How to Hone Your Travel Article Ideas to Perfectly Fit Each Magazine

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74 minutes of video
74 minutes of video
27 slides
27 pages of transcripts

In this webinar we workshoped article concepts into ready-to-pitch, focused ideas with multiple angles matched to specific magazines. I pre-matched them with specific sections from multiple magazines and walked through the process of honing an article “idea” from your concept into something adapted to a magazine and ready to pitch.

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Last week, we walked through trip itineraries and dissected the different article formats and audience slants that would work for each. But I’ve always found, especially with writers new to pitching magazines, that this process of thinking, on your own, what can fit into a magazine is potentially very destructive.

You run the risk of getting addicted to an article idea that simply doesn’t or wouldn’t fit into a magazine that will pay you for your words.

This is actually what drove us to create the Travel Magazine Database in the first place, to not only show writers that there are move places to publish their words than they realize, but also, and most importantly, to outline EXACTLY what an idea needs to look like to fit into each magazine.

What Magazines Look to Publish May Surprise You

I was just wrapping up edits on some database entries before I sat down to write this message to you, and every time I read our entries, I’m always struck by the cool things that magazines are looking for.

In the three entries I just edited, I found these neat magazine sections:

  • Suitcase  magazine, an indie travel magazine covering the intersection between fashion and travel, has this section perfect for big bloggers transitioning into magazine writing: “‘Living in My Suitcase’ highlights recent travels of an influencer with photos of the trip and a 350-word, first-person story about the experience. ‘Henry Holland in Puglia, Italy’ is an article from a recent issue about Holland’s five-year anniversary celebration with his boyfriend. ”
  • British Airways’ High Life in-flight magazine has multiple opportunities for the kind of quirky, observational essays that I often hear folks in workshops wanting to write but not knowing a good home for: “‘Curiosities’ is written by well-traveled writers about random global phenomena they have recently noticed. It is broken up into four subsections, with one of those written by a regular columnist. Examples of the other three subsections include ‘Global Scorn’ about the wittiest remarks in history and how they unite us, ‘Feel the Burn’ about how part of a mountain in Yanartas, Turkey is always on fire, and ‘What I Pack’ about the travel essentials of Tony Conigliaro, one of London’s finest bartenders. ”
  • The new UK edition of Robb Report magazine has a great quick win for people jonesing to go on luxury press trips to unique boutique hotels run by travel luminaries: “‘Masters of Luxury’ is a 1,600-word profile written in third person about an established, wealthy individual from the world of luxury. Alan Faena, developer and hotelier, was featured in a recent issue. ”

And there are thousands and thousands more specific magazine sections with angles that can inspire your travels and fill your bank accounts out there. It’s just a function of starting to change your thinking about your ideas, and now always holding so tightly to how you believe a trip should be written up, but rather opening yourself up to the possibilities of different slants and foci on the same experience.

In this webinar, we workshop article concepts from attendees into ready-to-pitch, focused ideas with multiple angles matched to specific magazines

We will cover:
– Quick look at the types of **hyperspecific** ideas magazines are really looking for
– How to make sure you have an article idea, not just a topic (and other things that come up when I was reviewing submissions)
– Workshopping your travel article ideas live two ways: pitchable ideas and ideas matched to magazines