If you’re a novice, the best way to do that is to plan a route around a theme. It could be a time period. It could be a transformation of some sort. It could be a theme like, say, “old versus new.” The key is that you should be able to ask yourself about every stop on that route, “Why is this stop on this particular walk?” And you should be able to answer in a single sentence. If you can’t, that stop isn’t ready for the walk yet. A lot of people pick their stops based on their inherent interest alone— “Well, people like the square. And they like the church. And they like this little street”—but then they have to force those places to connect. If you pick a square, a church, and a street—even if they’re all “must-see” locations—you have to figure out what connects them all. Once you’ve got that figured out, it’s a lot easier to pick your stops, because you know each one has an underlying reason to be there, not just a surface appeal.
It’s easy to plan a route around the information alone—on paper, it looks great to have five stops with really dense information—but if you don’t walk it, you’re not thinking about how it moves. On paper, those five stops look great. But in real life, what happens when you walk between them? Is the walk between two of them really long, with nothing to look at? Is it really hard to cross the street? Do two stops run right up against each other, so you don’t have time to let the first one sink in before you hit the second? The physicality of the walk has to work, too. I don’t think that the pacing of a good walk happens by accident.
One trick is to write down a one-line description of the purpose of each stop before you develop your full script. So, for example, “This stop introduces the neighborhood.” “This stop shows how commerce influenced the street.” “This stop highlights a transition from one architectural style to another.” If you write down the one-liners for each stop, you can look at them side by side and see where you have gaps—where you may have repeated an idea in two stops, or where you have a stop that’s great but doesn’t belong in this particular walk. It’s a great time-saver, because it prevents you from scripting commentary for a stop that ultimately undermines the entire walk. It also makes transitions easier, because each move is built into the logic of the route.
With just 15 minutes of planning time, you can go from a vague walk to a structured one. Spend 5 minutes brainstorming 4 or 5 stops that fit a single theme. Spend 5 minutes scripting a one-line description of what each stop will accomplish and laying them out in an order that makes sense—that moves the walk along rather than circling back over the same ideas. Spend your final 5 minutes practicing the walk out loud—even if you’re just walking around your living room with a map—and paying attention to where the flow feels awkward. If you find that one transition sounds clunky, don’t try to smooth it over with more words. Instead, reconsider the order of your stops, or cut out one stop if it’s making the flow awkward. Sometimes a shorter walk with a really tight flow ends up being more compelling than a longer walk with more material.
Another trick is to think about contrast. A great walk has stops that change it up a bit but ultimately still fit into the whole. So you might move from a busy street to a quiet courtyard, a change of pace, but they’re still both part of the same walk. You might move from a stop with lots of visual detail to a stop with more of a big-picture story, a change of pace, but they still fit into the same walk. You might move from a big famous landmark to a little local quirk, a change of pace, but it still fits into the same walk. Novice guides sometimes shy away from contrast because they’re afraid of losing their thread; they make every single stop sound exactly the same. Other times, they go crazy with contrast, and the walk has no center anymore. Somewhere in the middle, you want each stop to offer a bit of contrast while still fitting into the same spine.
When you finally get a logical walk, you’ll feel it. Transitions will stop feeling like life preservers you’re tossing your tourists, and will start to feel inevitable. It will be easier to memorize your script, because each stop leads naturally into the next. It will feel less like you’re rattling off a bunch of random facts, and more like you’re actually guiding people through a series of places that fit together.