Enhancing experience

February 19, 2011, Alice wrote, ...do you have any ideas for writing realistically about a cross-country road trip when you’ve never actually taken one yourself, and you can’t go on one because your whole summer is completely booked?

Alice’s question applies to any writing outside one’s first-hand experience. When you read this, I hope you’ll apply my ideas to your own stories.

First off, Alice, you know a lot about road trips even if you’ve never crossed the nation on one. And even if you had, you’d have only one experience, which might not be enough. You need those shorter trips to draw on, all your experience of car trips.

You can start with your knowledge of humans in cars then move onto your characters. Any story needs conflict, and the cramped space in an automobile, where personalities can’t help but rub up against one another, is perfect.

We all have different driving styles and different styles of being a passenger. If the driving is shared, that can be a source of trouble. And the radio! Or CD player or iPod. What kind of music to listen to? Who prefers news or a recorded book? Open window? Closed window? How high to crank the heat or the air-conditioner? Who pays for gas? Who sits in front? Anybody gets carsick? Conflict galore. As well as opportunities to make peace. The emotional ride can be bumpy!

And what about the car itself, inside and out? Are soda cans rattling around on the floor? Does the car smell like the family dog? Or does it still have a new-car smell after seven years? Is it in good repair? Is it a junker? Does it have a spare tire? Jumper cables? Whose car is it?

My parents loved and respected each other – ordinarily – but they were at their worst in the car. We lived in New York City, where a car and a driver’s license aren’t necessary. My father didn’t get either one until he was in his early forties, and my mother didn’t get hers until the last year of her life, after my dad had died.

My father’s late start and his diffidence combined with my mother’s nervousness and her inability to tell her left from her right (this was long before GPS) made every excursion an expedition into the unknown. If we (my parents, my sister, and I) had set off across country from northern Manhattan where we lived, we might well have driven three thousand miles and wound up in the Bronx, five miles from home.

We played word games in the car and sang car songs. What stands out in memory, however, is the mounting tension. We inevitably got lost, and my parents each blamed the other. Then, at the end of the trip, we had to go home, and it happened all over again.

What I’ve described applies to ordinary trips, and this is a magic ice cream truck (a lovely idea). Still. How does the truck look? Smell? Does Sam the ice-cream man keep the driver’s cab clean? Has the engine had its latest inspection? How high are the driver and passenger from the road? Is the truck noisy? How does it feel different from being in a car? And of course there’s the magic part.

What sort of driver is Sam? Does he love to tell stories and forget to watch the road? Or does he demand silence so he can concentrate? Does he tailgate? Drive too fast? Too slow?

What kind of passenger is the girl, whom I’m calling Honey? Relaxed? Or nervous? Chatty? Silent?

What time of year is the trip? What sort of weather might they encounter?

All this – the characters, the car or truck – are available to the writer before the engine has even turned over. And you don’t have to know the slightest thing about cross-country trips to write this part.

For the cross-country aspect, there’s lots you can do. You should certainly consult a map to plot the truck’s course. Get online directions for the recommended route and alternate routes. Find tourist attractions along the way. Explore the topography. Pretend you were planning the trip for yourself. Decide if Sam and Honey want to go through cities or skirt them. Are they going to stay in motels or camp out? Can they live in the truck? If so, where are the recreational vehicle camps? Research traveling in an RV if that’s going to be their choice.

Before starting this post I googled “worst car trip.” I was thinking conflict again. Lots of items popped up. I read only one, so I don’t know what’s out there. You can google “cross-country road trip” and see what you find.

Also, I’d suggest you ask people you know about their cross-country and long-distance car trips. Here’s a wacky idea: Listen to “Car Talk,” a weekly car-repair program on National Public Radio. You can stream it online. The program is more than car-repair; it’s funny, and you may hear a wealth of material that you can fictionalize.

Readers of the blog, you can help Alice by posting reminiscences of long road trips that you’re willing to share.

Of course, the danger of research is not knowing when to stop. We fall in love with all the discoveries we’re making. You may want to stay in road-trip-research land forever and never progress to the rougher terrain of writing land. So I’d suggest that you research enough to get you started. Then, if Sam and Honey are riding through the Sonoran desert, for example, and you need to know what the landscape looks like, return to the research phase until you’re ready to continue. When you began you might not have known that they would detour into the desert. You certainly wouldn’t have known they’d decide to go to a fancy restaurant for dinner and you have to learn about Southwest cuisine.

