Today, I want to share an exercise with you that we did with our improv group on Monday.

(Btw, have I mentioned I do improv? Well, now, I have.)

The exercise is simple yet really powerful, not just to help you hone the craft of story structure, but also to practice your focus and priorities during the writing process.

This is going to be amazing for anyone who:

• sometimes struggles with story structure,
• gets overwhelmed by all the things you need to think about when writing,
• needs to practice their scene structure,
• wants to do a fun writing warm-up before their writing session,
• or just likes having some brainstorming fun.

Sounds intriguing? Let’s check it out.

The basic elements of a story

The reason this exercise works so well is that it helps you focus on the basic elements of the story. Let’s define what those are for the purposes of this exercise.

Five basic elements of a story:

1. the setting
2. the characters
3. hook/main action/why are we watching this now?
4. raising the stakes
5. resolution

The exercise itself is very simple. You basically just fill these out.

Examples

Here is an example from our Monday session:

1. setting: a sailing ship, full moon
2. characters: a captain and a sailor
3. why are we watching this: they notice an approaching pirate ship that is about to attack them
4. raising the stakes: they realise that the princess of their land has secretly been on board the whole time (so now her life is also in danger)
5. resolution: the full moon actually messes with the pirates’ navigation and weakens their attack, plus it turns out the princess has also been secretly training martial arts and she kicks their asses

Or another one:

1. setting: futuristic office space, year 3000
2. characters: two office workers
3. why are we watching this: one of these workes has eaten the “food pills” of the other one (that he was storing at his desk)
4. raising the stakes: turns out, those were actually the last “food pills” this sector even had
5. resolution: the two workers decide to leave their sector and find the promiseland where, according to a legend, people have learned to grow their own food

It’s not about finding the perfect thing for each of these elements, it’s not about creating the perfect story.

It’s about training your brain to focus on the aspect of the story you are currently working on.

How to do it in a group

If you are working in a group (like we did at our improv practice), then you go around in circle and one person decides what the setting is, the next person tells us who the characters are, the next person tells us “why we are watching this now”, the next person raises the stakes, and the last person explains how it all resolves.

The fun thing about doing this with other people is that each person brings something fresh to the story.

Sure, some ideas might be what you’d think of too, but usually, they aren’t. That’s one of the beautiful things about doing improv.

But you can totally do this exercise by yourself as well. Go through the elements and jot down the answers to them.

How to do it solo

Now.

An important note on doing this exercise by yourself:

It might be very tempting to just imagine the whole story straight away. But that’s not the point here.

Instead, I invite you to separate these elements and do the exercise as though the other elements will be decided by someone else.

Sounds a bit schizophrenic, I know. But this is great for practising stepping out of your predictable tracks as a writer and an artist.

What I mean by this is I have found it very helpful (and honestly quite fun!) to basically pretend I am in a group of five people (these can be five Katjas or five imaginary friends of mine) and each of us will focus on just one of these points. So when it’s “my turn” to raise the stakes, I imagine I’d received all the previous information (the setting, the characters, the hook) from someone else, and now, I have to raise the stakes with full awareness that the resolution will be decided by someone else.

You might say, “What’s the difference? At the end of the day, it’s you who decides everything anyway.”

And I get it.

But there is a difference. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

It’s the difference between “it is now on me to figure out the entire story by myself” and “let’s take this one step at a time and focus on what is my priority in this moment in the process”.

It’s also the difference between “oh I have this one idea for a story and I already know all the elements for it” and “I have this one idea but let me play around with a few of its attributes”.

It’s these subtle nuances that you can practice with this exercise, besides the actual craft of creating a story, of course.

Naturally, it is always completely up to you to use the exercise as you wish. I have just shared a way that has worked for me very well and I know some of you might enjoy it.

Hopefully, you use it sometime this week, and then let me know how it went!

Wishing you a wonderful week ꩜

And I’ll see you in the next post

Katja