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SRWB 5

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So what the hell are "Stupid random Word Balloon's"? They come from boredom and borderline madness. But basically the idea is this:

- Take a comic or graphic novel and turn to a page at random.

- Then write down the dialogue in the first word balloon that you see. Repeat this process six times.

- Now the challenge is to construct a one page comic using these word balloons.

Simple, no? Perhaps others have done something similar. We think of it as a sort of comic book improv. It could also be a good writing (or page layout) exercise to get these random word balloons to make a (at least somewhat) cohesive narrative. Sometimes the combinations can be quite funny, even coherent! Other times they won't make any sense at all. But that can make it that much more challenging!

So here are a few results. Feel free to try this at home at your leisue. Let us know if you post any on your own site, we'd like to see what you come up with. And while we don't really have any rules on how to do Stupid Random Word Balloons, we do follow a few guidelines that seem to work.

First, try to stick with six word balloons. Any fewer makes it difficult to build a story around, and too many more tends to make it more incoherent and unwieldy. And second, we limit ourselves to only one retry. If you turn to a splash page or page with no dialogue then you try again anyway. But only toss out one word balloon (only if it really doesn't work). Just don't keep trying to get ones you like, that defeats the purpose.