Surprising Sentence

This is one of my favorite improv game. It has a redeeming instructional value.

Purpose

To explore the requirements for collaborative writing.

Time

10 to 15 minutes

Supplies

  • A telephone

  • Paper

  • Pencil

Flow

Find a friend. Call your friend on the telephone and invite that person to play a fun game with you. Wait until your friend finds a piece of paper and a pencil.

Explain the procedure. Announce that the challenge is to create the world's longest sentence. You and your friend will take turns supplying two or three words at a time to construct a meaningful—and lengthy—sentence. Both of you will separately write down the joint sentence.

Play the game. Invite your friend to supply the first couple of words. Then supply your words. Take turns to grow the sentence. Keep writing down the new words, adding them to the sentence as the game progresses.

Conclude the activity. Stop the activity when you have used up about 5 minutes or run out of paper. Ask your friend to read the sentence and have a good laugh.

Debriefing

Okay, that was great fun, but what's the point?

This activity is a demonstration of true collaboration. Here are the key features of such collaboration:

  • There are no hidden agendas. You are not trying to control the other person's contribution.

  • The focus is on the process and not the result.

  • No one dominates the activity. You take turns.

  • Both of you own the final product. It is impossible to figure out who contributed more.

  • Both of you have equal status.

  • Each person brings her own unique perceptions and experiences to the activity.

  • You build upon what the other person offers.

  • You listen actively. You have to be mindful of what is happening every moment.

  • You are spontaneous. If you begin to plan ahead, the activity does not flow smoothly.

  • The final product is unexpected and surprisingly delightful.

  • A playful approach results in you and your partner reaching a flow state in which you feel that you can read the other person's mind.

Of course, you can play the game in a face-to-face situation. But a telephone call makes it more spontaneous and fun. You can play without writing down the sentence, but then you will regret your inability to recall the brilliant creation and impress you other friends.


Play Sample

Here’s the most recent result of playing this game:

Once upon a blue-moon day when I was swimming nonchalantly in the Ganges River which was slowly meandering through a rippling and sensual set of buoys anchored to the gooey mud located at the bottom of an ancient snow-moving glacier that flowed for unknown centuries at the center of on a blue delta and capsized many a ship that carried alien assassins who were on their 87th secret rendezvous looking for some innocent and attractive and young men returning from a workshop on unarmed combat techniques for unmarried men who can cook rice 17 different ways without boiling off their little fingers or toes because that would not have been a pretty way to treat one's own body parts—although it could have been exciting to a masochist or to someone with a Ph. D. in self-mutilation whose great grandfather probably gargled with salt water while singing Nordic drinking songs that have guttural lyrics and many …