It was my passion for Australia’s rugged landscapes and its storytelling-rich Indigenous cultures that taught me how to get started writing a novel I can actually finish. This didn’t happen overnight. My creative adventures brought me back to Aussie shores several times before I completed a manuscript. Ever since my first visit, the land has had me spellbound in my story world, continuing to shape my creative life every single day.
Travelling as a writer isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind if you’re learning how to get started writing a novel. And it’s certainly not the easiest path. Travel brings its challenges, especially for introverts. It pushes you beyond your comfort zone. Yet, stepping away from my desk to explore places from my books, meet new people and find myself in the process has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. I literally got to live within my story world through the eyes of my protagonist. My (digital) notebooks are now overflowing with ideas, and writer’s block doesn’t exist for me anymore. And I’m convinced that creative travel, in whatever form, helps every author write fiction that feels alive with real experiences. In this 8-step guide, I’ll share how you can write a novel through travel, too.
1. How to get started writing a novel with no experience?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner at writing. Setting an intention as you first get started writing a novel is the step that comes before anything else. Whether you already have a story idea or you’re still seeking inspiration for writing fiction, your intention will guide you in planning your creative journey and following through. With a clear story idea in mind, you make different choices in each of the following steps than someone who is still searching for that one big story idea.
Here are a few questions to help you set your intention and guide you through the next steps in this guide.
- What do I hope to get out of this trip as a writer? Do you want to finish a draft, collect story ideas or perhaps build a flexible writing routine?
- Where does your story take place, or what resembles it most closely? A quiet countryside, lively hostels, beaches or mountains?
- How much structure do I want while I’m travelling? Are you planning writing sessions, or keeping it spontaneous and flexible?
- What’s one small goal I’d love to achieve by the end of this journey? A few chapters, a daily writing habit, a new sense of direction or the beginnings of your story world?
- How do I remind myself of this goal when travel days get busy or unpredictable?
2. Make a story-inspired travel plan
The last thing you want to do is go on your creative journey without a plan that supports your intention. At least not when you’re limited by your budget or how long you can stay away from home. The first time I travelled to Australia with the intention of immersing myself in my story world, I created an itinerary that included trips only partly related to my story. And it distracted me from my purpose. The result was that I had a ripper time, but was still behind on my goal to edit my story world based on real-life places. I had to return a year later, and the same thing happened again (what a punishment, huh?).
Choose your storyworld destination
Your intention will determine what destination you pick. If you already have an idea relating to a place you’ve been before or want to return to, it’s an easy task. But I can totally imagine that you don’t, and it’s in fact the reason you want to make that trip, so that you’ll find writing inspiration for your novel.
This might be simpler than you think. Ask yourself if there’s a place that has drawn you for no apparent reason and that you’ve always wanted to explore. This can even be a place close to your home or a country that you’ve been fascinated with your entire life. In this case, I’ll have to contradict my earlier advice and recommend leaving with little planning. Invite yourself to embark on a creative adventure and discover the story that awaits you.
Research your storyworld
Before you even set out, research the places you want to visit. Using a Lonely Planet travel guide or Google can be the first step to finding more information and lead you to various other sources. Many books can take you places, both fictional and non-fictional. Half the fun is in the preparation. Plus, your research could also be the first step to mapping out your novel outline and story world. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get yourself a travel journal and start making those notes that will keep you going from now on.
Sort out your writing space
Where and how you’ll be living on your journey might make the difference in your process of discovering how to get started writing a novel. I’ve written an in-depth blog about types of accommodation and how to create writing set-ups during your journey in, DIY Writers retreat: Creating a writing space on your creative adventures.
3. Pack a portable writing toolkit
You’ve set your intention and your plans are clear. It’s time to gather the tools that will keep your creativity flowing wherever the road takes you. As a travelling writer, your workspace might change daily. Sitting with your laptop in a quiet corner of a breezy outdoor café, lying with a book beneath a tree by the ocean or scribbling in your notebook while in your swag underneath the outback’s starry sky. Having the right toolkit helps you stay grounded in your writing, even when everything else around you is constantly moving.
Here are a few writing tools and essentials that I’ve found worth packing (and carrying around).
- Your writing device and novel writing software
- A physical notebook or journal: to jot down all your ideas
- Power and connectivity essentials
- Comfy clothes and personal items
- A writing inspiration toolkit: This can be anything that helps you tap into your creativity. It can be a favourite book or a sheet with writing prompts.
4. How to get started writing a novel with the right writing flow
Creative travel can open new ways of seeing your story. But unless you’ve booked a dedicated writer’s cabin, writing a novel rarely happens at a perfect desk with the proper lighting and silence when you’re travelling. It occurs between journeys, on train rides, under shady trees, or while waiting in an airport lounge between flights. More than anything, though, it’s a way to shape your story world through experience. Finding your writing flow as a travelling writer is part of discovering how to get started writing a novel on and through your creative adventures. You might find that embracing unpredictability becomes the only way to get words on the page.
