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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing another off the cuff conversation this time about improv, surprise, and knowing what’s for you.

Over the last year, we’ve done a wide range of topics — from writing about disabilities to writing with empathy —that took a lot of energy and preparation. We’ve also been doing this podcast for almost 5 years and as we near our 250th episode we felt it would be good to do a series of episodes getting back to our roots of how this first began — through unplanned conversations about life, books, and the writing craft. So, for the next few episodes we’re continuing to see where our conversations take us, without planning in advance what we’ll talk about.

In this conversation, we talk about improv and let the conversation flow and unfold based on the things that come to mind. Things like:

• Learning by actively paying attention to someone else reading a book to an audience and seeing how they react, or take an opportunity to read your own work aloud to someone or perform in a live reading to see what lands with an audience in real time.

• Using the rules of a good heist in stories outside that genre. The rules: make sure the audience knows the plan if the heist will fail and only give out small details of the heist if it will succeed. We note how Leigh Bardugo in Six of Crows does both to create the most tension possible.

• Setting-up effective twists and surprises with planting , teasing information, and hinting. Not grabbing solutions out of left field (which could make it feel manipulative) and noticing when and why a surprise leaves us cold (and we call bull shit).

• Studying what feels effective and ineffective around how early and how much to reveal character motivation especially when thoughts are in conflict with actions — prioritizing communicating the goal and at least some of the why.

• Re-evaluating if you should reveal small things up front and/or plant more throughout, especially if knowing a piece of information increases the overall tension over a character’s choices (Matthias in Six of Crows) or buys much needed character sympathy (ex. Marlin in Finding Nemo).

• Listening to ourselves and even the sense of dread we have when we try to do something to decide what is ours for now (what is challenging, but within our capacity) and what is maybe ours for another time (what we’re not yet ready or leveled up for)

We hope you enjoy this episode and the more improvisational format of this series! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Books and Films Mentioned:

• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

• The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan

Music from:https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)