So you want to write a travel feature?

Pictures must be aspirational

It’s that time of year when golfers, who can afford it, set off in search of a little sun and sand and to be seduced by golf courses in warmer climes.

Some travel as far as the United States and the Caribbean for their winter tee times, others closer to home in Southern Europe and North Africa.

South Africa and the Far East are also growing in popularity as golf destinations, while Britain and Ireland shiver in sub zero temperatures and temporary greens drive us potty.

The Words

Some golfers are natural writers, after all most know how to full in a scorecard, but to others it’s hard to describe what fellow golfers might find interesting and useful information.

We’re not looking for a Pullitzer prize-winner, merely tell us (chronologically, if you like) why you went there, what you found and whether it lived up to expectation. The bottom line is would you go back or recommend it to your mates?

But don’t necessarily feel you have to start at the beginning – tell us about a highlight, a magic moment, a funny incident, a post-round inquest in the bar. This will help you get you started and overcome any writers block that may be lurking.

Even if what you write ends up somewhere in the middle of the story or disappears completely, it will get the fingers active and your powers of recall rolling.

Leave your introduction until last – after all it’s usually a summary and you need to remember all the key points before you can make a judgement.

Aim to deliver a flavour of the trip. After all, if you're sufficiently inspired to want to write about it then it must have been pretty good, so let the potential reader know what was so good about it – the best bits – the courses, their condition, the scenery, the accommodation, the helpful course managers, the food. Give some examples of why it might appeal to others.

Photo of where you stayed is always useful.

Though it’s tempting, avoid a minute-by-minute account of each day and each hole you played. Imagine you’re on a train and dying to tell the fellow golfers opposite about your holiday but you’ve only got ten minutes to the next stop when you have to get off. Pick out the best bits then add other anecdotes to keep them enthralled.

Before you submit it read back what you've written and be critical. If something sounds long-winded or boring, it'll be ten times worse to someone else. Often the secret to a really good story is not what you put in, but what you leave out. So check it best copying and pasting into the area we have provided on the site.

The Photos

Good photographs are vital to a good travel story. In fact, as a journalist, I perhaps should not admit it, but they’re more important than the words. Text can be rewritten but you can't pop back to Florida or Tenerife to re-shoot that sunset over the links when your thumb covered the corner of the lens.

The best pictures are the ones that capture what's great about your destination. If the key attraction is the instruction with the pro, action shots are good. If there are some cracking par-3s, then landscapes are the obvious choice.

When taking course pictures, early morning or late afternoon sunshine is best, with a back drop of palm trees or mountains or the sea shore. Make them aspirational, ideally with a flagstick visible but preferably keep other golfers, trolleys, buggies and rakes out of them. They can distract the eye from the beauty of a course.

Picture yourself and your mates

If you're unsure of your photographic skills, take lots of pictures – we only need half a dozen of reasonable quality. This is easy and cheap if you're using digital, which we prefer – and submitted separately as low resolution j-pegs (via email to editor@golfmagic.com)

There are plenty of examples of appropriate pictures in the articles on Austria,Dubai and and the Estoril region of Portugal, if you're looking for inspiration.

We're not in a position to deal with dozens of slides or prints, you'll need to scan them. If you don't have access to a scanner, most high-street labs will do them for you - it's usually cheapest to get the images put on a CD when you have them processed.

We don't generally run pictures bigger than 800x600 (and usually smaller) so there's no need to email us multi-megapixel images. A little bit of extra is useful, though, as it gives scope for a bit of creative cropping that can do wonders for a photograph.