This post REALLY concludes this serializing of my six-chapter travel memoir about a trip to Italy’s Cinque Terre in 2008. In 2010, I self-published Write Your Travel Memoirs: 5 Steps to Transform Your Travel Experiences Into Compelling Essays. It included five how-to chapters and, to provide an example, this memoir. The book is available on Amazon.com.

If you’ve taken a writing workshop with me, you know I’m a believer in outlining. In fact, if you’ve ever been in one of my workshop sessions where we talk about structure, you know how I rely on a very specific framework I learned from Jon Franklin’s “writing for story” approach. Each chapter is based on “a complication, three developments, and a resolution.”

Here’s how I explained that in Chapter 4 of Write Your Travel Memoirs:

Jon Franklin, author of Writing for Story, teaches that a story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves. This is what Franklin terms Story Structure.

The complication raises a problem that will hang there until it’s solved, introduces tension and suspense. Choose for your focus a complication that is basic and universal, and you will get your readers’ attention.

Develop your story along an arc that leads to a resolution. Franklin would say your story must include precisely three developments between the complication and resolution. While I believe rules always have their exceptions, analyzing essays I consider great has given me confidence in the fundamental “power of three” formula I learned from Jon.

Your resolution should show your readers a change in the character or situation you presented in your complication. Complications, developments, resolution—that’s how you stage the action in your story.

I would never suggest that this method is right for everyone, but I find it extremely helpful in my writing practice. I hope it contributed to making this a good travel tale (even if it didn’t end with an enthusiastically wagging tail.)

Below is the same text as shown in the image above, with links to the individual posts reflected in the outline.

Chapter 1. The Gift

• [C] Family gives us a trip to Italy for our 25th anniversary.
• [D] We seek solution to the problem of caring for our elderly dog.
• [D] We find acquaintances willing but inexperienced.
• [D] We leave (in denial about the dog’s poor health).
• [R] Our vacation begins.
  This sets up foreshadowing re: dog

Chapter 2. Arrival in Cinque Terre: The Challenge of “Inserimento”

• [C] We choose town for first objective in Cinque Terre.
• [D] We miss it on first try.
• [D] Our happiness is threatened by arriving crowds.
• [D] We find lodging
• [R] A successful “inserimento” concludes in happiness.
  1st email check-in – foreshadowing re: dog (no news).

Chapter 3. Where Sneaker Meets Rock: The Vernazza-Corniglia Trail

• [C] Our much-anticipated nature experience begins
  “where sneaker meets rock.”
• [D] We find wildflowers in bloom.
• [D] Our first CT trail is challenging.
• [D] We survive to find happiness and “restoration.”
• [R] We find our next lodging.

Chapter 4. What to Do with Thirty Thousand Guests

• [C] We hope to find rest and quiet amid tourist invasion.
• [D] Landscape & tourists threaten our hopes.
• [D] Our expectations of botanical gardens meet reality.
• [D] A discovery rescues us from the landscape.
• [R] With luck, we find quiet and rest.
  2nd email check-in – foreshadowing re: dog (news too vague).

Chapter 5. The Days Blur, the Faces Don’t

1. [C] We pass the days hiking, eating, & trying to avoid crowds.
2. [D] We have encounters with interesting local people.
3. [D] We meet the “United Nations” on the trails & etc.
4. [R] We are grateful for small exchanges of hope and goodwill.
   3rd email check-in – foreshadowing re: dog (news still too vague).

Chapter 6. Return “Inserimento”

• [C] Our vacation days are all used up.
• {D] We leave CT and arrive in Madison too tired to recall arrangements.
• [D] We enter our house to discover everything is wrong in big and small ways.
• [D] Jane explains about dog’s near-death experience.
• [R] Were decisions made the “right” ones? We’ll never know.

Epilogue

© 2024 Sarah White