[Write On Wednesday] Get Your Kicks on Route 66

Detours Sometimes Lead to Conflict

How often do our travels – or our lives, for that matter –  go exactly as planned? The detours often lead to conflict, and conflict drives drama. Conflict provides the impetus for action and the catalyst for your characters to change. Conflict keeps things interesting – if it doesn’t get everyone killed! Don’t leave your reader wondering, “Are we there, yet? When are we gonna get there?” Road trips are meant to be fun, interesting, enlightening experiences for the whole family. All too often, we get lulled into complacency, boredom, and “white line fever.” Roadside attractions provide opportunities to stray from the planned path – and opportunities for it all to go terribly, shockingly, or hilariously wrong.

Today’s Prompt

Your character is taking a road trip cross country with two people who are not family or close friends. Something goes horribly wrong at the World’s Largest Cockroach and Frozen Custard Stand (or other odd or humorously cheesy roadside attraction) located in the middle of nowhere.

Ideas to Explore:

  • Who are these characters and why are they traveling across the country together? Was it by choice? Will they be closer by the end of the trip – friends for life, perhaps – or will one or more of them (barely) live to regret it?
  • Now’s your chance to camp it up – you can use an actual roadside attraction (the more ridiculous, the better!) or invent one. Don’t just describe it, though – make us feel like we’re there.
  • What could possibly go wrong? Here’s your opportunity to add over-the-top drama, nail-biting action, or hilarious comic relief. Can you work in all three?

Tips:

  • Create 5-10 brief character sketches on scraps of paper. Fold them up, drop them into a Mason jar, and pull out three of them. Throw them into the car together and see where it leads.
  • Build your own roadside attraction. Make us feel like we’re there. If it really existed, would we want to visit it – or would we pray we didn’t have a flat tire within 30 miles of it?
  • Use descriptive language that appeals to all five of the reader’s senses.
  • Add additional characters who are not in the car with your main characters. Throw in an animal, maybe a pet. Maybe it’s part of the attraction.
  • How do your characters solve their problems? What does that reveal about them that we didn’t know before?

Have fun! Be sure to come back and share your story links in the comments.

 

Holly Jahangiri is the author of Trockle; A Puppy, Not a Guppy; Innocents & Demons; and A New Leaf for Lyle. She blogs at It’s All a Matter of Perspective. You can find her books on Amazon at http://amazon.com/author/hollyjahangiri. For more information on her children’s books, please visit http://jahangiri.us/books.

[Write On Wednesday] – Cargo Cult

Such Bounty from Above!

Today’s prompt, should you choose to use it, involves the creation of an imaginary cargo cult.

A cargo cult is a religious movement usually emerging in tribal or isolated societies after they have had an encounter with an external and technologically advanced society. Usually cargo cults focus on magical thinking and a variety of intricate rituals designed to obtain the material wealth of the advanced culture they encountered.

The term “cargo cult” has caught the imagination of the public and is now used to describe a wide variety of phenomena that involve imitating external properties without the substance. In commerce, for example, successful products often result in “copycat” products that imitate the form but are usually of inferior quality.

Cargo cults exemplify the third law of Arthur C. Clarke: that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

See http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cargo_cult for more info. Your cargo cult can be set anywhere you like – how did it first come into being? Who are its adherents? How has it affected their lifestyles?

Ideas to Explore:

  • World building – while cargo cults are typically associated with the South Pacific, you can set yours anywhere. It doesn’t even have to be on this planet.
  • What might the central cargo or technology be? How does it shape the cult’s thinking and behavior? What myths spring up surrounding it? Is it useful, harmful, or merely…decorative?
  • What sort of conflicts might arise in such a society – between its members or between its members and the outside world?

Tips:

  • Think about setting, character motivation, props, and conflict.

Have fun! Be sure to come back and share your story links in the comments.

Holly Jahangiri is the author of Trockle; A Puppy, Not a Guppy; Innocents & Demons; and A New Leaf for Lyle. She blogs at It’s All a Matter of Perspective. You can find her books on Amazon at http://amazon.com/author/hollyjahangiri. For more information on her children’s books, please visit http://jahangiri.us/books.