| Write Your Own Italian Short Story |
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Create a Story Phrase by Phrase in the About.com Italian Language Forum
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"Costruiamo una storia aggiungendo una frase alla precedente: 'Ermenegildo aveva un cappotto nuovo ma non era felice...'"
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Everyone, it seems, wants to see their words in print. Biographies of minor historical figures flood bookstores, throwaway memoirs expose lurid details about politicians, and celebrities who couldn't boil water pen cookbooks.
"It was a dark and stormy night..." begins the famous opener plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy as he bangs out the beginning of the next great literary novel, while his critic Woodstock listens. There's even the Bulwer–Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
Now, community members of the About.com Italian Language Bulletin Board have started their own short story workshop, and the results are a pure pleasure to read.
C’era una volta...
"C’era una volta...
–Un re! – diranno subito i miei piccoli lettori.
No, ragazzi, avete sbagliato. C’era una volta un pezzo di legno."
(from Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1883)
If you aspire to be the next Carlo Collodi, or just want to practice and improve your Italian writing skills, start brainstorming plot, character, and narrative, and visit Create a Story in Italian. Members post a sentence in Italian, and others continue the story phrase–by–phrase. Sometimes the results are a gripping, well–written, and concise tale, sometimes the story is less than compelling, but they're always entertaining and everyone who participates can improve their Italian language skills.
Ermenegildo Aveva un Cappotto...
Here's just one story after just five phrases were added by various members of the About.com Italian Language community.
Ermenegildo aveva un cappotto nuovo ma non era felice. Il povero gigante si vergognava perché il cappotto era tanto piccolo.
Ma Ermenegildo ignorava ancora le magnifiche qualità magiche di quel cappotto regalatogli dallo zio Gioffredo. Passaggero clandestino arrivato in Sicilia dalla Svezia, Ermengildo ha incontrato questo zio, il marinaio Jurgen (chiamato "Gioffredo" in Sicilia), soltanto una volta: quel giorno terribile quando è sbarcato a Palermo. Ermenegildo, gigantesco, pallido e riservato, il suo vecchio cappotto perso nel mare qualche giorni fa, aveva paura di tutte queste persone basse che chiacchieravano tanto, ma in una lingua che non capiva.
For the full story see Ermenegildo Aveva un Cappotto (it has an ending you won't believe).
Rules To Write By
Here is just a sample of suggested ground rules to make the story–building process more entertaining. These have been culled from the original attempts in an effort to make some sense of the stories—but if they grow organically, so much the better!
- Anyone can add a single phrase at a time to the previous phrases.
- Repeat all the previous text (use the copy–and–paste function).
- The total number of personaggi is limited to five.
- All characters must have last names that mean something, and all successive phrases must be in character with the last name.
- From message 18 to 25 anyone can conclude a story by including the term "FINE" [the END] after writing the last phrase.
- Regardless of which point the story is at, after message 25 it is finished; if not si muore di noia, gente!
If you prefer to create a new story with different ground rules, go right ahead! Be very specific in your first post about the rules (for example, all characters must be from Boccaccio's Decameron, or all sentences must contain every letter of the Italian alphabet at least once), and experiment! Of course, all stories must be written in Italian—and state a level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) so that everyone can participate.
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