The Writer’s Playground Series – Rashomon

Rashomon

• Objective: To explore the unreliability of narration and the subjectivity of truth.
• How to Play:
  1. The facilitator outlines a single, dramatic event (e.g., “At midnight, the town’s bell tower col-lapsed,” “A royal wedding was interrupted by a dragon,” “The power went out during the final round of a high-stakes chess match”).
  2. Each writer in the group is secretly assigned a unique perspective from which to view the event (e.g., the security guard, a thief who was in the middle of a heist, a child watching from a window, the dragon).
  3. Without collaborating, everyone writes a first-person account of the event from their assigned viewpoint.
  4. Reading the conflicting and incomplete accounts aloud reveals how a single event can be many different stories at once.
• Best for: Mastering point of view, building narrative tension, character voice.

Dramatic Events

This list contains ambiguous, high-impact events. The truth of what “really” happened is meant to be elusive, depending entirely on who is telling the story.

• The town’s famous clock tower mysteriously strikes thirteen, then stops forever.
• A priceless violin is smashed on stage in the middle of a symphony performance.
• During a high-stakes poker game, the lights go out; when they return, the money is gone.
• The lone bridge out of town explodes during a fierce storm.
• A prized racehorse vanishes from its locked stable the night before the championship.
• The grand chandelier in a packed ballroom crashes to the floor.
• A hot air balloon makes an emergency landing in the middle of a crowded wedding ceremony.
• A glowing object from the sky crashes into the town’s central fountain.
• At a royal coronation, the crown levitates off the new monarch’s head and shatters.
• The town’s revered Oracle gives a sudden, terrifying pro-phecy, then collapses.
• A portal to another dimension opens in the middle of the public library.
• At the unveiling of a new statue, the tarp is pulled away to reveal it has been shockingly vandalized.
• The star of a play breaks character mid-performance to accuse an audience member of a crime.
• A famous magician’s “disappearing act” goes wrong, and they don’t reappear.
• A ship, thought to be lost at sea for a century, sails calmly into the harbor.
• The town’s quiet, beloved librarian is suddenly arrested by mysterious government agents.
• A deafening, unidentifiable sound echoes across the valley for exactly one minute, then stops.
• A will reading is interrupted when the deceased’s secret heir, previously unknown, walks in.
• The supposedly impenetrable vault of a famous collector is found wide open, with nothing taken.
• A sudden, inexplicable downpour of fish occurs over a single city block.
• A supposedly extinct flower blooms in the public conservatory, releasing a strange pollen.
• The power grid fails for the entire city, except for one, single, ordinary house.
• The lead race car in a grand prix dematerializes just before crossing the finish line.
• A flock of hundreds of silent owls descends and lands all over the town square at noon.
• At the zoo, the famously silent alpha lion roars, and all the locks on the cages spring open.

Unique Perspectives

This list contains the eyewitnesses, each with their own biases, blind spots, and secrets that will color their version of the event.

• A cynical, world-weary detective on the verge of retire-ment.
• A child who was hiding nearby and saw the whole thing.
• A pickpocket who was working the crowd at that exact moment.
• An ambitious young journalist looking for their big break.
• A street food vendor whose cart was right in front of the event.
• The person who stands to benefit most from the incident.
• A tourist who doesn’t speak the local language and interpreted it all visually.
• The secret lover of one of the people involved.
• A disgraced academic who believes the event proves their outlandish theory.
• A security guard on their very first day on the job.
• An insurance claims adjuster calmly assessing the dam-age.
• The town’s oldest resident, who believes they’ve seen this happen before.
• A stray cat who was watching from a rooftop.
• The person whose official job was to prevent the event from happening.
• A street performer who immediately incorporated the event into their act.
• A paranoid conspiracy theorist who was already filming the area.
• An artist who was sketching the scene as it unfolded.
• A foreign spy on an entirely unrelated mission.
• The janitor who has to clean up the mess afterward.
• The prime suspect in the incident.
• A historian who sees a chilling parallel to a past tragedy.
• A self-driving security drone that recorded the event with no emotional context.
• A ghost who was floating nearby, unable to intervene.
• The person who secretly, and intentionally, caused the event.
• The person who tried to stop the event and failed.