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?<\/i><\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
First off, Alice, you know a lot about road trips even if you\u2019ve never crossed the nation on one. And even if you had, you\u2019d have only one experience, which might not be enough. You need those shorter trips to draw on, all your experience of car trips.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t help but rub up against one another, is perfect.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s license aren\u2019t necessary. My father didn\u2019t get either one until he was in his early forties, and my mother didn\u2019t get hers until the last year of her life, after my dad had died.<\/p>\n
My father\u2019s late start and his diffidence combined with my mother\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2019s the magic part.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
What kind of passenger is the girl, whom I\u2019m calling Honey? Relaxed? Or nervous? Chatty? Silent?<\/p>\n
What time of year is the trip? What sort of weather might they encounter?<\/p>\n
All this – the characters, the car or truck – are available to the writer before the engine has even turned over. And you don\u2019t have to know the slightest thing about cross-country trips to write this part.<\/p>\n
For the cross-country aspect, there\u2019s lots you can do. You should certainly consult a map to plot the truck\u2019s 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\u2019s going to be their choice.<\/p>\n
Before starting this post I googled \u201cworst car trip.\u201d I was thinking conflict<\/i> again. Lots of items popped up. I read only one, so I don\u2019t know what\u2019s out there. You can google \u201ccross-country road trip\u201d and see what you find.<\/p>\n
Also, I\u2019d suggest you ask people you know about their cross-country and long-distance car trips. Here\u2019s a wacky idea: Listen to \u201cCar Talk,\u201d a weekly car-repair program on National Public Radio. You can stream it online. The program is more than car-repair; it\u2019s funny, and you may hear a wealth of material that you can fictionalize.<\/p>\n
Readers of the blog, you can help Alice by posting reminiscences of long road trips that you\u2019re willing to share.<\/p>\n
Of course, the danger of research is not knowing when to stop. We fall in love with all the discoveries we\u2019re making. You may want to stay in road-trip-research land forever and never progress to the rougher terrain of writing land. So I\u2019d 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\u2019re ready to continue. When you began you might not have known that they would detour into the desert. You certainly wouldn\u2019t have known they\u2019d decide to go to a fancy restaurant for dinner and you have to learn about Southwest cuisine.<\/p>\n
When I wrote my historical novel, Dave at Night<\/i>, 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\u2019s 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\u2019t pay the rent. She\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
Even when I\u2019m writing fantasy, I research. For example, in For Biddle\u2019s Sake<\/i>, 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<\/i> (out soon!) one of the major characters is a dragon. To describe him I googled images of dragons, but I wasn\u2019t satisfied, so I looked at Komodo dragons (online, not in person), and that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Letty\u2019s father is peculiar. You decide how.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Letty\u2019s mom is a dangerous driver. You decide how.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Letty\u2019s younger brother and older sister are coming along. They don\u2019t get along with Letty and dislike Perry.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The car is older than Perry. The radio doesn\u2019t work. There is no iPod, no CD player.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Pewers are economizing and haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The car is bewitched – not in a good way.<\/p>\n
\u2022 This is the snowiest winter in the history of Minnesota and surrounding states.<\/p>\n
\u2022 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.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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