The Story Game

You can read stories, and read about writing all your life, but until you practice writing every day, you’ll never see your craft improve. Things you’ve learned only really become knowledge when you implement them. Flash prompts with word limits are great ways to work with a variety of worlds and characters and styles of writing because they’re so short. There is also very little pressure as it’s easy to keep every scope of your writing in mind as you work, from the concept, theme, character, beats and word choice.

The Story Game is a turn based flash prompt meant to be played with a writer friend (or even a friend who writes will do) and can have any sort of prompt or rules you want. The only must-have rules I recommend are a word limit of no more than 500 words and a deadline of no longer than a week. I usually play with a target word range of 90-110 words and a 24 hour deadline. That way it becomes a daily habit to craft a little story beat every morning.

The biggest lesson I learned play this game is how to budget words. I had to learn to forward the story while keeping my word count between 90-110 words. You’ll be amazed after spilling out your first draft and turn to the word craft level of the Story Game. I realized how much space I waste writing unnecessary description, actions, even restating things I had written clearly enough before. I was even surprised at how much I could leave unsaid and come out with an even more effective narrative than if I had held the reader’s hand throughout the story.

So take a look at these ideas for prompts and rules, grab a writer friend (or group!) and start playing the Story Game!

Prompts

You can find prompts of all sorts by doing a web search for “writing prompts” or you can make your own.

• Word prompt: This is what I use because its easy to come up with and can result in some interesting twists when homonyms are used. You can have as many words as you like in the prompt, but three to five is probably best. These could be just for inspiration or required to be used somewhere in the narrative itself.
• Photo prompt: A group of photos of places, people and things can be interesting clues to piecing together a story.
• Premise prompt: Just a few lines as though you were pitching someone a premise. See how different the same story can be when crafted by different writers.
• First-line prompt: Write an intriguing opening line. Something which introduces at least the promise of a character and the potential for conflict.
• Character prompt: Craft a character sketch and let your partner start the story.
• Any other element of storytelling you care to try!

Rules

• Time limit: This is a must since it can otherwise be too easy to procrastinate and let the game drag, ruining your friend’s momentum in the story. 24 hours, or as long as a week with longer word limits is good, but if you have the time to give to your story each time it’s your turn, it might be interesting to see what you could do in an hour or even shorter time limits.
• Word limit: Also very important to the effectiveness of the Story Game. Word limits can be anything from fifty to a couple thousand words in longer term games. I like to stick to a range around 90-110 as it’s very easy to get in a complete beat or chunk of action forwarding the story but you also have to be careful to budget your words and make the most of each one.
• Turn limit: This is optional but can help if you find you have long running story games that meander aimlessly without good structure and conclusion. Each turn can be dedicated to a certain plot point, or at least you can keep in mind that by turn five, for example, you should have hit the Midpoint. An eight or nine-turn limit is nice because it breaks down into three acts nicely (Act II should be half the story) and each writer will have at least one turn in each act of the story.
• Wildcards! This rule is purely for fun and something I added recently when I couldn’t think up a name for a place where the characters had visited. Leave a blank space in your chunk of story with the number of words allowed in that wildcard for your partner to fill in. The number should be just how many words you had left in your own word count allowance that turn. Your partner might fill in something you never would have thought of and it grants more freedom in the next chunk of story. (Might want to limit this to one wildcard per player per game.)
• Multiple choice: Another one just for fun! If you’re torn on which direction the story should go, try writing more than one version and let your partner choose.

This game is not only about writing, but about improvisation and teamwork. You have to learn to make the most of what you’re given and work with the story beat you get back from your partner. This is a great way to practice writing about characters and topics that you might otherwise never thought of, and it might turn out you have more to bring to these stories than you thought.

Have fun!