One of my friends, a good friend, is also a writer. Neither of us share the same style or topics in our projects. Nonetheless, we embarked on a fun game that we designed over a skype session one day. Since he has moved from the area in order to get his Doctorate in Chemistry we only communicate over the phone or internet. Even with this limitation we created a game that challenged both of us to write in a pure form. I hope to share this exercise as I think it will benefit many people.
The Rules:
There are two stages: the first is topic creation and the second is the writing portion. Each one of the stages is 5 minutes. The first five minutes are used to create a topic for the other participant. The second five minutes is used to write a short story.
The Breakdown:
I choose a topic, in our last game I chose: “plants”. My friend chose: “Describe being on your porch drunk”.
He wrote about a person who was fed up with his neighbor and his unkept lawn. The confrontation led the neighbor to cut his grass but drove the lawn mower over gravel. This shot the gravel at the confrontational neighbors car and left dents and scratches. Moral of the story was be nice to your neighbors.
I wrote about being drunk on my porch from a third person standpoint. Describing the aftermath of a party.
On average our stories land between 50-200 words. I tried to break the 300 word barrier but was unable to, made it to 297.
The End Goal:
This isn’t an exercise in editing. Rather, it is a way to force yourself out of your comfort zone and work at an accelerated speed. After you complete the short piece you get the luxury of seeing where you did make mistakes. Perhaps you write the same word wrong multiple times. If that is the case you have made it visible. The second step is to correct the mistake.
For a real embarrassing factor we post these on Facebook for everyone to see.