Transform Your Travel Writing, Pt. 4: Know Thy Subject
STORYTELLING IS AN extended process. To borrow from audio/video terminology, there’s a production phase and a post-production phase. Production is where you’re out in the field gathering raw material — taking notes, interviewing people, setting up shots — in other words, “getting” the story.
Post-production comes afterwards. It’s the editing phase, the period photographers correct the colors, cropping, and different image levels to best represent the emotions and feel of the experience. The period videographers will scrub footage, logging scenes before beginning to put them in order. The process of journalists retracing through pages of notes, figuring out how the different bits of dialogue and observations fit together cohesively into a story.