Larry M. Coleman

About ten years ago, at airport toy store, I came across probably the only good thing I ever got out of Newark-Liberty International Airport: Rory’s Story Cubes.

Like many good stories, the concept is simple but the end result is up to your own interpretation. Nine cubes each have a small picture on them. Make a story out of whatever comes up.

There are some free websites that will do this (ESL Story Dice Online, for example), but there are several reasons I prefer the real cubes.

First, the sound and feel. I’ve had these so long mine come in a small pouch, like the little treasure pouches of old. (They’ve since changed to a small tin.)

There is something a bit exciting about pouring them out and hearing them clatter softly and spread into the fragments of a plot.

Second, after looking at them all and seeing what’s there to work with, you can touch them, rearrange them, and line them up, which is something you can’t do with virtual cubes.

You can—and should—interpret these however you want to. Here’s my story as an example ONLY. It’s not the “correct” answer, because there is no correct answer when you’re a storyteller.

Aliens come to Earth to have an expensive vacation. When a bee stings their leader (let’s call him Zlarthon the Easily-Peeved), they lock up humans at random. A refugee scientist working in an underground resistance lab unlocks the secret to defeating them when she discovers that cheerful flowers make the mean aliens fall asleep.

If that sounded vaguely familiar to you, congratulations on being old enough to have watched television in the 1980s, because the ending is a warm tribute to one of the most amazing TV miniseries of the entire decade. We didn’t have streaming back then, so if you didn’t watch it live, you missed it forever.

I was nine when it came out, and it was so good that I wanted to create something that epic someday, so it’s had an impact that has lasted across four decades. It was called V, and you can see a (spoiler-filled) summary of the first half here:

This reveals another nice advantage of using real story cubes. Let’s say you want to be a little more original by cribbing from H. G. Wells instead. The cubes have pictures on all sides, so you can flip up the “lock” face and use the “fire” one on the same cube, thereby making the aliens use heat rays.

The cubes I’m using are the classic ones, but they also have booster or themed packs called “Voyages,” “Actions,” “Heroes,” “Mystery,” “Primal,” “Fantasia,” “Emergency,” “Astro,” and even Star Wars and Harry Potter-themed versions. Unfortunately, some of these are out of print, but several of them are still available at their Amazon store.

Will you get amazing bestseller ideas from rolling some dice? Well, that depends on you, but if you look at the average novel at an airport bookshop or the things stacked up at the entryway to your local chain bookstore, you couldn’t do worse. What’s important is getting the practice structuring a story, identifying the components that make up a good one, using your creativity to link them together, and occasionally using a little revision (like flipping a cube to a better side).

For that reason, Fiction Inspiration Friday is spinning off a Story Cubes Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, I’ll roll the bones and post the picture for you to think and write as little or as much about as you like. On Sunday, I’ll post my short ideas for you to compare yours against.

Let’s get rolling!