01
Every player gets a card, the first step is to try to answer the sentences of "step 1" within 4 minutes.
02
Once you are done with the first step, share your answers with the group if you feel comfortable.
03
For every next step, you also get 4 minutes to write down your answers but don't share them anymore, wait until the end!
04
In the end, every player is challenged to read out loud their sentences as a whole. Together reflect on them. You can also just listen to the other players and keep your writings to yourself.
How did we get here?
To find a frame for a theme of honesty, we started with a question: Who is good at being honest? Evidently, we discovered that being vulnerable, relatable and honest is tightly connected to comedy and humor. (Hendell, 2016) Standup-comedian Amy Schumer says about comedy: “people only laugh when it’s real. Comedy transforms our darkest truths into light by making them a shared experience… (...) “not to wallow in that fear, but to really accept it without judgment, and then to surround it with compassion. (Hendell, a.22, 2016)
Schumer adds that everybody could benefit from using humor to deal with difficulties in life. Laughter and compassion can make you master difficulties and even enable you to see it from another perspective. There you can see that other people also struggle, which embraces the feeling of recognition and not being alone (Hendell, 2016).
So, in order to do comedy, you have to embrace your truths. To activate creative thinking and write honestly, comedians often start with writing exercises and prompts. In writing, a prompt is a short sentence that gives a writer a certain starting point from which you can finish the sentence ( Masterclass, 2022) For example The best is when..., I’m embarrassed by..., I hate… etc .
We transferred prompts into an intervention and created a writing game called Cards Against Dishonesty. The concept uses the same set-up and content from the prompt exercises, but it's reshaped into a card game that works best in a group setting, so youngsters can in a lowkey way share their experiences. After everyone is done with writing, one person starts sharing their sentences.
