Looking for a fill in the blanks story? You’ve come to the right place! Our full selection of stories is here.
Did you know? The first fill in the blanks story ever recorded was recently discovered, inscribed on the wall of a __________ in the hills of __________ and dates from as far back as __________.
Modern-day iterations of the game include the intriguingly entitled ‘Consequences’ and ‘Exquisite Corps’. These games each involve pencil and paper, with participants contributing small parts to a larger whole, without knowing what others have contributed. The result, in each case, is an amusing collection of incongruous parts that cause much hilarity.
I think I’d better explain.
In ‘Consequences’ players take turns to write sentences for a story, following a set of guidelines. After each sentence, the paper is folded, to hide the previous writing, and passed on to the next player.
A possible structure for ‘Consequences’ might be:
Once there was a…
S/he wanted to…
Unfortunately…
So s/he decided to…
And the consequence was…
The resulting story makes some kind of sense but also takes some surprising and preposterous turns.
‘Exquisite Corps’ works in the same manner, although instead of writing sentences, you are drawing a body. The first person draws the head, the second person draws the body and so on. You might choose to draw any body: male, female or even animal. The final creation looks like a body but it will certainly have some unusual characteristics.
Such games have been played for decades, if not centuries, at parties or just as an amusing pastime. Their appeal, I think, is the unexpectedness of finding something out of place: a consequence that doesn’t quite fit, or the head of a cat on the body of a crocodile.
In the early 1950s Leonard Stern and Roger Price started writing stories with blanks. It was they who formalised the game and called it Mad Libs. They set up a publishing company to release a huge selection of Mad Libs books*, which are still popular today.
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Here at SillyLittleCat.com I am writing my own fill in the blanks stories. I set out to amuse my children and discovered that people of all ages find this game funny.
Follow the cat to play!
