The 'What If' Story Game

This creative writing exercise will offer a chance to explore alternate, fantastical, or downright wacky versions of reality.

1. Have different family members write down the biggest, strangest, or most inspiring “What if…?” questions they can think of on slips of paper. Examples might be “What if our pets could talk?” or “What if we actually could live a day in the life of someone else?” Fold the slips and put them in a bowl or hat to select one by one.
    
2. Select a question from the mix and write a story about this fantasy world. Try writing a set number of words (100, 500, or 1,000!) or until you hit a time limit, start with 5 or 10 minutes. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, the idea is to let your imagination take over! If writing isn’t your thing, you could also try drawing or painting how you think this world would look.
    
3. Take turns reading your stories aloud to each other, or even turning them into a family skit! Over the past couple of months, we’ve been staying inside more, which means our brains haven’t been encountering as many new or interesting stories. We can keep our creativity flowing by engaging our minds to consider life’s big and small “what if” questions. In addition to keeping our brains active, this activity might help pass the time or give us a chance to slip into another world.