A quick (generic) storytelling game

Back just before my kid was born in 1999, I finished up a personal creativity project called "TaleWeaver," which was a set of storytelling guidelines and games that worked with 100 short poems separated into four "suits. I cleaned it up for a friend who wanted to publish it on a new self-publishing site called "Great Unpublished," which was then bought by Lulu, and you can still find it there, but I don't recommend it because you can have the PDFs for the book itself and the entire deck of cards free on The Side Ways site.

BUT! And this is important, you should also be able to play the storytelling game without my 100 poems getting in the way, so I've taken the instructions for how to play with the cards, and made them generic so you can play with just a set of colored paper or 3x5 cards or, if you wanted, just shouting out random ideas for characters, settings, etc.

This is kind of partly in response to a friend who is teaching a high school creative writing course (Hi, Julien!) and whom I told I'd ferret out some old writing exercises and/or games and partly because I've meant to do it for awhile. It's a good game to play with one person (including by yourself) if you want to help unlock some basic narrative blockages, or with a room full of students/kids to help show how storytelling / taleweaving should be fun and interesting and fun more than a chore.

Enjoy.

On four different colors of 3x5 cards, write down:

• Characters (archetypes like king, teacher, garbage collector, assassin) 
• Locations (school, battlefield, road, underwater, library, meadow)
• Props (sword, telescope, surfboard, blowgun, paintbrush)
• Situations (abandonment, lies, bad weather, betrayal, transformation, winter, escape, doppelganger, ignorance, sleep, duel, friendship, discovery, loss, prophecy)

Use those to create stories of the following types:

The Quest: Pick a character. This is your hero. Pick another card of any color. This is the goal of the quest – to find a prop, discover a location, survive a situation or link up with another character.” Keep those two cards face-up, and separate them by about a foot or so. Now pick 3-5 other cards and lay them out face-down on the table between the hero and the goal; these are your “obstacle” cards. Talk a bit about why the hero wants to make it to the goal. Come up with at least one (but ideally more) reasons why the goal is important to her. Now turn up the first of the face-down “obstacle” cards. This is the first thing/place/person/issue the hero encounters and struggles with on the way to the goal. How does this card “block” the hero? What could this do to keep the hero from the goal? And then, how does the hero overcome the obstacle? If you’d like, pick another random card – and let that card help the hero triumph over the obstacle. When all the obstacles have been overcome – your hero is at the goal! Tip: If you come up with interesting heroes/villains, make a note of them and use them in future tales. The more you build up a history of elements, the more special they will become and the easier it will be to work them into future tales.

Triumph: Pick two characters. One is your hero; one is the villain. Pick another card of any color. This is what the villain wants to ruin/kill/have for himself. Deal out at least 3 face-down cards. These are the environments or people that will influence the battle. In the first two situations, the villain will triumph and the hero will face setbacks that lead to the next card. As in “The Quest,” if you’d like to pick additional cards with which to “arm” the hero or villain, go right ahead. Tip: An additional victory condition can be the “winning over” of the villain rather than his defeat. Straight defeat is fun, but sometimes converting the villain over to the good-guy’s side will provide for future stories of conflict (the villain strays from the path of right), or will give you a darker, more complex hero for later stories.

The Locus: This is a story about a place or happening that’s fun, scary, educational, mysterious, hilarious, etc. to visit. Pick a mood before you begin and then grab a location or situation card at random. Now draw character cards and describe how that type of character reacts to the location/event. After four or five folks go through the process, have the last one discover a secret about the place that explains its harm/horror/etc. Use a prop if you’d like as part of the crux at the center of the mystery. Tip: These can be very funny stories. Children love to hear about how different characters react to the same weird circumstance, especially if all the participants start out behaving differently, but end up falling for the same gag or being ejected in a humorous way.

The Puzzle: A little harder tale to weave. Puzzle stories frequently involve hidden connections between apparently unrelated people, places or events. If you’re weaving a tale interactively, puzzle stories are even harder. If you’re making one up ahead of time for a later bedtime story, go for it. Find a character for a hero. Pick any other card as his goal. Now pick three random cards and decide how they fit together to provide a key to the goal. Make a note of how they finally fit together. When you tell the story, only reveal a little bit of the “solution” as each part is discovered by the hero Tip: Puzzle stories require planning. If you can’t seem to fit your three chosen cards into a puzzle – tough it out! It’s not supposed to be easy. 

Bought Low, Raised Up: Pick your character hero. Have her burdened by either a location one or more other characters or a number of props. Whatever the burden, make sure that other characters either mock, look down on or generally disparage the hero because of her association with that card. If you’re in the mood for romance, have another character come along and begin to help the hero out of her dilemma, and guide them toward a relationship. If you want the hero to persevere on her own, have her discover a random prop card or experience a random situation card and thereby gain power of what kept her down. Tip: It can be funny if the characters who originally mocked the hero are brought low themselves at the end, but be careful. You risk tarnishing the hero if she is too involved in turn-about cruelty.

