Exquisite Corpse 2023
It's time to kick off the 2023 edition of Exquisite Corpse! 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 250-1000 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!
We'll be running corpses with four different themes this year:
Deathly Corpse: The theme of this corpse, is, well, corpses! Or the spirits that linger past them. Scenes you write for this corpse should center on deathly, spooky, and generally macabre things.
Heist: A huge score, an intricate plan, and a colorful cast of characters poised to pull it off--what could possibly go wrong? For this corpse you'll be spinning out scenes of a high-stakes plan to land a big score--one that's incredibly successful or an utter disaster!
Mary Sue: She's got luscious emerald orbs, a fantastic singing voice, and an extra-special destiny--and we're going to find out what exactly that is! For this corpse you'll be writing about the continued adventures of the most special character ever, so bring your most outlandish tribulations!
Villainous Team Grunt: There's never a dull moment for the rank and file of Team Whatever. The executives may get to lounge around and yell at people all day, but someone's got to go out and actually liberate a few pokémon, shadowify the latest captures, or cut the tails off the slowpoke. For this corpse, you'll be writing about a day in the life of a villainous team grunt--the more chaotic the better!
Sound like fun? To sign up, just post in this thread stating:
a) which corpse(s) you'd like to participate in; choose up to three
b) if there are any weeks where you won't be available to write
c) whether or not you're okay with being the first writer for any of the corpse(s) you're signing up for
Signups close Sunday, August 13th! After a bit of behind-the-scenes wizardry, you can expect initial writing assignments to go out a couple days after that.
Thanks to everyone who volunteered to run a corpse this year, and if you'd like to give it a shot yourself, we should still have room--just mention that you'd like to run a corpse in your sign-up, and I'll be happy to add you to the team!
Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread. Happy writing!
