Story Cubes

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STORY CUBES

How to play Story Cubes

You get five story dice , each with a random image on it. Your job is quite simply to turn these prompts into a story.

I recommend you try to work with the order they appear on the screen but if you’re finding it tough, you can swap.

You also don’t need to take the image literally. You can use the dice metaphorically or as representations of other concepts. For example, a slice of pizza could represent food in general, cutting a slice out of something, Italy, a chef and a heap of other more obscure things. The job of the dice is not necessarily to provide you with literal objects to work with, but concepts to nudge your thinking in fresh directions.

You may just want to dive in as soon as you see them, working from left to right as you try to incorporate each image into your yarn. Or you may want to be more strategic and work out the ending first, using the dice to work out how you’re going to get to your big finale. Try different strategies to see what works best for you.

Example

Imagine I was dealt these dice:

A sailboat, a comb, a cactus, a couch and a toilet. How can I make these into a story that makes sense?

Dice 1

There comes a time in every man’s life when he decides to sail away from it all.

For Gregory, that time came on a Tuesday.

He left his corporate job, deleted his dating apps, and traded his espresso machine for a modest sailboat named Emotional Baggage. It wasn’t a midlife crisis, he insisted—it was a “sabbatical of the soul.” Gregory didn’t know how to sail, but he did have a linen shirt, a Spotify playlist titled “Ocean Vibes Only,” and enough existential dread to power a small yacht.

Dice 2

After three days of drifting in accidental circles, he dropped anchor near a barren desert island. There, he found an old, battered comb half-buried in the sand, lying next to a sun-bleached romance novel and a coconut full of ants.

It was a sign.

Dice 3

His hair, long neglected, had reached the level of "aggressively bohemian." As he combed through the sea-salt dreadlocks, something unexpected happened—clarity. Not metaphorical clarity. Literal. A small engraved message appeared on the comb’s handle:

“You are not the problem. Your couch is.”

Gregory was stunned. He’d spent years on that couch—napping, watching bad TV, ghosting women. Could it really be the source of his stagnation?

Dice 4

Determined to uncover the truth, he sailed home, comb in hand, soul slightly less tangled. Upon arrival, he was greeted by the same cactus he’d bought during his "minimalist desert chic" phase—a plant he had never watered, yet somehow thrived. It stood in judgment. Spiky, unkillable, and, frankly, smug.

Inside his apartment, the couch waited like an old flame. Lumpy. Familiar. Covered in crumbs from a time he pretended dinner parties were his personality.

He sat.

Dice 5

But Gregory immediately stood up again. He marched to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and had what could only be described as a “ceramic epiphany.” Life wasn’t about comfort. It was about movement, mess, and maybe—just maybe—finally watering your cactus.

He moved out that weekend. Took the couch to the dump, gave the cactus to a yoga instructor named Bree, and opened a used comb shop near the harbour.

Business is weirdly booming.

Your dice story

1. Go to davebirss.com/storydice
   
2. Use the 5 pictures you see or roll again
   
3. If you have a combination you like, make a screenshot of the dice
   
4. Paste the screenshot into a Word document
   
5. Write a story (at least 150 words) based on the pictures, in the right order
   

davebirss.com