Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series! Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft. Today’s Exercise is Blackout Poetry Objective: To find poetry in existing text and create striking visual and verbal images. How to Play: Each person gets a page of text from an old

Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series! Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft. Today’s Exercise is Word Association Chain Objective: To bypass the internal editor and get words on the page quickly. How to Play: One person (the facilitator) provides a starting word (e.g., “ocean”).

Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series! Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft. Today’s Exercise is Motif Weaving Objective: To practice the use of recurring imagery to unify a narrative. How to Play: Begin a collaborative “Round Robin” story. The first person must introduce a

Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series! Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft. Today’s Exercise is Voice Mimicry Objective: To analyze and replicate the core elements of an author’s unique voice. How to Play: The facilitator reads a paragraph from an author with a highly

Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series! Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft. Today’s Exercise is The What-If Machine Objective: To generate unique story concepts by randomly combining core elements. How to Play: Create three hats or bowls. In the first hat, everyone adds slips

Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series! Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft. Today’s Exercise is Verb Swap Challenge Objective: To practice using strong, active verbs and elim-inate passive voice. How to Play: Everyone brings one printed page of their own prose to the group.