Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Short Story Party Game

Whenever my family gets together we'll pull out a game like Dutch Blitz or Scattergories or some variation on the party game theme (Taboo, Catch Phrase, etc...). Every once in awhile we put the over-priced board game aside and just play something we've made up. I mentioned the "top three" game before. This week we played a short story party game (which I imagine has been done before).

Basically, each person writes a sentence and then passes on the paper for the next person to add a sentence until all the papers get around and you are left with several different short stories authored by each person collectively. In our case we were left with seven short stories of seven sentences. We added a variation to a couple of them in that you were not allowed to see the sentence before.

It was kind of fun, and I've got the papers all sitting here, so the best two are below. One was written without being able to see the previous sentences written, and the other was written with each person building on the sentences before. Hope my family enjoys seeing these again.

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Story 1
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Every Sunday started the same, the horses would take offence to something I said, tempers would flare and somebody would get hurt.

I had never seen horses get upset so easily until I started working at this ranch.

So I immediately set out to find out the source of the conflict.

The cook said, "Look around, maybe it's you."

As I am wont to do, my initial reaction, of course, was to throw around some glares, shot to anyone with bullet-like broiling heat.

On this particular Sunday, though, I decided not to hold my glare but I stopped and thought about what the cook had said.

I decided I was okay with being the problem and continued to offend the horses every chance I got.

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Story 2
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One day the monkey got tired of being a monkey.

It was a hearty soup, with 12 kinds of meat and a fried egg.

We always have so much fun when we get together as a family.

They all seemed to be angry, and they walked toward their destination reluctantly.

"Eat it, Stew!"

Brillian, fiercely, wonderfully, she spoke--a feral girl-child as born like a new-born babe with squalling hesitancy and insistent expectation of things to come.

In the end this incident ended the way most do, without incident.

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Good times.

3 comments:

Jinny said...

That's hilarious. I wish we Polan's were that inventive....but we're not. Thanks for the laugh. :)

s$s said...

"We always have so much fun when we get together as a family."

That's definitely my favourite of the sentences. I can just hear the writer's block; the frustration at trying to come up with something good but having a momentary lapse, and then resigning yourself to write whatever's on the top of your head.

This game sounds great.

Tony Tanti said...

Never forget the life motto, "offend the horses"

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