5 W's

Those who know me know I have a love for games.  We both do.  Often, we make up word games when we are hanging out after work.  The go to game is where you say a word and (on the honor system) are thinking in your mind a second word.  The other participants playing have only a few seconds to freely associate a word that is related.  You get a point if they say your word: for instance “stop” …”light”.   If “sign” or “it” or something else that follows is spoken, you get no point, but to long of a pause is a point as well. 

Recently, I came up with a new game.  It was inspired by a few sources.  One element of the game was a recollection from a lesson I recently taught about how to write for a newspaper.  In fact, I think I will call the game: the 5 W’s game.  The five W’s are the major question words that need to be addressed by a reporter, namely: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.  Yes, I know it is actually 5 W’s and an H, but that doesn’t sound as catchy does it? 

The other element of the game is thanks to Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire, which Nicole and I are jointly reading aloud to each other.  Reading out loud can be tricky.  One thing that can make it downright harrowing is the overuse of run on sentences and parenthetical statements.  Pollan is guilty of both, to the point that some of the book seems more in parenthesis than in the actual text.  After a chuckle about this, we thought about a book being written, where the text began with a couple words and then the entire body of the novel was parenthesis inside of parenthesis only to end with a closing few words.  Thus the novel would be just one statement outside of an absurdly long parenthetical side note! 

Putting the book aside, we grabbed some paper and pens and set out on a new exercise designed to be mentally stimulating and fun to write.   The idea was to write a word or two such as:

Ballet

Then to follow a form of answering the five W questions (and one H) inside inclusive parenthetical rabbit trails.  The first being “who”:

(a dance form founded by the French

Then next question would relate to the previous statement, often the last word, rather than the original word.  Where:

[a nationality in central Europe famous for art, food, and national pride

Continue with the questions, letting the guiding question dictate your direction.  What:

(pride being a philosophical/religious concept largely linked with the ego or will

When:

[that consciousness that endures from the earliest remembered days and returns to the void after death

Why:

(a phenomenon that most people believe is as necessary as life

How:

[life being defined by the Greeks as the art of dying well

Then you close all the parenthesis and finish the sentence:

])])]) takes commitment.

So, in the end, you have a sentence stating: Ballet takes commitment.  This could also be the title of the piece.  It is easy to do, and kinda fun to see where your mind goes.  It is also a bit funny to try to come up with an ironic ending to your sentence after going through the writing journey, i.e. Don’t think ahead to the end of your sentence, keep yourself on your toes and the end will write itself. 

Perhaps there is unique humor to us as we have been reading from this particular book, but the look of all the asides from a finished game is so comical.

Here are our first tries at it:

The man (who was the son of Zeus [a longstanding god (until recently residing in Olympus [this being the 3^rd golden age after the long winter (the sun having rolled off its orbital path and away from gods and mortals alike [due to the abundant use of packaging])])]) ordered a cellophane enclosed apple with a grimace.

Or, keeping the questions about the original statement is fun too:

The cat (who is orange and fat [because he ate to much (at the kitty café [on a fateful day (because he was a little depressed [due to a lack of cannabinoids acting properly in his cerebral cortex])])]) jumped off the top of his perch unsuccessfully trying to end his life but just bruised his paws.