It's time for Literary Game No. 10. But first ...

I'll announce the winner of Literary Game No. 9.

There were two entries. First to publish was "It's Art, Baby!" by @alonicus, and the second, by @beckyroyal, was "Gold to Retirement".

Both stories were good and I enjoyed reading them. The task was to write a one-paragraph story using three words chosen at random by ChatGPT. The words were plinth, bananafish, and velcro. Read the stories and tell us which one was your favorite (in the comments below).

Now, for the winner ...

Congratulations to @alonicus for his story "It's Art, Baby!" How clever he was to incorporate the three words into a metafictional paragraph that turned this prompt upside, literally and figuratively. @alonicus will receive 3 HBD or his prize.

Now, for Literary Game No. 10.

How Literary Game No. 10 Will Go Down (Like a Spoonful of Sugar)

This week, we're going to do something completely different. We're going to write a found story.

A found story contains its purpose in an old poetic tradition. Poets are notorious for their word and language play. In some sense, poetry encourages literary game playing. Aside from the surrealists, most fiction writers simply focus on storytelling elements and less on gameplaying mechanics. Poets can do both. Often, simultaneously.

So, what is a found story?

A found story, like a found poem, takes words, sentences, phrases, or paragraphs from other sources and repurposes them into something new. In this case, the "something new" is a narrative, a story.

Your task in this exercise is to find words, sentences, and phrases from the first 10 literary games (the previous nine plus this one) and turn them into a story. Here's how it will work:

• Visit each of the previous nine literary game posts (a full list of links to those is at the end of this post) and look for one word, phrase, or sentence in each post to use in creating a new story.
• Find one word, phrase, or sentence in this post and do the same.
• Your story must include at least one found word, one found sentence, and one found phrase from among the literary game posts published thus far (including this one), but no more than one from each.
• In your story, bold the words, phrases, and sentences you use in your story.
• Somewhere in your published post, state which words, phrases, and sentences are associated with each of the literary games posts. This can be done inline within the story or in your introduction or outro.
• Also, somewhere in the story, include the phrase "like a spoonful of sugar". Your found word, phrase, or sentence from Literary Game No. 10 cannot be "like a spoonful of sugar".
• Publish your story, tag it #literarygames, and post a link to your story in the comments below

That's the nutshell version. Now, here are the rules for Literary Game No. 10.

Literary Game No. 10 Rules

The following rules apply to Literary Game No. 10.

1. Upvote and reblog this post.
2. If you haven't already, follow me.
3. Write a complete story using your found words, phrases, and sentences, as well as the phrase "like a spoonful of sugar" as per the guidelines above. A phrase is any cohesive thought that is not a complete sentence. For instance, in Literary Game No. 9, the phrase "loops in upon itself" appears in one sentence in that post but is not a complete sentence. Your story can be any length, from very short to 1,000 words, as long as you get all the found words, phrases, and sentences (and "like a spoonful of sugar") into your story.
4. Publish your story to your Hive blog using any frontend and tag it #literarygames.
5. Deadline: Tuesday, August 5, 12:00 UTC (You have two weeks for this game!)
6. Read and comment on other participants' stories. Upvote the ones you like.
7. No self-voting!
8. Post to any writing community, following that writing community's guidelines.
9. Drop a link to your story in the comments below.
10. Have fun!

How Literary Game No. 10 Will Be Judged

Judging criteria for Literary Game No. 10 will be as such:

• 3 points for first in, 2 points for second in, 1 point for third in
• 5 points for the story I like best, 3 points for the story I like the best after that, and 1 point for the story I like best after the first two
• If this is your first time participating in the literary games, you get an extra point
• Points will also be earned for your ability to find unique words, phrases, and sentences in each of the 10 published literary games posts. In other words, if you follow all the guidelines above and retrieve found words, phrases, and sentences from each one and those found items are interesting and deployed well in your story, you'll earn extra points based on your ability to do that well, independently from whether that story ends up being one of the top three.
• Finally, I will run each story by ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to score each story based on pre-determined criteria that will also include ChatGPT's opinion on story structure, storytelling, and the story itself.

I realize this is a lot to take in, but I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for creativity. The intent behind playing literary games is to stretch the imagination and the boundaries of what storytelling can be. These stories need not be Pulitzer-worthy. Rather, they are designed solely to make us better writers, better creators, and more imaginative storytellers. The end goal is to have fun and improve upon our abilities to write and tell stories.

Due to the complexity of this literary game, the winner will earn 5 HBD.

And with that, I leave the rest of it up to you.

List of Previously Published Literary Games

For your ease, the first nine literary games posts are linked to below:

1. Literary Game No. 1
2. Literary Game No. 2
3. Literary Game No. 3
4. Literary Game No. 4
5. Literary Game No. 5
6. Literary Game No. 6
7. Literary Game No. 7
8. Literary Game No. 8
9. Literary Game No. 9

And don't forget about this post, Literary Game No. 10.

Good luck, have fun, and go forth and conk her!

@lauretb93 @luchyl @ozd @babygirl888 @mrnatty @alwaysonyi @esbat @reportercee @favouragina @sugarfix

If you wish to be removed from the tag list of literary games posts, or you wish to added, please let me know.