Rory’s Story Cubes have been around for a few years, sold as a game for ages 8 and up. It consists of 9, quality dice with different images on each facet. The object is to roll the dice and then create a story based on the images on the cubes rolled. 9 cubes with 6 images on each one for a total 54 images and over 10,000,000 possible combinations.
Now, this is not the great story-telling machine. At least in my case, the stories I create from what is rolled are simplistic and not really usable as a storyline for anything I will write. But playing through a few rolls of Story Cubes and creating a story from the random pictures does seem to break my brain out of idle and get me thinking outside of my comfort zone.
I tend to get in a weird funk where I’m not excited about what I’m writing about. I’m churning out words, knowing well that in the editorial pass, most of it is too mundane and will be cut. I find this most common with something I’ve been working on for a long time – I get bored with what I’m doing, but it’s not finished so I keep working on it.
Of course, you can just play the game with Story Cubes. It’s a lot of fun to play with a creative group of people.
Here is an example session with Story Cubes in which I tell a completely absurd and boring story despite the fact that I cheated a little bit.
You get the idea.
Rory’s Story Cubes sell for less than $10 on Amazon, and I’ve seen them in Barnes and Noble and other stores, too. Things like this can help get the creative juices flowing, sometimes. Aside from that, it can be a really fun drinking game.
Related articles
- Rory’s Story Cubes for iPhone and iPad review: Get writing inspiration from pictures on dice (imore.com)
- Rory’s Story Cubes – a gem of a resource (jivespin.wordpress.com)
- Rory’s story cubes (dejuf.wordpress.com)
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