Writing Exercise #3: Fiction, "Going Solo"

Fiction: Going Solo. This exercise is adapted from Poets & Writers Summer 2015 issue.

When the weather heats up and the pace of life slows down over summer, it’s natural to start thinking about traveling. Whether you set off on a long road trip across the country or catch a plane to an exotic land, being away home almost always feels like an adventure---even if you are going to a sick relative and staying in a motel. But what happens if the person you were planning to take a trip with can't go at the last minute?

Write a story about this scenario. How does your protagonist handle traveling solo? What obstacles does s/he encounter? Pretend this happened to you and “document” the trip you took alone for the person who couldn’t make it. Write diary entries and postcards---let the diary entries reveal the truth of your protagonist’s life and the let the postcards reflect the positive but deceptive, excessively happy "Facebook face” that s/he is trying to maintain. Make sure there is a real disconnect between the two. Remember: Secrets are always interesting. The diary entries should contain the secrets, unless you decided to reverse this, i.e. perhaps the diary entries are fiction and the postcards reveal truth, and the writer knows the diary entries will be preserved for posterity but the postcards will be thrown out and therefore, are actually safer to write.

Write for no more than thirty minutes and then stop. What does your protagonist really want to happen when his/her diary is found? What does the protagonist really want the reader to think when s/he reads the diary entries?