The Road Trip as Research and Inspiration for Your Writing
Author Nikki Erlick shares her experience of using a road trip for both research and inspiration for her novel.
The road trip is a staple of American literature, the journey across the country—and, especially, “going West”—a motif of many classics. And yet, I did not set out to write a “road novel.” The road novel, instead, found me.
My second book, The Poppy Fields, emerged from a time of loss in my own life, when I felt overcome by a desire to just sleep through my grief, unfeeling and unaware, and then wake up on the other side, feeling stronger. As I was thinking this, I looked up at a poster on my bedroom wall, a scene from The Wizard of Oz, depicting Judy Garland as Dorothy asleep among the poppies.
Suddenly, a setting emerged in my mind: A controversial place called “The Poppy Fields,” where people could choose to sleep through a challenging period of heartbreak and wake up on the other side, having processed the most difficult emotions during their extended sleep and now able to return to their waking lives, renewed. As I began imagining the characters that would populate this story, I wondered…how they would reach this mysterious place? Perhaps we could trace their journey, I thought, learning about their lives and loves and losses along the way.
The Wizard of Oz, of course, is one of our most beloved journey narratives, following a group of strangers who come together en route to their shared destination. Although The Poppy Fields is not a modern retelling of Oz, it does follow a similar structure. Like the travelers on the Yellow Brick Road, I decided to place my characters in a rundown yellow rental. They all have their own goals and desires in making the journey to the Poppy Fields, but they need each other’s help to get there, ultimately becoming something of a “found family” along the way.
Once this stage was set, so to speak, I needed to do the research. I needed to make the settings feel real on the page. I needed to drive this road trip for myself. I flew into the Kansas City International Airport, where the novel opens, and drove through six states—Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Many corners of the country I had never seen before. The landscapes were incredible and ever-changing, from rolling green plains to quiet deserts to towering red rocks. I tasted delicious cinnamon buns in Kansas City, toured a farm in Oklahoma, confronted my fear of heights on a hot air balloon ride in Albuquerque and uphill on a hike in Sedona. I tried to take notes as I was driving and took plenty of photos, of course. It felt impossible to pin down the journey on paper, all the sights and sounds and feelings of these varied places, but I hoped I could capture some of it.
Once I was home, in the throes of writing, it was thrilling and inspiring to revisit the many stops on my journey, but this time through the eyes of my characters. I found myself back in that hot air balloon as a teenage hitchhiker named Sky. How would she see the ground below? What would that tell us about her character? Later, I was trekking again in Sedona, this time in the body of Sasha, a young woman who had lost her fiancé. I felt the sweat on her skin, heard the crunch of the ground through her ears. With each step, she feels herself moving forward, not just on the hike, but in her life.
During the trip itself, while driving, my focus was observation—paying keen attention to the road ahead, to the directions on my map, to the views outside my window. While writing, I turned to reflection. I began to appreciate the symbolism of my experience, the road trip as a metaphor. There were detours on my trip when roads were closed; two days in the initial itinerary ended up swapping due to the weather forecast. I gripped the wheel tightly, fighting against wind that seemed determined to push my car off the road. How it reminded me so much of my characters’ journeys through grief and healing. The unpredictability, the setbacks, the urge to keep pushing forward even when it feels impossible. The fact that everyone follows their own unique route, everyone heals at their own unique pace.
My own road trip concluded in the desert, just as my novel does. Even before embarking on my research, I had chosen the southern California desert as the location for the Poppy Fields’ treatment center because of its isolation, the perfect place for a controversial facility that should be private and hard to reach. It was only once I was in the desert myself—surrounded by silence and the smell of dust, my skin baking beneath the unobscured sun—that I truly considered what it takes to live within the desert. How the plants and animals there were the ultimate survivors, adapting to the harshest of lives. Just like my characters who find themselves contemplating a trip to the Poppy Fields, the people navigating the terrible road of grief and, ultimately, healing. They, too, are survivors. Testaments to human resilience. I hope that my novel captures not only the landscapes and the road, but also the strength and humanity of the characters who are driving.
Check out Nikki Erlick's The Poppy Fields here:
(WD uses affiliate links)
