Improv for Writers on Orkney - island imagination!

On May 26, the Saturday after the workshop in Dublin, I had the chance to run it again at the very lively Orkney Library & Archive. If you want to know what I mean by lively, check out their Twitter feed. Again, the group was ready to muck in. And I fell in love with the island!

The first rule of improv is to listen. I love it when a group has an odd number of participants, so I get to join in with the exercise rather than just observe the group. Here I'm listening to a story being made up out of elements I am throwing at Anna, in an exercise called Spitfire.

It isn't always easy to improvise, and it takes practice, but even learning just a few exercises leads to some wonderful surprises.

Everyone gets some time to see if learning to tell stories on the spot translates into being more able to write stories on the spot.

Improv for Writers in Dublin - no ducking allowed!

What fun we had improvising to aid our writing on Sunday afternoon, May 20th, at the International Comedy Club in Dublin. Everyone who attended was ready to play and to learn. The main lesson of the day, according to one participant who ducked an imaginary scorpion thrown at her in a story she was telling, was that you must allow yourself to be hit by the scorpion - let yourself, and your audience/reader, experience the adventure.

Although to goal of improvising isn't to be funny, but to freely create, it always leads to lots of laughter.

The participants took a little time to write, to see if they felt freer in their brains. I hated telling them to stop.

It was a joy to work with this grand group.