What is an Exquisite Corpse?

An Exquisite Corpse is a story, poem, or drawing written by a group of people who cannot see what has come before. In our town-day version, the paper is folded so only the previous line is seen. The next contributor must write the following sentence of the story based only on that one visible sentence; the rest of the story is hidden.

The game was invented in 1925 by the surrealists Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton, and Marcel Duchamp. They called the game cadavre exquis, exquisite cadaver. The name comes from a sentence written when they first played the game: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau” which translates to “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.”

Arlington’s 2025 Town-Day Exquisite Corpse

At the Arlington Author Salon booth at Town Day, we invited visitors to contribute to our Exquisite Corpse story. Over a hundred people of all ages wrote a sentence for our story. Did you miss us this year? Find our booth at next year’s Town Day to participate in 2026’s Exquisite Corpse.

You can read the full story here or download it from the link below:

The Original Pages