Story Time: Introduction

The surrealists called it ‘cadavre exquis’ - ‘exquisite corpse’ - but despite the sometimes divisive nature of Breton’s leadership of that movement, this was not a murder mystery. Instead, quite the opposite: a method of collaborative creation. (One so fecund it even generated its own name, or so the story goes.) Parts are added in sequence, adhering to certain rules but otherwise without deliberation between the participants, in order to invite into existence an unplanned, but not unwelcome, composition.

Therefore, we shall construct a story by taking it in turns to add a paragraph to what has already been written. In this way, we hope to craft a story which is both enjoyable to read and surprising in its direction. We feel that paragraphs provide a balance between continuity and chaos (but we shall let you be the judge of that!), though look forward to experimenting with other techniques in the future.

However, with all that being said, James is branch secretary of Overplanners Anonymous (Hmmm, or should that be Associated?) and so to assuage his fears, it was decided to not forswear all deliberation, at least at the start, but to allow a variety of prompts to provide the merest hint of narrative scaffolding. To that end, with the help of the random plot generators at writingexercises.co.uk, we each generated six sets of prompts and let a cubed instrument of chance decide between them!

Therefore, we hope you enjoy reading a story set

—on a post-apocalyptic Earth;

and which may contain,

—a dream library;
—an unexpected birth;
—a mythical horse;
—ancient runes. 

What’s not to like? We hope you enjoy!