Storycraft: Lessons from Great Writing #1 Lessons from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Wonder, Simplicity & Purpose
Storycraft: Helping You Thrive Through Story - Lessons from Great Writing Series
If you’re new here, every week I share tips, insights and actionable ideas on writing, travel writing and mindful travel through the lens of a novelist and travel writer (Lonely Planet, DK Travel, etc.) in three newsletters: Storycraft, Write Your Way Around the World and The Green Travel Guide.
Welcome, thanks for coming on the journey!
Mini-Series: Lessons from Great Writing
There are many writers that have shaped me both as a reader and writer. In this mini-series I’m sharing a few of my favourites and the lessons I’ve learned from their writing. Alongside each week’s essay there’s a free mini-resource included on the themes covered to help you hone your writing craft, and at the end of the series there’ll be a complete Writers’ Reading Kit for subscribers (resources, tools and reading lists). Onwards…
2. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Wonder, Simplicity & Purpose
3. Seamus Heaney: Language as Excavation (coming next week)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Wonder, Simplicity & Purpose
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I vividly remember the first time I read Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (a 1943 classic that has become one of the top bestselling books ever, translated in more than 100 languages). I was very young, drawn by the illustrations he had also created, my imagination captured by this sad little Prince so far from home in a desert, dreaming of other planets.
I don’t recall how much I understood at that time of what he was writing but I know how that story made me feel. It was simple and complex all at once. The sheep in a box, the rose, the fox, the snake, the baobabs… each symbolising so much more. But as a child I didn’t read it that way. I was simply moved by his lonely plight. It was a story that both brought hope and sadness. At the time, I just felt the story. But it stayed in my heart.
Years later I came across another copy of the story, in French this time, and I read it understanding the tale now in a different way entirely. With more life experience I could tune into the social and political undertones that I had bypassed as a child. I became interested in the writer and his life.
At that time I was living about 60 miles away from where Saint-Exupéry had been based in Cape Juby (Morocco) in the Sahara where he flew planes for Aéropostale and managed the airfield. Cape Juby (Tarfaya) was a key stopover point on the Toulouse-Dakar airmail route. For anyone not familiar with his life he initially worked as an airmail pilot across Europe, Africa and South America; his writing was published from 1926, and he joined the French Air Force during World War II; his plane crashed in 1944).
I started to read the rest of his work: Wind, Sand and Stars; Night Flight; Letter to a Hostage; Southern Mail; Flight to Arras and the posthumous The Wisdom of the Sands (1948), a meditation on human values.
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Saint-Exupéry was a writer who cared deeply about the world, about humanity, and about our relationship to the universe. His sense of wonder and awe at the sheer mystery of life infuses all of his writing. He’s not in the least sentimental. Clear-eyed, in fact. But he is fully open-hearted - a rare and priceless quality in an author.
He was also a writer who loved to read, so much so that he could often be found reading right up until moments before he was due to pilot a flight, much to the exasperation of colleagues. His favourite author was Victor Hugo, and he appreciated the writing of Balzac, Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert, and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. He was a risk-taker, in life as in his writing.
What did I learn from his writing?
I learned that:
the best writing isn’t afraid to lean into our humanity. Or to be brave. That in fact bravery will make the writing stand out.
just because you have an extensive vocabulary doesn’t mean you need to use it when you write. That in fact, if you can pare your writing back to the essential, like a sculptor, that it will resonate and outlast any fancy turn of phrase.
making writing seem simple is actually a real skill. It takes a true feel for the heart of story and how it connects to a reader’s heart, and it takes vulnerability.
we never let go of that child we once were, and great writing embraces that. It encourages us to key into our sense of wonder and awe at the world.
the more profound the subject matter, the more simple the writing needs to be.
His writing taught me (as have many other writers) that great writing works in layers of meaning, it reverberates at different levels, so readers can meet the story wherever they are, and they can bring their own experiences to the reading, and that of course turns the story into something far beyond what the writer ever imagined.
“The most beautiful Things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
See how he uses symbolism in his storytelling - the rose, the baobab tree, the desert - The Little Prince is a fable rooted in ancient fables (the stories of the Amazigh deeply impacted Saint-Exupéry in his desert days).
That use of allegory and fable is something that I often use in my own writing.
From Saint-Exupéry I learned that story is always intertwined with all the stories that have gone before it, with the rhythms and patterns and story traditions that humans have created since storytelling began. And that ‘conversation’ is something I intentionally brought into my own fiction writing, most recently in Lenny (a tale set between the desert sands in Libya and the Bayou) which in part is a letter of thanks to Saint-Exupéry for lighting the way).
Perhaps my two favourite lessons from his writing are that even when things are bleak, when humanity is at its ugliest (when hope and despair live side by side on the page) - there is always hope and there is always beauty. This is something that I’ve carried through my life. Hope and beauty remain at the heart of any story I seek to tell.
