Fun, writing games?

February 1, 2013 11:22 AM

So I'm having some friends over tonight. We're all writers and we're going to play some writing games. Do you have any that you might suggest?

When I say "games" I don't really mean the type that are meant to inspire you creatively... I mean more in terms of writers using their wit to try and make others laugh. For instance, one game we'll be playing is called "Advice Columnist" where we take a letter that someone has written to an Ann Landers/Dan Savage/etc type and then each person answers it... The answers usually get weird, gross, surreal and at their best are hilarious. Anything like that... basically simple prompts with plenty of opportunities for weird creative energy.

posted by You Guys Like 2 Party? to writing & language (17 answers total)

You may already be familiar with Exquisite Corpse?

Another game I've played is having everyone in the room write 3 questions down, fold them up, and put them anonymously into a jar. A Reader selects a question and reads it to another person: the Listener. The Listener doesn't answer the question; they are meant to guess who asked it. (The point of the Reader is, of course, to help prevent handwriting detection.)
posted by juliplease at 11:25 AM on February 1

Sounds like Fiasco would be right up your alley.
posted by bswinburn at 11:25 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Fictionary?
posted by en forme de poire at 11:34 AM on February 1

One fun game is to have a list of weird things or situations or funny lines as prompts, and have people write something that includes it. But the catch is that afterwards everyone else tries to guess what the prompt is, so the writer has to try to conceal it enough that the prompt isn't obvious.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:42 AM on February 1

I can't remember what this is called.

Everybody gets 1 minute to write the title of an imaginary comic strip at the top of a blank page. After 1 minute the pages are handed to the person sitting to the right (/left/across/etc.), who must draw that comic in 3 or 5 minutes. When time is up you pass around the sheets and die laughing.
posted by carsonb at 11:47 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Similar to carsonb's suggestion (and inspired by Exquisite Corpse) is the party game of my heart, Eat Poop You Cat.
posted by brieche at 12:08 PM on February 1 [4 favorites]

I guess it's also called Telepictionary but why call it Telepictionary when you can call it Eat Poop You Cat.
posted by brieche at 12:09 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

I went to a holiday party hosted by a writer that had some of his writer friends there. We played a game that I can't remember the name of, but had three parts. The prelude is everyone things of two ridiculous phrases, writes them down, and puts them into a hat. Then you go around drawing them out of a hat with a one minute timer for three parts:

Phase one is like "Catchphrase", where you can describe the phrase however you want as long as you're not using the words in the phrase itself. Once you're able to get people to correctly guess the phrase, you pick another one and keep your successes and pass the hat on. After the hat has gone completely around, you can keep score by counting how many slips of paper you have, but score isn't really important.

Phase two is the same thing, but like charades, played only with the phrases that were correctly guessed in phase 1. Since the group is already familiar with those phrases, it's actually not too hard.

Phase three is the same thing, but like Password, where you can only use a one-word clue to get people to guess the phrase.
posted by LionIndex at 12:29 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

How about an Iron Chef, where everyone has to write short 100 word stories that all have the same theme or weird word in them?
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:32 PM on February 1

There are a lot of variations of Telephone Pictionary, including at least two mentioned above (possibly 3 if you include carsonb's suggestion), but here's the version we play with:

Players organize themselves into a circle. Each is given a stack of index cards, one for each player (so each player in a 10-player game gets a stack of 10 index cards). In round one, everyone thinks of any word or phrase, and writes it on their card. This round lasts 30 seconds. When the time is up at the end of every round, everyone passes their entire stack to the person to their left. In round 2, players have 2 minutes to draw. They look at the card with the word or phrase on it, move it to the back of the stack, and draw on the top card. Everyone passes their entire stack as is to the person to their left. Round 3 gives players 30 seconds to decipher the drawing, move the drawn card to the back of their stack and write what they think the word or phrase is on the next blank card. Then they pass their entire stack to the person to their left, and round 2 is repeated. This alternating (30 seconds writing / 2 minutes drawing) continues until the stack is completed. Assuming the stacks were prepared properly and nobody messed up their stacks, everyone should have their original deck. Then everyone shares their deck out loud, card by card, and hilarity ensues.

That's really formalized after playing it a lot and tweaking things as we've seen fit, but obviously you can tweak the rules however you like.
posted by smoq at 12:34 PM on February 1

"Hey fellow writers, you now have 10 minutes to write the lyrics to a song"

Bonus points if you can put it to a tune.
posted by ZipRibbons at 12:37 PM on February 1

1000 Blank White Cards
posted by usonian at 1:20 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

We recently enjoyed the party game Liebrary. For each round, a player read aloud the title & author & summary of a book. The other players would write down a first line for the book. The first lines would then be read aloud and all players would vote on which one was the actual first line of the book. The selected books were genre fiction as well as classics, and it didn't necessarily help to know the book in question. It was a lot of fun for everyone, both for our group's clever writers and (hilarious) terrible writers.

I do not think you would need to own the board game version of this to make it work- you would just need index cards with the title/author/summary/real first lines of a bunch of books.
posted by aabbbiee at 1:28 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Here are a few I enjoy:

1. Literary Mashups.

Pull two books off a shelf at random. Open each to a random page and copy down whatever sentence your finger first lands on. Then write the shortest, most natural bridge between the two sentences, making it seem like the both come from the same book.

Example:

The purpose of the table is to establish the connections between the nodes.
--"AI for Game Developers" by David M. Bourg and Glenn Seeman

I went in -- after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove -- but I don't believe they heard a sound.
-- "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.


The purpose of the table is to establish the connections between the nodes. But even though they were all seated around it, they refused to talk to each other. They didn't react at all, even when I banged my fists on the table. Fine, I thought, be like that. I got up and walked out of there and into the kitchen, which was warm and homey. Why should I ever have to go back in that dining room with those nodes who care about nothing, who care about no one? But I know my duty. I went in -- after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove -- but I don't believe they heard a sound.

2. Limited Language Games. Everyone has to rewrite a famous speech or quotation, translating it to follow rules that constrain what words they can use. For instance, the rule could be that no one can use any word containing the letter E. Or that no word in the rewrite can be multisyllabic. Or writers must compose in E-prime, which is a version on English that forbids any form of the verb to-be.

3. Opposite Telephone. Player One gets a quotation, which no one else gets to see. He has to rewrite it, making it say the opposite of what it original said. So, for instance, if he gets this --

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

He might change it to this:

"Fear is what it takes to sit down and be quiet. Fear is also what it takes to stand up and scream."

Player Two then has to rewrite this, changing it to its opposite:

"Bravery isn't what you give people if you want want them to jump up and make noises. Bravery also isn't what you give people if you want them it stand down and shut their mouths."

And so on...
posted by grumblebee at 1:30 PM on February 1 [5 favorites]

How about Dysfunctional Family Circus? Delete the captions from banal comic strips. Give everyone a chance to re-caption them.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 1:48 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

The paperback game!
posted by mmmbacon at 10:25 AM on February 3

Argh my link got screwed up. Here we go: Fictionary
posted by en forme de poire at 10:08 AM on February 4