5-Minute Add-on Story
Directions : This has got to be our all time favorite. Everyone starts a story and writes for 5 minutes. On anything. Brain dump. Freewrite. Set the stage. Let it fly. Have fun. Then everyone passes whatever they’ve written to their left. Everyone reads the new story they just received and then adds 5 minutes of their own writing to move the original story forward. Do this until everyone has written onto each story or until everyone’s written onto a certain number of stories. As the story grows in length, it can take most of the allotted 5 minutes to just read what’s already been written (especially with reading others’ handwriting). We tend to not start the timer until everyone is done reading.
Time : 1 hour for 6 of us to create six stories and contribute to each one.
Need : timer
Modifications : Of course, you can do this for other than 5 minutes. Or prime the pump with words or pictures. Or (your great ideas here).

Word Pick
Directions : each writer writes a word on a piece of paper and puts it in a hat. Do this a number of times until the hat has a whole bunch of words. We used two minutes per word and we wanted to write for about a half hour so we came up with 16 total words – 4 words per each of our 4 participants. Once all the words are established, one person starts by pulling a word and announcing it to the group; the group then writs for their first 2-minute stint. When the timer rings, the next person pulls a word and announces it to the group and everyone writes for another 2 minutes. Repeat till you run out of words. Then read the stories.
Time : 40 minutes plus time to read stories
Need : timer, paper strips, hat
Modifications : sometimes 2 minutes feels too short. Play around with it. Make the words be all verbs or all about fish or only one syllable or contain two vowels or start with vowels or be both noun and verb. Add a pass around in the middle once or by the roll of the dice - odd means pass, even means don't pass. You get it. Add your great ideas here.

Not Our Secret
Directions :Each writer makes up a secret and writes it on a piece of paper and throws it into a hat. Then each writer picks a secret (throw it back if you pick your own if you want) and writes about it for 5 minutes as if it was one’s own secret from long ago.
Time : 10 minutes plus time to read stories
Need : timer, paper strips, hat/bucket/big cup
Modifications :

More games coming soon.
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Notes

Of course, every detail is up to you. Add your own twists. Think up new games on your way to meet. Some of our most interesting games come about this way.

Pass to your right instead. Pass two to your right if you have an odd number. Put them in the middle of the table and everyone pick a new one.

For iterations, decide beforehand or decide as you go. Will everyone write on everyone else's story? Or will you do, say, 5 iterations?

If you have 5-8 people, most games work alright when everyone gets to write on every story. If you have more people, you may want to divide into two groups or pass around until you reach a certain number of iterations.

With all good improv, it works better when everyone goes along with whatever is suggested. If you don't like something, say yes anyway and suggest something to add to it. Half the fun is in seeing that you can indeed do something with just about any suggestion. At least try it once.

Again, like good improv, these stories seem to work better when the intent is not to be sensational but to just tell a story. The synergy comes from how each writer responds to the previous one.

Sometimes when reading stories aloud, we can’t read each other’s writing and so we pass the stories around for the original authors to read aloud.