is sparkling white.
When you fully live these moments and keep a record in your mind of all those sensory details, you’ll be able to write richer, more vivid descriptions when you return. So if you want to keep your readers happy, make sure to immerse yourself in as many experiences as possible on your travels.
5. Traveling brings clarity to your story
When we talked about the writing habits of famous authors, we saw that many of them came up with the ideas for their most famous novels when they weren’t actively working on the novel. From a nice, relaxing bath to a train ride to a walk in the graveyard, great ideas often show up when you’re not trying to force them to appear.
RELATED POST: The Writing Habits of Prolific Authors
When you take a step back from writing and allow your brain to relax, it becomes free to come up with ideas you may have been blocking when you kept trying to direct and control them. The ideas are already there, you just have to give them space to surface.
And one of the best ways to create that mental space is by traveling. When you travel, you’re focused on the new places you see, the interesting people you meet, and enjoying all the new experiences. That gives your muse some room to breathe. Maybe you worry that while you’re focused on other activities and having fun enjoying your travels, your muse might think you’re ignoring her and will abandon you. But she won’t. She’s still there, she’s just quietly working in the background.
And then, suddenly, when you least expect it, she’s back. You’ve just reached the summit of the mountain you hiked, and you suddenly know how to get your protagonist over a challenging time in her life. Or you’re relaxing at a spa and suddenly you know exactly how to get your hero back together with his love interest.
Wherever you are, as long as you’re taking a break and relaxing, you’ll find that solutions for your plot problems will come out of nowhere. Except it’s not really out of nowhere. New experiences help your brain form new connections, and that leads to a boost in creativity, which brings clarity to your story. And that’s exactly what your story, your heroes, and your readers needed.
So when you travel, everyone is happy.
This post was all about getting writing inspiration from travel. If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy this post:
How a Walk in Nature Inspires You to Be a More Creative and Productive Writer
Now it’s your turn. Let me know in the comments which was a memorable moment from one of your travels that inspired a story, a scene, a character, or a place in your novel.
Leave a Reply