Writing on the Fly

Jen Wilding

Jazz players do it. Politicians do it. Comedians do it. But, as a writer, can you?

How good are you at improvising your craft for an audience?

Imagine: You’ve been given twenty minutes and a prompt. Pen in hand, you’re poised, ready to knock out the next flash fiction masterpiece. All you need is a good, simple story and you need it fast. You can do it. You’ve written countless other short stories that have garnered equal parts praise and enthusiasm. If anyone can tell a good story, it’s you. In fact, you can’t have a cocktail at a party these days without being interrupted with instructions to “Tell ‘em the one about blah, blah, blah”.  But, for some reason, at this moment in time, you are absolutely stumped. You have discovered a new fascination with the mechanics of your watch’s amazingly swift secondhand as your naked page becomes damp with perspiration from your pen-gripping palm. Your inner voice mechanically recites again and again the words of the prompt, its echo traveling the empty corridors of your grey-matter in high hopes that the inner chanting will give way to certain brilliance. After all, it’s your reputation at stake.

Of course, those of you who are practical thinkers may be asking yourself how often this situation actually presents itself in the life of a writer. Aside from college test essays, writing workshop exercises, and actual timed-writing competitions, why would the average writer need to be adept at extemporaneous writing? Well, impromptu writing skills can be used to develop any and all writing material, not to mention, come in especially handy when you’ve procrastinated on an important deadline. It can only be to your advantage to sharpen these skills. In fact, if you ever have the chance to take a class on improvisation, of any kind, I highly recommend it.

Before focusing on writing, I studied acting rather extensively and, as part of a college acting program, I took classes in improvisational performance. At first, I was incredibly out of my element, having been a stage actor and self-proclaimed perfectionist, improvisation of any kind left too much to chance. I’d seen improv comedy at its best and worst and I was only willing to participate if I knew I would leave the experience high on the wonders of unpremeditated genius, as opposed to walking away with a laundry list of should-of-saids. At first, I was terrified, but before long, after many performances and much training, I went from near piss-my-pants panic to having the time of my life onstage with fellow actors creating scene after scene of sometimes funny and sometimes horrendous material for an audience. And, as with anything, the more I practiced, the better I got. After college, I worked for an improv comedy company in Chicago, picking up more and more experience and improv exposure. It was during these experiences that I became privy to the secrets of improvisation in any art, not excluding writing. Here’s what I learned:

Secret #1.

'''The less you care about it being a masterpiece, the more likely it is to become one.'''

In improv performance training, the emphasis is on creating without editing. There is an infamous exercise known as “Yes, and…” that some business savvy corporations have adopted in training employees to brainstorm ideas more effectively. The exercise is usually performed with a group of people and it begins with someone voicing an idea and then the other group members must build on that idea, accepting it, and adding onto it, even if the idea doesn’t seem practical, or plausible, or has innate flaws. Each person must add onto the idea by using a sentence that begins with the words “Yes, and…”

The process of creating without editing or judging, though a challenge that works against our critical nature, takes you amazing places that you wouldn’t have allowed yourself to go had editing been a part of the process. In fact, in an improv comedy performance, this approach is a crucial technique used to build an effective scene because editing, known as blocking in improv training, hinders the development of a scene. Sound familiar? Perhaps you can feel your inner editor writhing at the very idea that editing has no place in creating. This is not to say that editing isn’t very important after a scene, story, or idea is developed, but when creating under time constraints, one cannot afford to resist riding the wave of the creative brainstorm. This approach is as effective for creating manuscript drafts as it is for flash fiction. So, throw caution to the wind and save the editing for another day, you may be surprised at how good you are when you’re not focused on perfection.

Secret #2.

'''Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.'''

Okay, I totally ripped that one off from the lyrics of a Sound of Music song, but it works perfectly to prove my point. The illusion of improvisation is that characters, conflict, dialogue, and plot are created out of thin air in a creation scenario similar to God creating the known universe out of nothing in the book of Genesis. Actually, improvisers would love for you to believe they rank right up there with God when it comes to being creative. But, this is an illusion. The reality is that when good improvisers do their thing, be it on stage with other comedians, with an instrument, or on a page, they are simply regurgitating existing ideas that are already spinning around in the stratosphere of their creative mind. Usually, the idea components are from very fresh, recent real-life experiences, conversations, or sometimes even recent rehearsals or practice-writings.

A few months ago, after being crowned the writer champion of an impromptu monologue writing competition, I had countless people approach me to both compliment my work and ask how I could possibly come up with such humorous material on the fly. I tried to explain to them that I was able to write such material because I brought a lot of it with me to the event. Some reacted with shock, as if I had just confessed to cheating at the competition. (I didn’t pre-write anything, as my assigned actor partner could attest.) I had to clarify that when I say I bring the material with me, what I really mean is that I use ideas from events and conversations that have taken place in my life recently. Stuff that, at the time it occurs, I mentally flag as good writing material. Some of these ideas even make it into an idea notebook that I carry around with me to notate ideas that strike me as interesting for a character, scene, or dialogue to reference when I’m looking for fresh ideas. You see, I’m not just a writer when I’m writing, I am a writer always. Chances are that you are too, and the same applies to improv comedians. Improvisation is essentially the linking together of existing good ideas, relevant to the moment, and using them to create and enhance a story. 

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