Swap-A-Story

A friend of mine came up with a funny thing to do: continued-story-writing. Probably you have done that, I know I have done it at different moments of my life, in different ways and with different degrees of success. Some of them have been blah and went nowhere, but others were downright addictive, giving birth to a story that marvelled us all.

These type of games requiere more than one person (obviously, otherwise it would be regular writing), and a given set of rules or agreements and then each person writes a part of the story, which goes back and forth between all of the players until at one point the story comes to an end. You can make it with each writing a paragraph or two, or do it in a dare style where each player writes a scene and the next player must write a scene where it gives more into the story. Like imagine a story of two wizards fighting, so the players, from scene to scene come up with more complex, interesting and fabulous twists and turns of magic.

A style I once did with a friend of mine was a letter-story. Being both big on fanfics - slash fanfics, to it - we decided to play a game of "secret admirer" or "secret lover", where one of us picked a character from some story, and the other was to play the part of the secret lover. So "Secret Lover" starts sending a letter of love to the picked character. Each of us replied "in character", with Secret Lover trying to keep their identity concealed, while dropping clues, AND the picked character trying to figure out who could they be.

Have you tried that out?

Swap-a-stories usually work with people who know each other well, because unlike stories written by one person, these stories need to click with all the players involved. Each write for themselves, but also for the rest of the participants. It entails writing in a way that opens up the chances for the others to continue the story, and then think on your feet, so to say, to pick where the players leave the story and work it.

I guess not everybody is up to it, but when you are out of reading, or you can't find anything pleasing enough to read, gang up with your friends and scribble up something fun!