Improv and Fiction writing

01/31/2025

I took an eight week improv class in Winter 2024. Every so often, I try to do something that I wouldn't imagine myself doing, and this was one of those things. The first session was scary; I was full of anxiety, but by week 3 I found myself looking forward to the classes. We ended the 'semester' by performing in front of a small crowd. My watch thought I was having a heart attack, but I felt just fine up there. Though, I didn't get 'the actors bug' like I thought I might; I have no desire to continue the Improv sessions, or look deeper into acting.

Every week we focused on a different 'improv tool'. There are many similarities between these tools and fiction tools. Writing and improv are exact opposites, and yet inform each other in various ways. Let me think out loud about it all:

The three W's in an opening

The first thing you learn in improv is to set up the who/what/where of a scene ASAP. Hopefully you learn to gracefully do it in a few sentences, ideally one sentence, and it should be the first thing said. This is important because if an audience just sees two people out on an empty stage, holding nothing but mimed props, then we're all just floating, unsure of what's going on. It could be literally anything. It's a blank page.

But if you say who/where/what in one line of dialogue, the audience will then feel grounded and imagine the scene. So an example of an opening line in a two person scene would be something like this. Person A walks out and then Person B walks out.

Either could start and say:

in true improv fashion, I just wrote this without thinking and i'm KEEPING it. So this is a two person scene. Bob's boss is talking to Bob. That's the who. The what is that Bob has sewn himself onto a patient, yet again. I'm guessing in surgery. Yikes. The where would probably be an operating room, but that's more implied. The person responding could reinforce the where, or make a joke about it, like 'well if we weren't operating in an abandoned mine, i could see better!' or something like that.

Okay but how does that relate to fiction? As writers, we try to do the same exact thing in the opening line of a story. A good first sentence will give a who and what. A great one will give all three.

Here are a few examples that i've read recently and I think do a great job of this:

I am such a sucker for a good opening line. Let's do one more.

What makes these work so well is not only that they hit those three W's, but that they are specific. Writing is a series of getting more and more specific with each rewrite. Notice, they are not summary. There are very few great opening lines in fiction that are summary. Consider this opening from The Barber by O'connor: "It is trying on Liberals in Dilton." - which gives us a where, but it's very vague in everything else. Plus, it's more idea oriented.

Of course, there are exceptions; here is a summary opening that hits all those W's:

Now THAT is an opening. yes, it's summary, but it's summary of the entire story that's to come and it also very clearly gives us those three W's. We get the Who, which is our 1st person protag, who is looking back at being a child. (We also know there is a father character.) We know that the 'what' is an event with violence. Lastly, we get the where: a drive-in theater. This opening also gives us the all so important when, but improv doesn't concern itself with when/time, so we can ignore that.

While Pollock's example is a great fiction opening, it wouldn't be a good improv opening line. It is nearly a monologue and not a dialogue with a scene partner. (Also, it breaks some rules of improv that don't apply to fiction: never talk about people who aren't there in the scene, and uhhhh, keep it light.) But the same fundamentals are there: the audience knows the who/what/where.

We as an audience want immediate action. We want the three W's to get an immediate image. I want to know where we are, who is there, and what we're doing. I want it in one sentence. This is the first thing we learn in improv, and it's the first thing we should do with a fictional story.

iteration

I thought that I would be naturally good at improv. I'm generally funny, and I've studied storytelling for a while. But what a fool I was!

Good fiction is a process of iteration. We go over the words again and again until they shine. Improv is almost like this, but instead of only showing the finished product, we show the audience the entire process. We are, after all, doing it live in front of them. The opening line in an improv scene might stink - maybe it doesn't hit all those W's, maybe it hits them but none of them quite work well. The next few beats might make no sense as both actors try to find what the scene is.

But eventually, though iteration of dialogue, by going back and forth and shaping the thing together, the scene eventually makes sense. Eventually there is a joke to be found, a heart to dig at. This is a terrifying act to do as a writer in some ways, because we are so used to only showing the final product. We spend hours on a sentence and pretend we're naturally that charming. But, with improv, that shitty first draft of yours is being presented as the final and only draft.

The lesson here is that it's more important to get a thing down that you can iterate on. Having something is infinity better than nothing. The only way to fail in improv is to go out there and say nothing; the only way to fail at writing is to never write. That's not a revolutionary thought, but it is a true one.

Situation as Plot as Means of Finding Character

The last thing I want to talk about is that the situation of a scene is never as interesting as a characters reaction to situation. In improv, I often found myself standing on the sidelines, waiting for some inspiration to hit. I wanted a perfect opening line all thought out before stepping into the light. I've always tried to be different or unique. I didn't want to walk out there and say something unimaginative or not funny. But there's this saying: follow your feet. Just walk out there, and something will happen. My improv teacher always said it's more important to focus on the relationships of a scene, and not the 'what'. An audience cares more about the emotions rather than the action.

We don't really care about plot as readers or audiences of improv as much as we think we do. What we care about is that a characters reaction to a plot point feels true to that character. We like to see a situation that's absurd, yes, but mainly to think 'oh I don't know what i would do here, what will they do?' Or: 'oh wow they banged and now they're gonna try to be friends? yeah right!'. The point is that plot (or situation in improv) only exists as a means to put characters in the same room and make them talk and force them to make irrevocable decisions. The 'what' isn't important. Yes, it needs to be there. But it doesn't need to be a crazy wacky situation. I did that bit about the doctor above and that's a bit wacky and funny, but situation doesn't need to be. I could have made the scene with the doctor who sewn himself to a patient instead be a doctor dressing up in the bunny suit, scared to perform their next surgery. We have no idea why he's scared. We'd find out together in the scene.

Unless you're writing genre, the situation probably shouldn't be too inventive. I wont make an argument about literary vs genre here, but I often think about Kiss Me Judas by WCB when I think about plot. Baer just stole that old urban legend of the stolen kidney and repurposed it. It's got a plot that requires a disclaimer when recommending the book. Yes, it has some of my all time favorite characters and prose. Yes, it was one of the most important books that inspired me to be a writer. But Every time I recommend itto someone (which i've done about a million times over the last... TWENTY years) I have to say: 'ignore the plot, the book isn't what you think it is'.

Actually, that last sentence sums up all good fiction and improv: it starts in a place you don't know, and ends in a place you do.