Road Trips

I’m the sort of writer that gets inspired by oddball characters or intriguing situations. Rarely do I find inspiration in a place. Settings are not my bag in my fiction; I prefer to give a hint and move on to juicy dialogue or a cracking action sequence. Okay, sometimes I like exploring the feeling that setting evokes. But I don’t waste a lot of time on it.

Last week, however, I took a road trip to a place where I’m thinking of setting my next novel, and I was amazed. The setting actually informed how I want this story to unfold. I never had that happen to me before. Maybe I’d been going about this setting thing bass-ackwards (and that wouldn’t be the first time :-)).

The landscape, the foodways, folkways, even road signs all provided inspiration I’m convinced I wouldn’t have found if I read it in a book or even a documentary film. Being There was everything.

I have a memory like a sieve and I worried that I wouldn’t remember some of the more ephemeral things that contribute to evoking a place in an authentic way. So I made sure I did the following:

• Took photos. I had them developed immediately so I wouldn’t forget where and when I took the photo, instead of letting them sit in my camera for six months. Then I placed the photos in an album with labels. This album has already become a valuable resource. When I needed a punch of description, I flipped it open and boom, the photo took me right back to the moment I snapped the pix.
• Kept a journal. I’m not a journal-writer, and toting one around was a pain, but after I was able to sketch out some local color and a regional name I’m convinced I’d never come up with on my own, I’m a travel-journal believer.
• Ate lots of local specialties. There’s just something about food that imparts so much information in a compact passage, and knowing regional cuisine will add more authenticity. Who can eat scuppernog jelly without thinking of coastal Carolinas? Churros=Tijuana; curry=London; soggy hotdog=Fenway Park.
• Bought a lot of local books. Even in the age of Amazon and Google, it’s hard to find small-press or self-pubbed books on local history. In a gift shop, I found an amazing book on regional folkways that was chocked full of the kind of detail writers salivate over. It had been published by the local church.

I’m sold on first-hand research whenever feasible.

Have you ever traveled to a place and been inspired to write a book just from the setting? What other tips can you share for preserving the feelings and visuals that places evoke. I’d like to know so I can use them in my next road trip.

Kathleen Bolton

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.

She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.

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