The Plot Game

I saw this on a different writer's forum and thought that we could use one here.

This is the plot game.

This game stems from Aristotle's view of plot, which was that plot is a character wanting something.

So, in this game, you have a character who wants something:

Bob wants a cookie.

But obviously, that makes for a very short story, so you have to complicate it. Why can't Bob have a cookie?


Bob wants a cookie, but there are no cookies in the cupboard.


Even so, that just makes for a tragedy. We want something more complicated. So you have to explain why there are no cookies in the cupboard.

There are no cookies in the cupboard because his parents have not gone shopping.

Why haven't his parents gone shopping?


His parents both lost their jobs.


You get the point. Try to make it go for as long as you can.

Here is the first one:

Julie wants a flower.

(Why, this looks familiar! )

Julie wants a flower, but she lives in a desert.

Julie lives in a desert because she is at a university there.

(Just trying to kick things off. )

The university is in a desert because the lake dried up.

The lake dried up because the river feeding it was dammed.

The river was dammed to provide power to a hydroelectric plant that's trying to compete with a nearby nuclear power plant.

The hydroelectric plant is comleting with the nearby nuclear plant not because of environmental reasons but because the two owners are feuding.

The two owners are feuding due to a date gone horribly awry back when they were both attending the university, which the residents still talk about.

The date that residents still talk about went awry because the girl in question had asked both me out on the same day at the same time at the same place.

The girl asked someone else out for the same date, time, and place because she lost her planner the day before and she wanted to go to her favorite restaurant.

The girl lost her planner due to her careless nature, a nature that would later land her in trouble with Greenpeace.

The girl has a careless nature because she had an smothering mother who insisted on doing everything for the girl, which taught the girl that she could just leave her stuff around and not having to worry about it.

The mother was overprotective because her first child had died at the age of two.

Her first child died at the age of two because he got an illness doctors couldn't cure.

The doctors couldn't cure the illness because it was a form of cancer.