Exquisite Corpse 2022
Our Exquisite Corpse game returns for another year! An Exquisite Corpse is a frankenfic created by a group of authors working together... without getting the full story of what's going on! Anything can happen as the story passes from one writer to the next, changing dramatically with each scene.
Once it's your turn to write for a particular corpse you'll receive a message from the organizer with the last two sentences of the previous writer's scene. (Or, if you're the first writer for a story, you'll get a simple go-ahead instead; you start with a blank slate!) At that point you will have one week to write a scene of 250-1500 words to continue the story. Once you're done, send your scene back to the organizer and wait to see how it fits into the final story.
After the last writer in a corpse has sent in their segment, the organizer will arrange a Discord voice chat where volunteers will collaborate to read the entire corpse. For extra fun, the organizer won't reveal who wrote each segment right away--we'll see if we can guess who wrote what first! If you can't make it to the voice chat or don't have Discord at all, don't worry; the full corpse will be posted here on the forums for everyone to view and come back to as often as they'd like.
Check out last year's thread for an example of how this all works in practice!
This year's theme poll had three clear favorites... and then a five-way tie for fourth place. As we'll be using four themes this year, I've chosen to add Fanregion/Fakemon to the mix, leaving us with these options to choose from:
everything!Ash: You may be familiar with smart!Ash, aura!Ash, or perhaps even pikachu!Ash, but this corpse will challenge you to come up with the best, most exciting, most exclamation-point-riddled variation of Ash out there! In addition to receiving your prompt from the previous author, you'll be told all the modifiers that previous authors have added to Ash's name and have the option to add one more for your own segment of the corpse. hipster!undead!champion!Ash? elderly!angsty!ranger!Ash? harder!better!faster!stronger!Ash? The possibilities are endless, and I'm sure we'll see a plethora of exciting new traits for our hero as this corpse plays out!
Fanregion Supreme: It's time to show off your worldbuilding skills as this corpse takes us from place to place--but not any place we recognize from canon! Show off your fanregion and/or fakemon in this corpse. It's sure to be a weird and wacky journey through exotic lands when the authors of this corpse bring all their worlds together.
Legendary POV: What's it like to be the person stuck monitoring the ocean currents, governing the expansion of space, or creating volcanoes whenever you sneeze? This corpse is all about seeing life through the eyes of a legendary Pokémon--or more likely several legendary Pokémon, given the way these things tend to go.
Oops All Quag: Write about whatever you'd like, with one simple rule: all the characters must be Quagsire.
Sound like fun? To sign up, just post in this thread stating:
a) which corpse(s) you'd like to participate in; you can write for as many as you want
b) if there are any weeks where you're going to be busy and would prefer not to write
c) whether or not you'd be okay with being the first writer for any of the corpse(s) you're signing up for
Although you can sign up later if you like, we'll be kicking off the writing period one week from now, so if you know you're interested, please sign up by Sunday, July 25th! After a bit of behind-the-scenes wizardry, you can expect initial writing assignments to go out within the next couple of days.
Thanks a ton to Chibi Pika, IFBench, Sinderella, and SparklingEspeon (and windskull on backup) for helping run the Exquisite Corpse again this year! If you'd like to try running a corpse yourself, I expect there to be plenty of opportunity to do so this year--just mention that in your sign-up, and I'd be happy to add you to the team!
Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread. Happy writing!