I also learned that you’ve got to keep a sense of humour and a sense for the absurd (Beckett also taught me this).
In writing, that ability to go light when writing about something dark or weighty is like a boxer dancing on their toes or ‘staying light’: it helps you manoeuvre ideas in your reader’s mind with grace and playfulness.
Reading Saint-Exupéry taught me that it is often not the longest books that have the most to say.
I also learned that a writer leaves a signature on the page - it’s the writer’s voice but it goes beyond that - who are they, what do they care about, what questions keep them up at night - and in the best writing that is a consistent note, no matter what genre, literary experiment or route the writing takes. It’s their purpose coming through in the writing.
“All grownups were once children… but only a few of them remember it.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
For me the best writing is writing I want to come back to time and time again, each time learning something new, ending each reading feeling richer for the time spent. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is one of those writers.
Mini-Resource for Writers: Lessons from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Theme: Wonder, Simplicity & Purpose
Saint-Exupéry’s work reminds us that great writing is not about complexity but about simplicity, courage, and heart. Here are a few practical takeaways you can apply to your own writing.
1. Write with Courage
Lesson: Writing that matters doesn’t shy away from humanity’s fragility or darkness.
Try This: In your current draft, highlight one moment where you pulled back for fear of being “too much.” Rewrite it with more honesty. See how the passage changes.
2. Pare Back to the Essential
Lesson: Simplicity is understanding what to say, what to hold back.
Try This: Choose a paragraph you’ve written. Cut around 30% of the words without losing meaning. Does the heart of it come through more strongly?
3. Layer Meaning
Lesson: Great stories work on multiple levels — a child may see one thing, an adult another.
Try This: Take an image or symbol from your draft (an object, a gesture). Ask: What does this mean literally? What could it mean metaphorically? Write both layers into the scene.
4. Write for the Child Within
Lesson: Wonder and awe are timeless engines for story.
Try This: Imagine your younger self reading your work. What detail, image, or question would catch their imagination? Add that to your story.
5. Balance Light & Dark
Lesson: Even in bleakness, Saint-Exupéry finds humour, beauty, and hope.
Try This: Look at a heavy passage in your draft. Add one note of absurdity, tenderness, or beauty. Notice how it shifts the emotional weight.
6. Leave Your Signature
Lesson: Beyond craft, your writing carries you — your questions, your obsessions, your voice.
Try This: Ask yourself: What do I most care about in this story? Make sure that thread runs through every scene, no matter how subtle.
📚 Suggested Reading List
To dive deeper into Saint-Exupéry’s world and influences:
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) — allegory, simplicity, wonder.
Wind, Sand and Stars (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) — memoir and meditation on flight, humanity, and the desert.
Night Flight (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) — duty, fear, and courage in aviation.
Les Misérables (Victor Hugo) — Saint-Exupéry’s favourite author, exploring hope, justice, and humanity.
Selected Poems (Baudelaire & Rimbaud) — for symbolism, lyricism, and to explore emotional layering.
Action Step for the Week: Take one draft page and apply “simplicity + layering”. Strip down excess words, then add a symbol that resonates beyond its surface meaning.
What are some of your favourite books, the ones that gave you the encouragement to write? Why?
If you’ve found this helpful and want to follow along with this series, sign up for weekly insights into storytelling.
For writers interested in Writing With Purpose, I’m hosting a short course at the end of September. Waitlist here for details.
And if you’re interested in different storytelling models that go beyond the hero’s journey — a previous post Do We Still Need Heroes? breaks down global storytelling models and how to apply them in your writing.
Also this week:
In The Green Travel Guide - Top 10 Eco-Friendly Destinations for Autumn (cabins, fall foliage, slow travel stays, Autumn Adventure Pack, a writers’ retreat in the Arctic Circle ++)
In Write Your Way Around The World - Pitching Your Stories (How to Pitch + Real World Example)
If you enjoyed this content, a ❤️ share, restack or recommend is greatly appreciated!
Until next week,
Laura
Laura McVeigh
Author | Travel Writer | Storyteller
lauramcveigh.com | lauramcveightravel.com | travel-writing.com | greentravelguides.world
Laura McVeigh is a Northern Irish novelist and travel writer. Her internationally bestselling writing has been widely translated. She has authored books for Lonely Planet, DK Travel, bylines in Irish Times, Irish Independent and her writing has been featured in BBC, Newsweek, New Internationalist and many more. Former CEO of global writers’ organisation PEN International working with writers from 145 countries, Laura is founder of Travel-Writing.Com and Green Travel Guides. She works with writers, founders, and sustainable brands on storytelling. Laura also writes weekly on writing, travel writing and green travel on Substack.
Really appreciated this post, Laura. The point about simplicity carrying the deepest weight hit me hard—too often I overwrite when the stronger move is to strip back. Also love the reminder that writing in layers lets people meet the story where they are. That’s exactly what keeps a book alive across time.