Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Game

Been awhile since I started talking without thinking on the interwebs. I normally think before I speak for fear of insulting the mass herd of social neophytes, but then I realized. I’ve got like 6 followers here and 6 on Twitter. Who the hell am I going to piss off?
Meh.
So, I’ve taken to playing a creative thinking game with my buddy @MScottHoward, or better known as “Mike.” We’re both creative writers and we both love to do wherever we can to write and or expand our creative mind sets. And so was born, “Four Words and a Story.” Actually that wasn’t ever the name of the game, I just made it up on the spot. I kind of like it though. It’s got a nice kick to it. Like Mild heat buffalo wild wings.
Unimportant.
The point of the game is to take random words, drawn from a random source, and then craft a story or something around the words. In this case we generally stuck to Dungeons and Dragons stories and/or adventures because the game was born of the need to make a quick on the spot game for my nephew and niece. Random sources can include but are not limited to, Online random word generators, random people on the street and road, Penny, or the Phonics flash card set that we bought to teach my daughter to read and write. The key to making this as random as possible is that YOU CANNOT SELECT THE WORDS YOURSELF. Someone else must choose the words to be used in the challenge
So you already understand rule number one: The words must be randomly selected. Keep in mind you need between three and five words for this to be effective.
Rule number two: The words do not need to be used exactly as they appear. They can be both conceptualized and existentialized. In fact, this is rewarded with cool points, and creativity points. For example, the word zero can be used as either the actual amount of zero, meaning having nothing left, or getting down to “zero bullets in you magnetic accelerator,” but it could also be the feeling of emptiness and alone-ness (is that a word?) that is associated with being nothing, or zero.
Rule number three: I’m sure there was a third rule, but it couldn’t have been that important.
Rule number four: Words cannot be combined into a single object or concept in the story. If you have both cheese and stench you would be disqualified for that round if you used the stinky cheese man as part of your story. But, if there was a cheese maker and in his house a unique stench could be found by exploring the air with your nostrils and cilia then you have a winning option.
Try it out: I’ll write what I got from this same combo earlier.
Words: Obelisk, Archway, Outrigger

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