This is an Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative work from 2002 or 2003. Each line represents a new author.
Benny sat down on the park bench, observing the pigeons taking shits in front of him.
And then he died.
He came back alive!
He ran around the room screaming, “Yipee!”
And tripped over the footstool and broke his leg.
Since the break was a compund fracture, the man made a makeshift splint out of popsicle sticks and dust bunnies.
With the splint in place, he made his way through the forest, and drove 23 miles to the aid station.
The drill sergeant asked, “What happened?”
We did one of those in my art history class, but mostly people just wrote one word each and we weren’t allowed to see what had already been written. I think it’s more interesting that way, and more true to the nature of an exquisite corpse. I wish I had a copy of how it turned out to show you, but I don’t. Maybe I’ll ask the professor to email me a copy.
OK. There were actually two different ones, one for each half of the lecture hall, but this is the one I participated in:
The cute black cat a most curious twist of fate
Jewelry gangsta headache
J’adore tu love beans sour candy
Go brew crew bored Lee Harvey Oswald
Hi how’s it goin? Rubbish casa Rurale
Kicken him in the like a fish slip
I contributed the word “jewelry” and I think the phrase “jewelry gangsta headache” is my favorite part.
Interesting.
Doing it word by word almost makes it more unpredictable.
I think I prefer the sentence version better, although both have their place in good amusement.
There is also a visual (artwork) version of the game.
I can just imagine all those old surrealists sitting around a parlor smoking and playing this game.
I think the sentence version is fine. Really I think you can do either or both at once, but in your example it seems like the authors were aware of what had already been written before they contributed.
In the sentence version that I’m used to playing, the writer sees only previously written sentence at a time.
I think that ruins it, but that’s just me. I like it completely absurd.
They end up being completely absurd simply by virtue of their random creation. I love the Exquisite corpse.