12 Days of Prompt Tools for Fiction Writers
Day 2: Rory's Story Cubes
It’s Day 2 of the 12 Days of Writing Prompt Tools (known locally, as the latest excuse I have for sustaining my addiction to buying writing prompt tools whenever I come across them). Each day, leading up to Christmas, I will share a new post highlighting one of the writing prompt tools I love to use and share with the Stop Writing Alone community and beyond. Here is today’s share.
*Many links in this series will be affiliate links (any that direct you to bookshop.org), so if you use these links to make a purchase, please know that the shop itself will pay me a commission as a result of your purchase.
Day 2: Rory’s Story Cubes
If you want to be the only contributor of words in your endeavor to find story, or if you find yourself more inspired by visual cues than anything else, Rory’s Story Cubes are the tool for you!
Explore at StoryCubes.com, purchase locally, or on Amazon.
This is another prompt tool that I consider an oldie but a goodie. I have been playing with story cubes since I started this whole writing community gig. They are fantastic to use on your own, with a group, or in a classroom with writers both young/inexperienced and old/seasoned. This is a tool that meets writers wherever they are and pushes their imaginations just enough to inspire fiction they never would have dreamed on their own.
How It Works
The box of story cubes is a box of nine six-sided cubes. Unlike the numbered dice we are used to in gambling, probability word problems, and board games, these cubes are covered in simple images. You roll the dice, look at the face up images and write a story incorporating them all, either literally or figuratively. The box includes extra challenges to direct the storytelling if you are up for a challenge, but this is as simple as it gets.
How I Use It
As described above, the story cubes do come with some extra challenges in their instructions. One of them is to come up with a title before you roll the cubes, in order to give your writing an added direction or restriction (depending on how you feel about a preemptive title!). That’s what I did in this video below, so you can see what this type of play looks like.
What I’ve Written With It
Here are stories I have shared online that have all come from rolling Rory’s Story Cubes:
flash fiction Night Flight
flash fiction The Game (story based on the prompt shared in the video above)
Why I Love It
Rory’s Story Cubes is one of the most unassuming powerhouses in my writing prompt tool collection. Upon first inspection, it looks quite childish, as it is a bunch of cubes with simplistic line drawings on each cube side. However, this simplicity leaves room for writers to do what they do best: create. In addition to the simplicity, the randomness of the nine-image combination stretches every writer far beyond what they can imagine on their own, which results in stories that force writers to dig deep, finding new strengths in their own bag of tricks they may not have known existed before. I know of multiple writers who have submitted and published stories that were birthed in Rory’s Story Cubes Writing Prompt Parties, or based on prompts shared on my YouTube channel.
It has become my experience that when you write a story using the cubes, it becomes a story that haunts you until you complete it and share it with the world.
Where To Buy It
I have seen Rory’s Story Cubes in bookstores, teacher stores, toy stores, and beyond. I will share the Amazon link only so you can see the many variations and expansion packs for the cubes currently available, but keep an eye out in your local shops to see if they have a set waiting for you.
The List
Just in case you do not have the time or patience to wait out all 12 days to see the tools I will be sharing this season, here’s a bit of a master list. You can come back when it suits you to check out the reasons I love these tools and how I use them. As the posts go up, I will update this list with the links to those posts.
Games that are great prompt tools (You’ll have to check the post out for these links!)
Now Write! Books
Stop Writing Alone Paid Subscription (you really can’t blame me for this! With this option, you have access to all of these AND MORE all the time!)
I love the story cubes and I learned about them from you so many years ago! They are so much fun. Thank you for sharing these resources.