Monday, November 03, 2003

Time for a round of "Pants On Fire"!

Sara Donati has an interesting blog about storytelling, which she has adequately titled Storytelling. She described an interesting exercise the other day, which I've done before. But when I did it, it wasn't part of a writing workshop or class, but rather one of those goofy games that managers like to do to start off meetings where people don't know one another. Usually I detest games like this, but this one appealed to me because it actually requires creativity.

What happened was this: During the standard "Go around the room and tell us your name and something interesting about yourself" phase of the meeting, we actually had to tell three things about ourselves. The catch, though, is that two of the three things were to be true, but one was to be false. And then the others in the group would try to quiz you and find out which was the false bit of biography. If you were good - - i.e., creative with a good eye for detail - - you could baffle the guessers.

This was easily the best "meeting icebreaker" I ever got to do, and I never thought of it as a writing exercise. Cool.

(Sara Donati, by the way, is the writer of a series of romance novels that my wife likes and which I've always been tempted to read. Maybe I will, this winter.)

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