The One Minute Story Game

One game we like to play is the "One Minute Story" game. We pick one person to tell the story. Three people each pick a random item for that person's story, for example: a fuzzy blue blanket, elmer's glue, a sour apple. The storyteller has 1 minute to put together a basic beginning, middle, and end and then they have 1 minute to tell the story including those three items. One person is the timer and gives them a 5 minute warning when their time is running out. Surprisingly you can get some pretty good stories this way. And sometimes they are pretty bizarre! We now give extra "points" if you can add in other people's items they had to use for their stories. When my teens were in the Toastmaster's Club class they weren't too worried about the impromtu speeches they had to give.

We've now added this to our writing and I had my son give me three random items for me to use in my novel. He came up with some clever ideas and it was a fun challenge to see if I could work them into the plot. We've decided that this summer we want to write a whole story that way--each of us giving three random character traits to each other's character and then each chapter throwing in three random items for the other to deal with!