Read a story by Oneohtrix Point Never, Robert Wyatt, Ian Rankin, The Horrors and many more

You know when camp-leaders or drama teachers or whoever would get a group to tell a story one word or sentence at a time? Well, The Stool Pigeon have done that, but with some of the greatest alternative musicians in the world. Gary Numan, Dan Lopatin, Mark E Smith and many more joined the fun, but the final contribution, by Robert Wyatt, is our favourite:

At last, her own calm whisper: “You twist, turn, and writhe, but still you are always, always trapped in this, our infinitely unchangeable past. Get used to it, son.” [Robert Wyatt]

Head to The Stool Pigeon’s website to read the whole thing. Read their explanation of the neat feature below, and consider that it is going to such absurd lengths for a short piece of writing that makes the independent mag outsell Kerrang and NME. *

Because we wanted lots of musicians/writers to take part (40 ended up doing so), and a story that would hopefully be fluid and make some sense (you be the judge of that), we allowed players to read every contribution before adding theirs.

We initially insisted that contributions be kept to a single sentence. That didn’t work out, because we didn’t have the balls to tell Ian Rankin to re-submit his entry. We subsequently requested something short and simple, and that, of course, is a tough ask of many musicians/writers. As such, we refused five contributions, cut down and edited four that were decadent or over-long, and corrected grammar.

• Of course, The Stool Pigeon is free, so “sell” could be seen as too strong a word. But our point remains – please your readers with hard work and good ideas and they will reward you with figures.