What Improv Comedy Taught Me About Writing
The Official GUTS t-shirt design for the 2014-15 school year, designed and drawn by Maria Mondloch. Picture courtesy of the GUTS Improv Facebook page.
First of all, yes. I was that kid in college. The only posts I put on Facebook for four years were pleas to my friends, begging them to come see me joke around on stage. And I didn’t just do improv. It was my entire personality. I was in more than twenty shows and never skipped a practice if I could help it. My roommates were on the team, as were most of my friends. It’s even how I met my husband. As someone who was as entrenched in it as I was, I’m allowed to say that every stereotype regarding people who do improv is true. We were quirky and stubbornly awkward. Most of us weren’t nearly as good at accents as we thought, which was fine since it was near impossible to embarrass us. And, whether we knew it or not, we were incredible writers.
There is a key difference between busting out a story on the computer and standing in front of a theater of people making one up on the fly. In improv, there are no rough drafts and there are no editors. The feedback happens in real time. Either the audience laughs, or they fidget uncomfortably as you look at them expectantly. You hope they laugh. Usually, they do. Usually. In the moment, you don’t think of it as writing, but that’s what all storytelling is, whether it’s put to paper or not. You learn what makes a narrative compelling, how to appeal to an audience, and how to invent dialogue. Unlike a novel, the story only exists for the moment (unless it’s immortalized on YouTube like it is right here , where you can see me being not nearly as good as accents as I thought I was). However, the elements of good writing are found in good improv and you either learn them fast or you end up staring at the audience waiting for a laugh that isn’t going to come.
Cast photo taken after the 2015 Valentine’s Day Show and my husband’s first show ever. He’s in the hat and I’m right behind him holding my first love, a cardboard cutout of Harry Styles.
Photo courtesy of the GUTS Improv Facebook Page.
CROW
The first thing we learned in my improv troupe was CROW. Every great scene had it and every bad scene was missing at least one part of it. Essentially an updated version the 5-W’s your first grade teacher taught you, CROW stands for Character, Relationship, Objective, and Where. It’s a straight forward idea. If you want a good scene, whether on stage or on paper, you need characters with diverse relationships, each with their own wants that they are working towards, within an established setting. Can you have an otherwise enjoyable scene without one of those elements to some degree? Sure, but any good improviser will tell you it is more important to create a quality scene than it is to play to laughs. If you create a scene that engages and captures the audience, the comedy will come on its own without having to rely on cheap jokes as a crutch. I found writing Beta to be no different. It was possible to write a good scene but if it didn’t work to further character development and relationships or work towards (or against!) the objective of my main character, that scene only worked as filler, distracting from my greater story.
Never Go With Your First Idea
Obviously there are exceptions to this one. Sometimes your first idea really is that good. However, the best advice I ever received from an improv veteran was to ignore your first idea. More often than not, the next one, two, or even three will be better. The number of times I walked away from a show beating myself up for thinking up better ideas after the fact is embarrassingly high. Writing at least comes with the grace that is the second draft. In fact, with Beta, I set out to write a completely different twist at the end. Not only was my new idea more original and more exciting, but it gave me the enthusiasm to finish the book that the initial plan didn’t. It’s easy to get attached to our first ideas, but it’s when we push past them and force ourselves to dig deeper that we find the ideas and stories that are worth telling.
Take the Feedback
Possibly the most universal advice in both how often it is given and how difficult it is to follow. Not only did my time with my college improv team offer hard lessons in immediate audience feedback, but careful scrutiny through our “Mentor/Mentee” system as well. Like with any art form, notes ranges from objective to subjective. Were you loud enough? Did you utilize CROW? Those are easy notes to take. What happens when someone tells you that your joke wasn’t funny? That they didn’t like the character you chose to play? You can argue that you were funny and that was a good character, but with subjective notes, the best thing you can do is thank them and move on, whether you agree or not. With writing, it’s the same. You have to sift through the objective and subjective to find the notes that will help you get better at your craft. That isn’t to say subjective notes aren’t helpful, but they need to be contextualized. It might be a matter of your reviewer not being a part of the audience you were trying to appeal to, but sometimes, it might simply be that the joke wasn’t funny. Carefully consider all feedback, positive and negative, to determine which is helpful but never disregard feedback right off the bat.
The End of Year Photo for the 2015-2016 GUTS troupe, courtesy of the GUTS Improv Facebook Page.