- Choose 4-6 players.
- Suggest a location and choose one of the players to be the “guest.”
- The guest comes up with a strong offer of why they are at this location, for example, to pick up a date or go to a wedding.
- The other players respond by providing obstacles that prevent the guest from achieving their goal. For example, “your date isn’t ready,” or “the wedding is running late.”
- Additionally, the characters, other than the guest, behave strangely or suspiciously, as if they have a secret.
- The guest continues to question the others as he or she pieces together what’s actually happening. All the other players are free to elaborate on their own or other people’s secrets.
- Players with secrets must listen closely to each other so their secrets add up to something.
- By the end of the scene we understand everyone’s secret — and they all come together. For example, A guest arrives at a church, thinking they are a guest at a wedding. The other guests act strangely and slowly it’s revealed that it’s a surprise wedding and the guest is really the bride or groom.
Story Spine
Daniel Will-Harris
Most stories have a common structure. So common we usually don’t even have to think about it. But when we do think
