Posts Tagged improv

How to Scream in Japanese

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Guest Bloggers, Supporting Yourself As A Writer on August 23, 2014

5Writers welcomes first-time guest blogger, Michele O. Medlin. Michele is a comedian and voice actor. She’s written and performed sketch comedy and continues to entertain audiences as an improviser. She graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City and works at SiriusXM. By Michele O. Medlin When I was 5 years […]

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Waiting for Inspiration

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Darlene, Staying Inspired on July 26, 2014

by Darlene Cah I’ve heard it said that writers can’t wait for inspiration. We have to start writing even without that grand idea, the magical spark that spurs us forward into that time-suspended state of mind where words spew onto our computer screens, seemingly on their own. While those brilliant moments happen (and what gifts […]

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Think Inside the Box

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Darlene, Working Within Constraints on September 23, 2013

by Darlene Cah I’ve posted, many times, about the connection between improvisational theater and writing. This month, our blog topic is “writing in constraints.” How could that possibly relate to improv theater? True, when you go to a live improv show or watch “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” (is that still on TV?), it appears […]

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Building Blocks of Storytelling

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Darlene, Structure on April 23, 2013

You are a baby sitting in a high chair. Your parents, aunts, uncles, their friends are telling each other stories around the dinner table. Afterwards, you watch cartoons while the grownups chat some more. Later, your mom reads you a book (My fave: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein). You are absorbing it all. Story […]

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A Conversation about Dialogue

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Darlene, Dialogue on November 12, 2012

I was in a two-session writing from prompts workshop recently and one participant mentioned that he was scared of writing dialogue. He didn’t like it and thought he wasn’t good at it. Turns out he wasn’t as awful as he thought and with some tips and encouragement, he began to feel more confident, even two […]

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What a Character!

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Character, Darlene on September 19, 2012

Hey, writer-person! Yoohoo! Yeah, that’s right. It’s me. Your character! Okay, I know I annoyed you at dinner last night and everyone was whining about how distracted you were. True, “She twirls her hair incessantly,” is not an appropriate response to “Pass the okra, please.” And that dream was meant to be informative. It’s not […]

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An Environment Ripe for Writing

Posted by wordimprovisor177 in Darlene, Where I write on May 16, 2012

I have a home office. Like the rest of my house, it’s decorated in contemporary clutter. Looking in from the door, you’d see a direct path to my chair lined on either side by stuff. My computer sits on a roll top desk among the ever-changing collection of coupons, bills, scraps of paper with scribbled […]

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