Prompt #52 Road Trip!

This prompt challenges you to hitch a ride on your imagination and write about a road trip. Adapted from "Measure for Measure: Write a Road Song" by David Alzofon (American Songwriter Sept/Oct 2016)  Sections in italics directly quoted.

Road Trip!

Road songs often have an emotional impact far exceeding expectations. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," Kris Kristofferson sings in "Me and Bobby McGee," and therein lies the key.

Freedom (or lack of it) is a potent, pervasive theme in road songs. Most of us lead lives of quiet desperation, but give us four wheels, an open highway, and a distant horizon, and our hearts take wing. "Freedom" might mean pushing a broom, as in "King of the Road," or it might mean dreaming of driving to a better place in a "Fast Car," or maybe just getting out of "Lodi," but freedom calls to one and all.

So hitch a ride on your imagination, and write about a road trip.  

Process

First, immerse yourself in road trip songs. Choose one of these songs, or any other one you know in this genre, and map its structure.  Ask yourself what makes them work. Your task is to apply what you discover to your writing.

"We Gotta Get Out of This Place" The Animals
"Sloop John B" Beach Boys
"On the Road Again"  Willie Nelson
"Born to Run" Bruce Springsteen
"Where the Streets Have No Name" U2
"King of the Road"  Roger Miller
"Day After Day"  The Pretenders
"Two of Us"  Beatles
"Homeward Bound"  Simon and Garfunkel
"Life is a Highway"  Tom Cochrane


Second step is to think about road trips you've been on (or perhaps a fictional character is taking), and think of the images that will be present.  In "Bobby McGee" we have "faded jeans," dirty red bandana," windshield wipers slappin' time."  Think of the colorful places discovered, like "the coal mines of Kentucky" or "Baton Rouge"  Make lists. Attempt to think about two to four different kinds of road trips to get the one ripe for writing.

Third step is irony.  In "Bobby McGee" the irony is both humorous (Bobby is a girl), and tragic ("Freedom is just another word for nothin' left to lose.)  Think of pairs of opposites, such as gain and loss, beginning and end, high and low. Think of the geography in which you or your character is traveling, and connect it thematically.

At this point, I hope you will have enough grist for the mill to produce a poem, story, memoir, or some other piece of writing to make a road trip come alive!


Check out P!NK singing "Me and Bobby McGee" in 2003 to get warmed up.