Oulipo | Andrew Benbow

Cartes Noires: A Creative Writing Exercise For Mystery and Detective Fiction

Cartes Noires is a creative writing exercise to help you craft the plot for a mystery novel in about 30 minutes using only a standard deck of playing cards and your imagination. With it, it is possible to make an elaborate, whodunnit story on the fly.

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What is Holorhyme Poetry?

I made this experimental poem by reading the alphabet aloud forward and backward. It is also what 2000's era chat bots sounded like when they talk to each other.

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Beau Presents & Big Ol' Crusty Books O' Magick

In college I experimented with a constrained writing system called the beau present. This is an experimental poem often prepared as a wedding gift. The names of the betrothed serve both as the title of the poem, and as a challenge to the writer.

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Writing Snowball Poems

Writing prompts like the snowball poem are fun for discovering unexpected stories. For instance, this poem focuses on a bisexual two-toed sloth hanging out with con artists deep in discussion about matters of national (and psychic) security.

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Writing With The Prisoner's Constraint

I’ve been digging through some old poetry of mine and found a couple of pieces of constrained writing, including this poem below written using something called the prisoner’s constraint. Topically, it’s based on a true story in the same way LeCroix is based on fruit: it’s an earnest attempt at truth that doesn’t come anywhere close to passable or plausible, but does end up becoming enjoyable in its own right.

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