This idea is from Nancy Lewars. Last winter, I took Nancy's class on improvisational acting, or "improv." In improv, members of a group "improvise" with each other. That means they interact in a group to create scenes and characters. It's really fun!
In Nancy's improv class, we played a game called "Once Upon a Time." It's a great game for writers, and it goes like this:
Round up a group of nine people, including yourself. The nine people can be your friends, family, or neighbors. They can be kids or grown-ups. Form a circle. Each person in the group completes one of the following lines, going around the circle until you have a complete story.
Once upon a time....
And every day....
Until one day....
And because of this....
And because of this....
And because of this....
Until finally....
And ever since that day....
The moral of the story is....
The "moral" of the story is the little lesson you can learn from it. (Oops, sorry, didn't mean to talk about lessons during spring break.)
Here's an example to get you started:
Once upon a time, a grizzly bear escaped from the zoo.
And every day, it would visit Mrs. Merckle's garden to eat her spinach.
Until one day, Mrs. Merckle....
What? What did Mrs. Merckle do? It's up to you to finish the story with the other members of your group. Have fun improvising!
