Today's short story device #TheStoryCube

Today's flash fiction is actually multiple flash fictions in one and its ending is actually chosen by you! This is going to be a long post because I'm going to be explaining to you how this works, but its really awesome once you learn it.

Today I'll be showing you my second “Story Cube”, much better than the first one I did many months ago. A Story Cube is a whole bunch of stories with branching paths(though of course there is the ability to make one story with many branching paths) inside a table, but this story cube is multiple tales. The table you see below is a Story Cube. * are blank spaces that mean nothing and make dead ends.

The way you read a story cube is that you start in the upper left hand corner then start reading words going up down, left or right as you please to new words to form sentences and a story. One story I made(highlighted in red) was “The little girls saw the ghost of their grandmother, they met. It did not harm them because it only wanted love.”(There is no punctuation in the Story Cube, this must be invented by you.)

If you've ever played Scrabble or Words With Friends you can think of it this way. Go up, down, left, right, connecting words however you wish. Some words are next to each other, some stacked side by side. Keep going until you reach the bottom of the cube or the dead end *. But you can also pull out early. Some words can even be upside down. If something doesn't make any sense you may have chosen a word into a nonsensical story path and should choose a different way. There are sad stories happy ones, good endings and bad endings, all formed and chosen by you! (In fact, I could have made my story “The little girls saw the ghost of their grandmother, they met. It did harm them because it only wanted pain.” I could do this by ignoring the not and choosing to go to pain at the end instead of love.)

Anyway, its a bit weird to get used to, but its fun once you get the hang of it! I suggest going with “THE” “TRAIN” for the start of your first path.(The is the upper right starting part then the word TRAIN is under the T.) Anyway, Enjoy!

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You may make your own Story Cubes and distribute them in any legal manner. You may share your story cubes in any way you choose and even for profit as long as you clearly cite me as the original creator of the Story Cube concept and put the url of the blog.(As specified in The Rule For Citation below) I really like the concept and would love if more people play with it and hopefully improve on what I've done making better Cubes. I would love to hear about any story cubes you create so please comment with links to any cubes you create and where you posted/published them.

The Rule For Citation: As long as you put the phrase: “Original Story Cube Concept By Langdon Kennedy” then the url for the blog underneath that, above your story cube in the same font size, style and letter size as the letters in the cube it should be technically clear enough to be proper citation. Any smaller or less detailed and the citation is too unclear and I think its incomplete and should not count as a proper citation.

Otherwise have fun!