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Sixty-four Writing Prompts, Two Booksellers, One Game of Chess: One Story
Inspirations & Provocations
Taking a cue from the Oulipo's Knight's Move constraint, we randomly assigned writing prompts (quotes and misquotes, song titles, lines of poetry, images, and more) to the squares on a chess board, and began a game. Whenever one of us moves a piece, we use the associated prompt to continue a story guided by our imagination, the game, and the story that came before.
This freedom of constraint lets us move beyond traditional structures and conventions of written language to a "potential" literature in which anything is possible.
One sly and self-applied definition of Oulipo, with shades of Borges, is: "rats who must build the labyrinth from which they propose to escape." Escaping the labyrinth is, after all, the key to the lock: one must create in order to have literature. What is most important? The act of writing, the structure of writing, or the final text itself?
Well, we're doing it for fun. After all, as Borges wrote, "Seek for the pleasure of seeking / Not of finding."
This freedom of constraint lets us move beyond traditional structures and conventions of written language to a "potential" literature in which anything is possible.
One sly and self-applied definition of Oulipo, with shades of Borges, is: "rats who must build the labyrinth from which they propose to escape." Escaping the labyrinth is, after all, the key to the lock: one must create in order to have literature. What is most important? The act of writing, the structure of writing, or the final text itself?
Well, we're doing it for fun. After all, as Borges wrote, "Seek for the pleasure of seeking / Not of finding."
Prompts
White Queen starts on D1...
A1 Never too late
A2 standing at the crossroad
A3 Agent Orange
A4 the foothills at twilight
A5 mountain ladyslipper
A6 Multiple daze
A7 dream sweeper
A8 we hold these truths
B1 Boots of Spanish leather
B2 Pine sap
B3 Voodoo Donuts
B4 radical hope
B5 a small cob house
B6 Fire green
B7 Summer breeze
B8 abandoning their posts
C1 Sidewalk glances
C2 Bird-song
C3 Out on the weekend
C4 sleep artist
C5 Patina of desire
C6 a spoon in the road
C7 twelve-mile house
C8 a detached interest
D1 Over again
D2 empty hummingbird feeders
D3 Forest rain
D4 sweet autumn clematis
D5 Shaken, not stirred
D6 Albatross
D7 The ocean and I
D8 the mannequin's eyes
E1 let us never lose the lessons we have learned
E2 love and will
E3 we wept together for the things we now knew
E4 the ___ who came in from the cold
E5 Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
E6 Open desert
E7 I'm going home
E8 please, bury me, with it
F1 There's a hole in my bucket
F2 Psalm
F3 Marvin's garden
F4 Cafe Lourdes
F5 her flannel cowboy pajamas
F6 Snow in the dogwoods
F7 four-star specific
F8 Lex talionis
G1 rumors of peace
G2 Dial tone
G3 Bottled time
G4 Barefoot in the mud
G5 quitting the paint factory
G6 A wet dog
G7 pink ties and pinstripes
G8 Kaleidoscope
H1 blue lake jazz
H2 Stone dark
H3 in the pines, in the pines
H4 An accident of choice
H5 Ripple
H6 After the smoke clears
H7 calling all angels
H8 Within the cedars
A1 Never too late
A2 standing at the crossroad
A3 Agent Orange
A4 the foothills at twilight
A5 mountain ladyslipper
A6 Multiple daze
A7 dream sweeper
A8 we hold these truths
B1 Boots of Spanish leather
B2 Pine sap
B3 Voodoo Donuts
B4 radical hope
B5 a small cob house
B6 Fire green
B7 Summer breeze
B8 abandoning their posts
C1 Sidewalk glances
C2 Bird-song
C3 Out on the weekend
C4 sleep artist
C5 Patina of desire
C6 a spoon in the road
C7 twelve-mile house
C8 a detached interest
D1 Over again
D2 empty hummingbird feeders
D3 Forest rain
D4 sweet autumn clematis
D5 Shaken, not stirred
D6 Albatross
D7 The ocean and I
D8 the mannequin's eyes
E1 let us never lose the lessons we have learned
E2 love and will
E3 we wept together for the things we now knew
E4 the ___ who came in from the cold
E5 Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
E6 Open desert
E7 I'm going home
E8 please, bury me, with it
F1 There's a hole in my bucket
F2 Psalm
F3 Marvin's garden
F4 Cafe Lourdes
F5 her flannel cowboy pajamas
F6 Snow in the dogwoods
F7 four-star specific
F8 Lex talionis
G1 rumors of peace
G2 Dial tone
G3 Bottled time
G4 Barefoot in the mud
G5 quitting the paint factory
G6 A wet dog
G7 pink ties and pinstripes
G8 Kaleidoscope
H1 blue lake jazz
H2 Stone dark
H3 in the pines, in the pines
H4 An accident of choice
H5 Ripple
H6 After the smoke clears
H7 calling all angels
H8 Within the cedars
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"The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added." Tuscan Proverb
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