When I wrote my historical novel, Dave at Night, I started with general research about New York City in the 1920s, especially about Harlem and the Lower East Side. Then I started writing. Dave’s father dies at the beginning of the book, the first page. A little further on I needed to know what route the hearse would take to the cemetery in 1926. Back to research. Later on, Dave is on the street outside a Harlem rent party in 1926. (A rent party was held when a tenant couldn’t pay the rent. She’d hold a party, serve food, bring in jazz musicians, and collect a small admission fee, which would bring in enough to cover the rent.) These parties were egalitarian affairs. Poor folk and rich attended. I wondered what kind of cars might have been parked at the curb near where Dave stood. This led me to reading about classic cars and interviewing a classic car expert.

Even when I’m writing fantasy, I research. For example, in For Biddle’s Sake, one of my Princess Tales, the fairy Bombina loves to turn people and things into toads, so I researched toads. I used little of what I learned, but knowledge made me more confident. In A Tale of Two Castles (out soon!) one of the major characters is a dragon. To describe him I googled images of dragons, but I wasn’t satisfied, so I looked at Komodo dragons (online, not in person), and that’s what I described, except for the wings, which I made up. Research helps with detail, and, as we all know, detail brings stories to life.

Naturally these prompts revolve around car trips. Perry is invited to vacation with his best friend Letty Pewer and her parents. They are traveling from Minnesota to Florida for a winter week in the sun. Below are some possibilities to fool around with. Pick as many as you like or make up your own or do a combo of mine and yours.

•    Letty’s father is peculiar. You decide how.

•    Letty’s mom is a dangerous driver. You decide how.

•    Letty’s younger brother and older sister are coming along. They don’t get along with Letty and dislike Perry.

•    The car is older than Perry. The radio doesn’t work. There is no iPod, no CD player.

•    The Pewers are economizing and haven’t bought a GPS. Good old maps are good enough for them. They plan to camp out and save on motel costs as soon as they reach warm enough weather.

•    The car is bewitched – not in a good way.

•    This is the snowiest winter in the history of  Minnesota and surrounding states.

•    The scenic route will take the family and Perry through an old mining town. Unbeknownst to the authorities, one of the abandoned mines is now occupied by squatters who may be dangerous.

Have fun, and save what you write!

19 Responses on “Enhancing experience”

  1. Jenna Royal says:

    I also feel daunted by the idea of trying to write something I know nothing about. I'm always worried I won't get a piece of information right, or I'll mess something up – especially when it's something I know almost nothin about but many other people do. For example, I've always been worried about writing school scenes. I've been homeschooled since first grade, and even though I've been in schools and heard my friends talk about school and read novels with school scenes, when it comes down to writing a scene set in a school, I find it hard to work up my courage to do it. I feel sure that I'm going to make a glaring mistake that everyone but me will see.

    But this post gives me encouragement to try. For more than a year I've had te idea for a novel about an Aztec girl set in Mexico in the 1500s, but I've never gotten down to doing the research. I was hoping to tackle that project this summer, and I will keep your comments about research in mind.

    Also, I was wondering … in one of the stories I wrote and am currently editing, one of the character's name was inspired by the name of another character in a book. Now, as I observe my character, he in many ways resembles the character in the other book that I got the name from. He's an important character in my story, and the qualities are important too – plus the name fits him perfectly. He has many traits that are unique to him, too, but I'm afraid that someone who reads my story will make the connection between the two characters, mostly because of the name, which isn't too common. Do I have to change my character or his name? I don't want too, because he is one of my favorite characters, but I don't want any resemblance of copying someone else's work in my story, either.

  2. welliewalks says:

    I love this post! The prompts will be fun and I like the idea of writing a story about a car trip-great idea. I never thought about all the conflicts that could happen on one! Thanks! Two things about me on car trips (and I've had many recently, with a move)- I hate people seeing my sleep so I always try to turn my head away from everyone else. And I usually get slightly hyper from being cramped so long and eating 'car food'. haha random info.
    @Jenna Royal- I hear you. I've been homeschooled since 5th grade and I worry about writing High School and Middle School scenes since I've never been! I've been making my characters a) be homeschooled b) not go to school (like in fantasy) c) just not write about it or d) have the story take place during a school break. Does anyone have ideas on how to make the school scenes realistic?
    About the character- make sure he has more than three (at least) characteristics that make him different from the character in the book.

