Stories to pass the heat
Pass it on · 30 minutes · Published
Read this first
But, an my counsel be followed in this, we shall pass away this sultry part of the day, not in gaming,--wherein the mind of one of the players must of necessity be troubled, without any great pleasure of the other or of those who look on,--but in telling stories, which, one telling, may afford diversion to all the company who hearken; nor shall we have made an end of telling each his story but the sun will have declined and the heat be abated, and we can then go a-pleasuring whereas it may be most agreeable to us. Wherefore, if this that I say please you, (for I am disposed to follow your pleasure therein,) let us do it; and if it please you not, let each until the hour of vespers do what most liketh him."
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (1353). Translated by John Payne, 1886. Project Gutenberg #23700
The prompt
Agree on a reason your group cannot do anything else for an hour, heat, a storm, a delayed train, and let the first writer set it in a paragraph that ends by proposing a story. Each next writer takes the last sentence as their first and tells a short tale that the previous one made possible, then hands over with a new proposal. Nobody tells a story that could have been told without the one before it.
Set a timer for 30 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
Alone, in ten minutes: take the last sentence of the passage as your first, tell the short tale it makes possible, and end on a sentence that proposes the next one.
The move
Pass it on. Write in company, each extending the previous writer's piece, linking to it and moving it on.
Tags: structure, dialogue and constraint.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.