Triptychs
Triptychs are a story-telling game. They are flash fiction with a catch: the story must contain three components provided by a person other than the author and be 1,000 words or less. (The idea behind this game is not new; artists of all kinds have always engaged in this kind of exercise. We just formalized some rules specific to fiction.) These are selected from the following categories:- Character: can be a profession (butcher, baker, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, indian chief); a proper name; a physical type (blonde, brunette, fat man, child, athlete, cripple); a social/family role (father, mother, middle child, jock, nerd, sponsor, teacher, friend); a race, nationality, or stereotype; an anthropomorphized plant or animal; etc.
- Object: This one’s self-explanatory, I think.
- Natural Phenomena: can be weather (rain, snow, sleet, hail, thunderstorm); temperature; natural disasters (earthquake, tornado, forest fire, sand storm); rarities, myths, or the unconfirmed (spontaneous human combustion, dark matter, Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster); astronomical or celestial events (supernovae, gravity, an eclipse, solar flares, moon phases); etc.
- Symbol: can be a letter or grammatical symbol, in English or other alphabets or syllabaries; a number, whether Arabic, Roman, binary, or other systems; a color; an icon or logo (the Nike Swoosh, McDonald’s Golden Arches, ®, Apple’s Apple); a sign (traffic signs, restroom signs, directional arrows); internet symbology or webspeak (wtf, omg, rofl, emoticons); etc.
- Place/Time: can be a time o’ th’ clock or time of day (morning, evening, noon, dusk); a year, decade, or era (1999, the Sixties, the Age of Imperialism, “the future”); a general setting (city, forest, ocean, farm, office building, apartment, factory); or a more specific one (Los Angeles, the Amazon Rainforest, the Mediterranean Sea, the Sears Tower, St. Peter’s Basilica, Mons Olympus on Mars); an abstract or imaginary locale (inside a barrel, Mordor, Salvador Dali Land); etc.
- Activity: another pretty clear category. It can be a sport (baseball, football, soccer, curling, hurling, baton twirling, table tennis); a job or professional task; a hobby; an exercise; an artistic pursuit; basically any kind of verb; etc.
- Flora/Fauna: can be any general or specific plant or animal (from dog to basset hound, from cat to Egyptian hairless, from whale to narwhal), even fantastical, mythic, or imaginary ones (hydra, chimera, unicorn, Piasa bird); etc.
The above categories are treated loosely. It’s more important that the components be creative, inspiring, unusual, fun, and filled with story-potential than that they fit neatly into some strict categorical delineation. Components can be combined in any way one wants. For instance, you could choose three ingredients from three different categories, like:
—Mailman, Banana, Green (character, object, symbol)
—Hospital, Hamster, Hurricane (place, fauna, natural phenomena; also, the alliteration of the letter H provides a sneaky “fourth element”)
—Ben Franklin, Smoking, the 23rd Century (character, activity, time)
Or you could choose three ingredients from the same category, like:
—Priest, Minister, Rabbi (three characters)
—Rock, Paper, Scissors (three objects, which are also an activity)
Or any other combination that one can think of, even including components that don’t fit into any of the above categories. The author can use the components in any way in the story. They don’t have to be major elements of the tale (though that approach does present some enjoyable challenges); they just have to be there. Hopefully, they produce tales that are funny and silly, macabre and cynical, challenging and unconventional and everything in between.
If you enjoy reading and would like to contribute a trio of components, email your selected three to TriptychsSTL@gmail.com.
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