  3. Kitty says:

    I really like this post. Usually, when I'm writing, I like to have experience on the matter on my side, but when I don't, I end up procrastinating. I'll keep this post in my mind. 🙂
    As far as car trips go, there are a lot of conflicts in my family's. I'm usually trying to read, but getting a headache (making me kind of crabby), my sister is unsuccessfully trying to sleep, my brothers are arguing over music choice, and my parents are attempting at conversation over all of our noise. Occasionally, we'll have a bit of conversation and play a few word games, but, as we get farther into the trip, the arguments start up again. It's fun, anyway.
    @Welliewalks/Jenna Royal- I would recommend deciding, first off, what you want to emphasize: does the story mainly just take place at the school, or is it a backround piece? Is it a way to introduce characters or get to know them? If the school is more of a backround plot, you can mostly just pull off of your own experiences (i.e. talking with friends at the lunch table isn't too much different than talking to people elsewhere) I'm not sure if this is the kind of advice you were looking for, but I hope it helps some!

  4. Andrea Mack says:

    Great post! I love how you show us about generating all kinds of possibilities and questions, based on what we already know.

    I have been on many car trips, both as a child and as a parent. Some of the things that come to mind: arguing with my 2 brothers over who had to sit in the middle; sleeping a lot so I wouldn't get carsick; poking or elbowing my brothers just to start something; packing lots of "amusements" in a special bag for my kids to keep them busy for hours at a time (e.g. invisible ink books, pipecleaners, stickers with sticker books) — it took almost as long as the trip to think up stuff for them to do (we didn't give them Nintendos or anything); having to stop and look for bathrooms in the middle of nowhere; stopping for a break just because and finding something unexpected, like starfish clinging to rocks.

  5. gailcarsonlevine says:

    Jenna Royal–If the character in the book has a common name I wouldn't worry about it, but if it's Harry Potter or something else that's well known and unusual, I suggest thinking of another name. I suspect you can find something else you like as much or better.

  6. Grace says:

    "Of course, the danger of research is not knowing when to stop. We fall in love with all the discoveries we’re making."
    So. Totally. True. This post inspired me to get off my lazy behind and write! I've only gotten 30K words on a project I've been writing for about a year and there's absolutely no reason it shouldn't be finished by now. I need to stop doing research on a character I haven't even introduced yet and stop writing backstory for a character that will probably never make it into the book XD
    I may also have to try that last prompt, sounds fun 🙂
    As of now I possess no interesting travel stories (well I did travel 14 hours in a bus with my youth group, but that was a charter bus so it didn't really count). But I'm taking a 2 day drive to the beach this summer so that might totally change, haha. 🙂
    Thanks for the post, Ms. Levine! 🙂

  7. Maddie says:

    This was such an interesting post… sometime I'll have to write a short story about a road trip. My question is, how would you end it? Would they reach their destination mostly unscathed, would they get into a crash, or would all the characters discover something new about themselves through the course of this trip? (or, in the case of my family, would they all need therapy afterwards?)

    Jenna– I wouldn't worry too much about writing school scenes. Plenty of people write details that seem wrong to me, and I think it's because everyone's had a different school experience. Besides, if your friends are helping you, it's not like you haven't done any research. You basically can't screw it up. 😀

  8. MNM says:

    I love road trips and it is difinatly easier to see the personality of someone when you go on a road trip with them. For example: My dad is controlling, not in a bad way, but he always drives the car he is in. He also only focuses on one thing at a time, so the whole trip he is silently driving. My mom has to be busy constantly or sleeping, so she always has a big bag of stuff to do and a pillow within reach. In the back seats, before the trip begins, my brothers and I argue about who sits where. The worst seat is always the one that is by my little brother's carseat because the person that sits there has to keep him happy the whole ride.

    As for conflicts on road trips, I have seen more than enough. One summer my family went to Colorado and about ten minutes before we would have reached our rented house the car started smoking. Luckily, we had another car that we took trips going to the house, while my dad waited for the mechanic. We left most of our luggage in the car, but my oldest brother had to bring his suitcase because it held the ring that he planned to propose to his girlfriend with. She was with us, though, so he couldn't explain why he needed to bring his bag with us. And that was just getting to the house. The whole trip turned out great, but a great many things went wrong.

