Writers, solitary creatures that we are, can have trouble connecting to other humans in casual social situations. These six new editions of classic board games, targeted to writers for the first time, provide the structure awkward writers need to interact.
These games can also inject new energy into your tired “I read half of it” book club, or your petty “I feel like this isn’t really a story?” writing group. So chose your piece, roll the dice, and may the most competitive writer win.
Guess Whom?
This grammatically correct guessing game asks players to identify authors by asking increasingly specific questions. “Did the writer offer scathing opinions of Joycean modernism?” “Is the author a post-structuralist working in the mode of Roland Barthes?”
Publishing Monopoly
First there were six, then there were five. Your mission is to reduce the corporate publishers to one conglomerate by buying up properties around the New York City board. The owner of SimonHachetteCollinsMacmillanPenguinHouse wins!
The Game of Lifetime Copyright
The career of a writer is checked with many failures and few successes. Roll the dice to determine your path. Will you sell your first book in a “major deal” or be forced to self-publish? Will your contract grant you favorable royalty rates, or will you accidentally give away your masterpiece’s copyright? The winner’s best-selling novel gets turned into a prestige television show produced by Reese Witherspoon, the loser toils in obscurity and dies of scurvy.
Sorry! I Stole Your Idea
Better to apologize instead of asking permission; that’s the motto of a true writer. Roll the dice to steal personal details, great and small, from your opponents’ lives. That clever remark they made over coffee? Fair game. The exact way your best friend’s mother died in that car accident? Use it. It’s all fine in the name of art, as long as you shout “Sorry!” as you barrel past.
Risk Transfer
On the one hand, write what you know. On the other hand, you grew up in a boring suburb and have never experienced adversity of any kind. In this board game, writers achieve world domination by appropriating cultures around the globe for the purposes of their own financial gain.
Revue
In this classic party game, players use context clues to pretend they’ve read canonical works and buzzy novels. Once a player feels they have collected sufficient evidence, they announce their opinion of a work they have not read to the group. The first player to formulate a plausible opinion wins.
The post 6 Literary Party Games for Your Next Salon appeared first on Electric Literature.
