City of IF

Tikanni Corazon · Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 2:57 pm Post subject: Storyteller's Circle!

Hey all!

I have yet another writing game idea that I want to try out with you all, and I've been thinking about the details of it over the last couple of days and how I can make it work. And I have made out a basic plan so far, and I want to test the water for interest.

As you will have seen from the title of the thread, this game is to be called the Storyteller's Circle, also known as The Lewis Carroll Experiment, and the inspiration behind it is the way that Lewis Carroll came to write his famous novel The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland:

Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, whilst on a five mile rowing trip up the Isis in Oxford, England, started to tell the story of a girl called Alice to his companions on the trip. One was fellow Reverend, Robinson Duckworth, and the others the three daughters of the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University, Henry Liddell, Lorina, Alice and Edith. In his story, the girl Alice became bored and decided to go looking for an adventure. The girls loved the story and Alice Liddell asked him to write it down for her. He began to do so, and embellished further upon the story when he and the three girls went on another boating trip a month later. After this he began to work seriously on his manuscript. He researched the natural history of the animals he'd used in the story, and had other children look over the book to see how well it was liked. Finding that it was well received, he then made moves to have the book published under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , though he gave Alice Liddell her hand-written/illustrated manuscript on the 26th November 1964, before he did so. - Piece taken from my Writing Class in the IFQ April Issue.

So, then game I have thought up would consist of the following:

1) We will form a Storyteller's Circle, consisting of 3+ players.
2) A person will be chosen to be the Player or 'Storyteller' for the session.
3) A subject matter will be chosen for the Storyteller, but kept a secret from them.
4) Upon beginning the session, the subject matter will be told to the Storyteller and they must then tell a story off the top of their heads based around it to the rest of the group. The session will last a specified amount of time (likely 20-30 minutes, but I have yet to truly lay out all the details).
5) When the session is over, the Storyteller must go away with the rough story they've told, and turn it into something more readable over the period of a couple of days. Both versions of the story will then be posted up in the Storteller's Circle Game Thread.

That's the general idea I've had anyway, and I'd like to know if anyone would be interested in giving it a whirl!

Seraphi · Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2013 5:52 pm Post subject:

YES! I will probably be absolutely appalling at it, but I want to try it. It sounds like so much fun :)

PopeAlessandrosXVIII · Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2013 11:12 pm Post subject: Yays

My will play, my will play!

HalfEmptyHero · Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 9:51 am Post subject:

I'm game.

Tikanni Corazon · Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 5:45 am Post subject:

Thanks for the interest, guys! :) I'll probably set up a session over the next couple of weeks when I should have started to get used to my new routine and such, and won't be sleeping quite so much, lol! In the meantime, I'll set up a thread to record the sessions in once we've started.

I'll post in this thread when I'm ready to give it a go, so watch this space! ;)