Improv–improvisational comedy–has become epidemic. Classes and performances pop up all over the place. Improv is taught to corporate teams as team-building.

It’s fun. It builds intimacy. It works.

Like I wrote in an earlier post, we had several young people in our Passover Seder on Monday night, and we wanted them to get involved in the Seder. These are people who are happy to be Jewish, but have little or nothing to do with synagogues or Jewish life in general.

Now, the central part of the Passover meal is the retelling of the coming out from Egypt. “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt…and the Lord brought us out, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” The preservation of Jewish culture and spirituality hinges on the telling and retelling of this and other stories.

But it’s also important to know that it was Moses, not Charlton Heston, who led us out of Egypt. And reading through the traditional story, we felt, would not make much of an impact.

So my wise wife, Dalia, suggested we improvise. “Everyone can take a role, and tell the story from their point of view.” We did that.

At one point, one of the participants suggested we use the improv technique of telling the story sequentially, where each person says a sentence. That’s when it started to get really funny. (I think it helped that we served Pisco Sours as the “first cup”….)

A good time was definitely had by the diverse group. And it occurred to me that my book writing–and yours–could benefit from improv techniques:

  • Make statements, not questions; questions put too big a burden on the other party, unless they are simple, yes/no affairs.
  • Accept all offers. Take the context created by the person working with you and work with it. If you are writing alone, as most of us are, take your “offer” from the news, from blogs, from random people you engage with, from Twitter. Go from there.
  • Go with the flow. “Yes, and…” is an improv term; embellish what is given to you, rather than fight it.
  • Be generous in your own offers. Inspire your readers with big thoughts, lots of possibilities.

Improv is still kind of new to me. Can you think of other ways it can be applied to book writing? Comment below.

Filed under: book love • book writing • inspiration

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