“Creative people often get stuck in their heads about their projects and it’s difficult to escape that spiral, especially when a deadline is fast approaching. However, it’s important to take a step back from your work every now and then to give your brain something else to chew on for a while, so let’s play some games! ”
Kensie Kiesow
Have you ever been in a mood to write, but you’re not sure what to write about? Maybe you’re stuck on an idea that’s going nowhere, or a plot that’s going somewhere, but you don’t like where it’s ended up. Or, maybe you’re bored and this whole writing thing is something different to pass the time. In any case, games are a great way to relieve any stress or anxiety that might be preventing you from working on the next Great American Novel (cue waving flag and fireworks). Creative people often get stuck in their heads about their projects and it’s difficult to escape that spiral, especially when a deadline is fast approaching. However, it’s important to take a step back from your work every now and then to give your brain something else to chew on for a while, so let’s play some games!
“Complete the Story”
This here game is the only one on this list that requires a group of writers (at least two, but the more the zanier!) and it can easily be adapted to a socially distant e-mail chain. Firstly, you will need a prompt. The more vague or ambiguous the prompt the better because then it opens each story up to multiple, vastly different interpretations, and we at the guild have found that prompts in the form of a picture or painting work wonders for this. Next, now that you’ve got a group of creative writers and an intriguing prompt, it’s time to start writing your stories. After each player has had a moment to divine a story from the selected prompt, they have three minutes of speed writing before passing the document onto the person next to them in a clockwise motion. If you wish to adapt this to a socially distanced, e-mail format, your group will have to devise a hypothetical circle around which to pass the documents. The number of rounds wherein your group passes the document is absolutely up to you and your group, but eventually, each story should be written to conclusion. Once the stories are completed and returned to their original writers, read them back to the group and try not to laugh!
“From Beginning to End”
For this game, pick two books from your bookshelf completely at random. With your eyes closed, flip through the pages of the first book until some intuition from deep in your gut tells you to stop, then with that same gut intuition and your eyes closed, pick a line at random. This line will be what starts your story. Now, turn to the second book you pulled and choose another line using the same search process. As I’m sure you can guess, this second line will be the last line of your story. Write the starting line at the top of a piece of paper and the ending line on the bottom and try to connect these two, completely random thoughts!
“The Pantoum”
Some poem formulas present unique creative challenges, like the sonnet or villanelle, which require a specific structure when written traditionally. Contemporary poetry writing has all but thrown propriety out the window, but sometimes returning to your grandparent’s age of poetry can be fun game to pass that unproductive time staring at a blank page. The pantoum form consists of four-line stanzas wherein the second and fourth lines of the first stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza, and so on and so forth. Your poem can be however long you want, but in the last stanza, the pattern switches up. Instead, the third and first lines of the first stanza become the second and fourth lines of the last, so your poem should end with the beginning line. Sound complicated enough? If your answer is no and you’d like to take this poem a step further, steal four lines from your favorite song or poem and build the rest of your pantoum from there!
“Twenty-Six to One”
With one sheet of paper, write a story or poem wherein the first sentence or first line contains twenty-six words. No more, no less. As you write, knock off one more word from each sentence or line until you end up with just one word. If you’re writing a poem, you can use enjambment to cheat a little bit, but if you want to up the ante, try to make each line a complete sentence. Conversely, you could write a story that begins with a one-word sentence and grows to twenty-six!
“Dialogue”
Dialogue is notoriously difficult to write. There hasn’t been one writer in the history of the world who hasn’t, at some point, struggled with dialogue. It always sounds too unnatural or trite to their ears, so this game can provide you with a little no-stakes practice. Firstly, you’ll need three hats. Or, you could use envelopes, boxes, your friends’ purses, bowls, what have you, but you need three containers. Cut up a bunch of little slips of paper and write out as many places as you can think of in ten seconds and put them in the first hat. These could be rooms in your own house, a Macy’s, a national park, or the surface of the sun. Into the second hat, dump an equal number of slips on which you’ve written your characters: a mother and her son, three teen gal pals, a chicken and a goose, or a priest, rabbi, and monk. In the third and final hat, list some interesting topics like hiking in the Andes, dentistry, baking, Frankenstein, etc. Your topics can be anything you want, but make sure you can get a story out of it. Choose one slip of paper from each hat and write a scene about what happens using ONLY dialogue! Your dialogue must include a mention of the place in which the characters are talking as well as some action, body language, and most importantly, a narrative. Writing dialogue can be stressful, but practice makes perfect and games make practicing fun!
Now, go write!