  9. Jill says:

    I think I know too much about car trips… My family drives everywhere! I have only been in a plane once and that was only two months ago. We have driven from Oklahoma to florida, Virginia, California, and Illinois. Every time I think back on those car trips, I literally get car sick. If I had to choose between a cross-country car trip or tame a wild boar, I'd seriously consider taking the boar…

  10. Rina says:

    I just got BACK from a road trip… but it was just me and a parent, so perhaps it wasn't much compared to most.
    I think the greatness about road trips is all the different places you can be in in only a little while, so that you look up and say "whoa, I have been in 3 states in 6 hours."

  11. Mya says:

    Aww, miss this blog! School hols now, so I'm devouring every new post.=D

    I actually love road trips, but I'd much rather take one myself (getting my license next year! Whoo hoo!) than going out with parents. Couples do tend to quarrel when taking a trip, so Mrs Levine, you're not alone. I should know, since I've been driven by a friend's parents 4 hours away, and have been taken on many other road trips with my parent's friends.

    @Alice: It depends on where you set your roadtrip too, I suppose, because here in Australia, there are warning signs about kangaroos, and you'll be hard pressed not to come upon at least one dead kangaroo in all the roadtrips you take here, sad though the fact is.
    )= Not to mention the many reptiles, especially those lizards in the bush, which scurry away, and get injured quite often by cars.
    Although, I'm personally deathly afraid of lizards!
    I hope my bit of info has helped. Good luck with writing your novel!

    On a related, though different note, I was wondering about enchancing experiences too, especially those that deal with romance. I've had a few incidents happen in my life that are definitely out of the ordinary, and involves love.=) I'm just dying to pen it down, but I wonder how I should do so, without making obviously similar to what really happened, so that I don't feel like I'm offending the other people's privacy. Any help?=)

  12. Jessica says:

    Ahh, the joy of car rides with the family. My worst was probably with my family when my brother was 3 and my sister about 6. That means Nick Jr. cd playing constantly (I now have a complete hatred for Oswald) and my siblings beating me over the head with stuffed animals and played and screamed. Not exactly the 8-year-old's dream trip, haha.
    I'm in a similar boat as Alice in that I'm writing about a road trip with people who live on the other side of the country and do things I have certainly never done. What I found that helps is my parents' family trips when they were kids, Google is a writer's best friend and worst enemy, and my friends all have different talents that help me with my characters. Hope that helps a bit, thanks for the post, Mrs. Levine! 🙂

  13. Jenna Royal says:

    When I was younger, I wasn't very good at siting still in the car when my family went on roadtrips. When we took a trip to Maine when I was five, my Mom packed a bag filled with little gifts that I would get to play with every so often along our trip, things like silly sunglasses, hair clips, and stuff like that that I could easily use in my car seat. We went back home at night, and I slept most of the way.
    It seems like we always have adventures when we are driving around. Running out of fuel because our fuel gauge is broken … blowing out a tire on a back road and night in the rain with no flashlight and trying to change it while another yore is hissing out air … a seriously leaky fuel line … getting lost and trying to find maps on a laptop that gets overheated or runs out of batteries … little things make great material too, like worrying about the kayaks on the top of the car or a rainstorm.

    @Ms. Levine – thank you for your suggestion. I will look at other names. My character isn't named Harry Potter, but the name isn't particularly common either. Oh well.

    @Maddie, Kitty, and Welliewalks – thanks for your input on writin school scenes. I guess it's true that a conversation is pretty much the same wherever you hold it, so maybe I'm being too cautious.

    @Mya – I never though about signs warning for kangaroos before. Around here we have problems with deer. About writin your love stories – if you are writing a fictional piece based on your experiences, it shouldn't be too hard to change enough that there won't really be a resemblance between fact and fiction to anyone other than yourself.

  19. Bryan Meeks says:

    How are you doing, Gail? First of all, I really enjoyed reading this blog post of yours. I find it so amusing. I also experience a road trip, but it was several years ago when I'm still a teenager. Well, it was actually fun for we get to feel such freedom. It was supposed to be a long ride, but we never expected to have our engine ended up smoking. Lucky for us, there was a nearby mechanic shop that helped us. The price was a bit high, but what else can we do? From that day, we all learned our lesson: It's important to have the car inspected first before using it, especially for a long ride. If you're going to seek for a mechanic, then it would be wise to know their review and quote first. Well, I guess that's it. Have a nice day!

    Bryan Meeks

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