Begin at the End
The idea here is to figure out who did the killing first thing. Your audience must figure that out as you go; they’ll see each Act as you create it. You’ll start by defining characters, deciding the location, And writing a brief outline. You have three days to write your story: an app per day. Here’s what you’re going to be doing each day:
Characters and Location
- Who croked
- who killed them
- Who else is hanging around but innocent
- Where does your story take place? And imagine, on a boat, top of a mountain…
- Reginald Harrington: Extremely wealthy, not popular father of the family
- Lucas: eldest son at 40, the Golden child. Runs one of Daddy’s businesses really well.
- Ethan: essential bad boy. Always overlooked, into art and his father considered that just silly.
- Sofia: the only daughter and the youngest. Very bright, a lawyer, going places.
Be sure to describe these characters and the location, as you’ll likely draw clues from that location.
Outline
Act I
Reginald has invited his loving family to an elaborate dinner at his place And he has an announcement. He’s changing his will. Instead of dividing it three ways, he’s going to do so depending on who has contributed the most to the business.
No sooner does he finish his announcement; he guzzled some good scotch and falls dead into his soup.
Once the moderators have answered all questions, they will close the chat room until the next evening. The players will then have until then to individually develop ideas for the story: additional characters, murder details, additional setting details, and a plot idea for the complete story.
Act II
Here is where you come up with the clues: two or three of them. For instance, one of the kids discovers a note under dear dead daddy’s foot. Put some conversation in here, they all accuse each other of having murdered him.
At the end of this act there’s a twist: a cop shows up having been called by a neighbor.
Act III
Now the accusations fly as they all accuse each other. The cop helps by asking astute questions and suddenly it happens. They discover who done it.
To wrap it up with a neat bow , you must come up with explanations of what the clues meant; have they provided good leads or dead end? How, why did he croak?
We don’t expect expert writers! If you do happen to write, major bonus if your team wins, a byline on TSP.
Winning team prizes
A poll for “Favorite Team Story” will indicate which team takes the prizes.
All registered site members will have until Day 4 to read and vote on their favorite story. Winning team gets cool prizes, including the outrageous TSP tree shirt, a mug, and—for writers, the best prize of all—a byline on our Tales page.
And that is it!
Don’t give easy clues. Be sneaky, be unique, be funny. And you’ll be on the team that wins!
