Play the writing game exquisite corpse
Do you know the surrealist art game exquisite corpse, where each person draws a section but can’t see what’s been drawn earlier because the paper is folded over?
At the end, you unfold the paper to see what strange being you’ve sketched collectively.
The same basic idea makes a fun group free-writing game. Start by writing one line of words—like a line of a poem or lyrics—at the top of a piece of paper. Each player reads a line and adds one line, then folds over the paper so the next person sees only the last line. Everyone is writing without any idea what came before. The result can be very odd and very funny.
I’ve used this game with my creative writing and songwriting classes for years, and I finally created an online version that accomplishes the same thing.
Want to play? Read the line and add a line—just write the first thing that comes to you. Your line doesn’t need to rhyme with what came before, but picking up on the rhythm and phrasing of the previous line helps the whole thing hang together.
I’ll let the game run for a bit and then post the results—see below for previous rounds.
Here’s a line: