[Writingworkshop] does this sound familiar to anyone?
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
Sun Nov 30 16:24:45 EST 2008
It sounds like fun. It would work as a game for this list if it had a
nice quick turnaround and low demands on time and effort. In a way it's
what you do when you're writing alone, and there's the danger of running
out of momentum. Keeping it fast and simple might avoid that. You don't
want to oblige players to write a thousand words, but a couple of
hundred might be feasible. If you can put together a simple list of
rules that keeps it guided as well as easy, I'm happy to try it. Any
excuse. Thanks for suggesting it.
From my memory of theatre sports, there are general principles that
help to make it work. One is to avoid blocking - if someone initiates an
idea, you don't say no and suggest an alternative, you run with their
idea and build on it.
When theatre sports works, the product is fun for the players and the
audience.
Neale
Adam Holland wrote:
> This sounds a bit like our earlier discussion of a fiction /renga/
>
> I like what I have heard so far, but want to know more, and perhaps
> see a rudimentary one in action
> I'm not completely sure yet what the interpreters /do/.
> do they write pieces of stories? contribute to an ongoing story? add
> details, etc?
> What's the authorial analog to improv acting?
>
> also, what's the end product of playing this "game"? (other than
> enjoying it)
>
> Best,
> Adam
> ____
>
> "I never feel that I am inspired unless my body is also. It too
> spurns a tame and commonplace life.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Daniel Peters
> <danieltpeters at gmail.com <mailto:danieltpeters at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> My little brother does a form of improv where they practice scenes
> and scene fragments with a series of different game rules that
> allow them to develop as much as possible out of immediate
> dialouge and actions. This is one of his textbooks
> <http://improvencyclopedia.org/references//Truth_in_Comedy.html>,
> anybody who has seen a pythons sketch will recognize rules like
> 'agreement'. Some of the rules are also geared to keep the games
> fair so that it stays as much of a group activity as possible and
> no one player can dominate. I've been trying to think of ways
> that similar games could be developed for writing. Obviously they
> can't be real time, even if you could do something with a chat the
> end result is going to lose alot of the luster of spontaniety. I
> think I've finally hit on something that would draw inspiration
> from the idea of a game but not attempt to mime improv to
> closely. I would love to know if anybody is doing something like
> this already or if it sounds at all plausible. The key to this is
> that I'm thinking primarily science fiction writing.
>
> The game has two kinds of players builders and interpreters. A
> builder is given a time frame, say, a week (purely arbitrary), to
> construct a scenario/world/community. Now the builder has the
> hardest job here, they have to describe a set of new idea's or
> reconfigure old ones but in such a way as to allow the greatest
> room for improvisation. I.E. no one is going to out do Frank
> Herbert in a week and they shouldn't try because this is a team
> sport. So a builder could identify plot arcs or simply a state of
> affairs for a specific locale or community or set of character
> types. Leaving room for improvisation also means allowing new
> characters or scientific constructs /as long as they
> look recognizably like something from the original model./ One of
> the hardest parts is going to be coming up with models that will
> actually interest possible interpreters. I.E. space opera will get
> pretty played, pretty quickly.
> Now for the interpreters one of the cooler parts is going to be
> the second order of interpretation, meaning the part where it
> becomes interpreters playing on other interpreters moves. Now an
> interesting part of this is going to be the writers analouge of
> the fourth wall, i.e. it /will have to be a special session for
> the game to get meta textual./ Refering to another players move or
> an original model construct as construct would obviously end
> normal play, it would get pedantic, everyone would be telling
> rather than showing to use joe's terminology. An analouge for
> this exact situation in live improv is the training not to pull
> out a joke at another players expense, it ruins the scene and is
> outside of the actual action scene in and of itself. The maxim of
> if doesn't move the plot along its a waste of the readers time
> will be truest fro the interpreters.
>
> This also removes the most pressing aspects of integrating info
> dumps into the structure of the narrative(s).
>
> This is a rough sketch and I actually have a few more direct
> idea's pertaining to this but I would love some feed back.
>
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--
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
http://www.nealemorison.com
35 Frazer St, Leichhardt NSW 2040
+61 417 661 427
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