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Saturday, December 17, 2005

Exquisite Corpse

Another game for over the holiday season, this is a writing game for a group.

What you need:
  • a group of people
  • writing implement for each person
  • a sheet of paper for each person
How to:

Write down the side of each paper.
  • Article (traditionally a, an, the, but also: some, all, every, one, ...)
  • Adjective
  • Noun
  • Adverb
  • Verb
  • Article
  • Adjective
  • Noun
The first person fills in an article and passes the paper to the right. The second person fills in an adjective and folds the paper over to hide the article before passing the paper to the right. The third person fills in a noun and folds the paper over to hide the adjective before passing the paper to the right. So each time the paper is passed, the person accepting the paper will only be able to see the most recently added word.

Keep going until all the words are filled in. Then open them up and look at the sentences created.

(You can use any structure of sentence. The above is the structure of the original game that prompted its name.)

It's speculated the name came from one of the first keepers "The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine."

If you would like to contribute to an online Exquisite Corpse Poem go to Exquisite Corpse Poetry. Click on Game (up at the top in the gray bar)

The circles show how many words have been added to a line. (If the last one's blinking only one more word is needed and you can complete a line.) Click on a verse and it will tell you what type of word is needed. Type in your word and then submit.

Click on Verse (again up in the gray bar) to see lines that have been completed. If you change the month you can see the top vote getters. They can be used as writing prompts.

There's also a longer ongoing poem at An Exquisite Corpse Poem. This displays the most recently submitted line of the poem. You supply the next. When you click "Activate" (which submits your line) you can see the poem so far.

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