Chase: A fun, action-oriented motif. Find your random hero character card. Find two random location cards. Your hero needs to get from the first to the second. But wait! Will she make it before the chaser (another random character) catches up to her? Pick any other number of cards at random. The hero must run “around” these obstacles as she is chased. Do the obstacles hinder her more or less than the chaser? Can she use them to help elude her pursuer? What is the prize when she reaches the goal? Pick another prop card as the Amulet of Yendor (Google it) if you’d like. Tip: Turn the tables once you get your hero “home” and have her chase the pursuer, empowered by the earlier action and the prize that she found at her goal.

Redemption: This time you start with a villainous character card. Then pick a location and make him lord of that place in a bad way. Give him one or more props with which he can control the environment. Now find three other characters. Show how they fit into his location and how the villain is cruel to them. Now pick three situation cards. Each of these events should present our villain with a nearly catastrophic or almost deadly challenge. Show how each of the three other characters, despite having been treated badly by the villain, help him survive these events. In the end, the villain will realize his error and befriend the others, perhaps even sharing control of the location of which he was sole master. Tip: The journey of redemption can be guided by a single character, who shows the villain the error of his ways. Or the villain can experience the devastating situations alone, and realize that he needs the help of others, and see the value of his formerly mistreated underlings. This type of tale is rich in moral possibilities.

Capture & Escape: Can be kind of creepy. Good for low-stress spooky. stories. Pick your character card hero. Pick another for your villain. Your villain captures your hero (using a prop if you like) and takes him to a random location card. Now – either various different characters can try to help the hero escape, or the hero can find various different props within his prison location (not literal –he could be held on top of a boulder, guarded by… you decide) and use them to escape. Or the props can be used to fool the villain into eventually entering the prison and changing places with the hero. Either way, when it’s time to escape, choose a situation card and make that the trigger or final step of the escape. Tip: This is a good story type for kids to help with. How would you use a staff to get out of a theater? How would winter affect your chances of escaping a castle by boat? Kids are great at making up ways to manipulate reality towards an end. If their methods are impossible – so much the better.

Growing Up: Can be funny. Can also be combined with other story motifs. Pick a character hero and make them young. Pick at least three random cards, any type. As you turn them over, describe how the youth and inexperience of your hero makes them react in an inappropriate or immature way to these people/places/ things/events. Have them be distraught or embarrassed by their failure. Now pick a mentor character who will teach the hero a more mature or effective way to deal with these things. Pick one or more random cards and have the hero and mentor share the experience(s), with the hero becoming more accomplished each time. In the end, pick one more card. This one the mentor can’t deal with, and the hero needs to come to his aid. Tip: Give the mentor a random prop that seems to always help (maybe it’s magic) during the process of discovery or adventure. Have him lose it before the last challenge, and have the hero find it and use it to help out the mentor. Or have the hero discover that the object isn’t special or magic; that the magic or knowledge is in himself.

Total Mess: My favorite. Basically, random goofiness. Grab a character card. Now make a declarative statement: “My [character] loves…” and turn over a random card. It doesn’t have to be “loves.” It can be, “The [hero] wakes up in bed with…” and turn over a card. Or, “The [hero] is allergic to…” and… card. You go with the story until you get to another point where you stumble or pause or slow down or where it’s clearly the next person’s turn or people are getting bored, and then you make another declarative statement and… bang. And you gotsta, gotsta fit the card into the story. Rock on with your bad, TaleWeaving self. Tip: An alternative way of doing this in a group session is to “steal” the story. The person whose turn it is gets to talk and tell the tale until the next person has the guts – the guts, I say! – to reach in and take a card, blindly, interrupting the story and inserting his/her idea of how to keep it going with the new card. This method can easily be adapted to a point system for those Alpha Types in the crowd who must keep score. It can also be a drinking game. I’ll leave you to figure that out.

Romance: Although a romance story can blossom in any of the other settings, I’ve been asked a number of times to specify, specifically, and redundantly, how to build a romance using TaleWeaver. Although there are countless ways to go about weaving a romance, here’s a starter smoocher. Find two characters. Now, a romance must involve separation and (if it’s a comedy) eventual reuniting, or (if it’s a tragedy) permanent estrangement or death. So… what separates the couple? Pick one card randomly; this is their “fate.” The thing that ties them together. How so? That’s up to you… and the cards. Choose another card to describe how they are brought “to” their “fate card.” This is how they meet. Choose again to develop an attraction related to the “fate card.” Now introduce the separation; choose one or more cards that come between them. Again, it should somehow still relate to their “fate.” Everything does, you know. Then choose cards that help bring them back together, bridging the gap. In a comedy, which must end in a happy ending (traditionally, a wedding), they must essentially “beat” their fate, either coming to terms with it, conquering it, ignoring it, or deciding to do without whatever it is. In a tragedy… the couple’s fate, in the end, is too much for them. The very last card that is chosen to bring them back together will, instead, be played by their “fate” as a way to separate them, eternally. Tip. Romances are usually character studies as well as stories… but not for the couple. Most great romances have funny, fun and interesting characters as sidekicks, villains, family members, fat nurses (what’s up with that?) of the couple, etc. But other than being gorgeous and in love, you shouldn’t distract from the couple’s “fate” with too many details. Their shared love and, possibly, doom is the big deal.