Instead of forcing a strict schedule, start noticing your natural rhythm. Are you most alert in the mornings, or does inspiration arrive when the world goes quiet at night? You might already know that from writing at home, but it’s worth testing how your habits shift when you’re out in the world. Once you recognise your natural rhythm, work with it rather than against it. Your journey will soon feel like a series of creative waves, moving between deep adventures and quiet moments of reflection, where ideas begin to take shape, whether in your mind or on paper.
5. Find inspiration for writing fiction
One of the most meaningful tips I can share is to use your travels to fuel your writing inspiration as you discover how to get started writing a novel. My definition of a writing retreat isn’t necessarily about hiding away in a cabin and pushing out 20.000 words in a week. You could, of course, if that’s your intention for the trip. But the kind of storytelling-inspired travel that keeps your creativity alive in the long run is a balance between craft and the pursuit of inspiration to write your novel.
The options for finding writing inspiration on the road are endless. To name a few:
- Open your travel guide (e.g. Lonely Planet) and follow its suggestions to chase adventures.
- Browse Tripadvisor or GetYourGuide for unique local experiences.
- Join Facebook groups to see what’s happening nearby.
- Explore neighbourhoods on foot or by bike.
- Spend an afternoon people-watching in a café and let your imagination wander.
- Head out camping or take small-group tours to experience life off the beaten track.
6. Create sensory language
When you’re travelling, you’re surrounded by a world alive with colour, sound, texture and movement. All the things that make stories come alive. Using sensory language in your writing is one of the most powerful ways to convey those experiences on the page.
You can just sit somewhere with your notebook and describe all the senses. What do you see, hear, taste and feel? Take a few minutes each day to pause and be present in the moment, or go out and visit specific places that inspire your storyworld. When I stayed in Broome for a couple of weeks, I visited a red sand beach I’d seen many times before, but I chose to look at it a tad deeper. I sat on a rock and watched the waves lapping on the shore. My legs were sticky with red sand, and I tasted the salty tang on my tongue. I wrote everything down in my notebook, even though I couldn’t use the details straight away. If I ever need to write a beach scene in my book in a similar location, I only need to dig up my notes to write that scene and use the sensory language to make it as vivid as possible.
7. How to write a novel outline
Once writing inspiration moves in, you can start giving your story a bit of shape. That white page on your screen can seem daunting. But what if I tell you that you only need one sentence to start? And that one sentence becomes a paragraph, and a paragraph becomes your novel outline. And well, novel outlines become novels :)—an entire YA fantasy series, in my case.
How to get started writing a novel step-by-step using The Snowflake Method
I’m a massive fan of The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson. It’s a simple but powerful way that helped me build my novels step by step. While I was travelling in Bali in 2018, I had just begun jotting down the ideas for my storyworld, and this method helped me build a structure for my plot, eventually resulting in an entire storyworld and novel series. Especially when you’re on the move, it makes it easy to break your novel down into small steps and let your story grow naturally.
The Snowflake Method’s little book has accompanied me on many travels. It guides you through the following four steps.
- Start with one sentence that captures the essence of your story.
- Expand it into a short paragraph describing the main plot.
- Flesh out your main character, their goals, conflicts and motivations.
- Keep layering in detail: scenes, turning points, subplots, until you have a clear roadmap for your novel.
How to get started writing a novel with Scrivener
The step-by-step approach works beautifully for travelling writers because it’s modular. For organising everything, I swear by Scrivener. It’s like a portable writing studio that perfectly captures those bursts of inspiration you come across as a traveller. You can brainstorm a single step on a long train ride, develop a character profile on your hotel bed, or sketch out a new scene while sitting in a café.
As a novel writing software tool, Scrivener allows you to keep all your notes, research, scenes and character sketches in one place, and rearrange them easily when inspiration strikes. It also works offline, which is perfect when you’re writing somewhere remote or without WiFi. Scrivener makes the best novel writing software for building a fantasy world on the road.
8. Bring your story home
Unless you decide to become a full-time writer living nomadically (and I’ll totally root for you if you do), your creative adventure will have to come full circle. At some point, you’ll return home to your familiar routines. Give yourself time to settle back in and reflect. What stayed with you from your travels? What changed in your perspective, and how does that show up in your characters or themes? You’ll be amazed to discover that this is only the beginning. From here, your experiences, your notes, your writing routines and first outline will have a chance to develop into the story you’ve been yearning to tell all along. Just go out there and find that one sentence that can grow into a full novel.
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