I recently read an article exploring how learning to perform improv changed one author’s approach to writing. There were some interesting observations.

“At first, I thought improv and writing couldn’t be more opposite—one is performed in front of an audience, the other alone in a quiet space. But now, after hundreds of shows, I’ve come to see how wrong I was. Here are [some] things I learned from improv that dramatically impacted my writing.

• How to think specifically: Improv has no props, costumes, sets, or special effects. When working in a medium of the invisible, it’s important to ground scenes in the familiar. Details set a scene, create an agreed-upon reality, and provide something for audiences to see. In writing, creating a world for readers to perceive presents similar challenges. Just like onstage, offering some authentic details can heighten the level of realism in writing. It’s through specifics that we enter a shared world, whether through words on a page or actors on stage.

• How to think boldly: One of the tenets of improv is to never negate another player’s ideas; instead, we respond with a version of, “Yes, and….” It’s not a hard concept, but I found it a difficult rule to follow. What if I make a fool of myself? What if no one laughs? Yet, over the years, I’ve found halfheartedly playing an uncomfortable moment only shares the awkwardness with the audience, whereas giving in to discomfort lets us find a shared humanity. And that’s what makes any art relatable.”

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This provided plenty of food for thought for me. It’s not precisely improv, but I also recently took up a public performance hobby — barbershop music, in chorus and quartet. The quartet work, in particular, forced me to think beyond just producing the notes anonymously — I have to interact in public with my fellow vocalists, and (most importantly) we have to tell a story that entertains an audience.

It’s surprisingly (to me) difficult to tell a story based on lyrics, body movement, facial expressions, and character & audience interaction without feeling (and looking) like a complete dork — and that’s if the notes are at least in tune and the lyrics correct, so you don’t have to worry about suppressing a wince. (That last bit is like saying “grammatically well edited”.)

But it’s the story-telling part of barbershop that has got me thinking about how it translates to fiction. It’s more ensemble work than a hero story — even the lead singer doesn’t do isolated solos — but there are bit players (baritone), supporters (bass), and comic relief (sparkling tenor high notes – my role) that surround the lead singer (the equivalent of 2nd tenor range) with humor, sympathy, commentary, sarcasm, intimacy (duets), etc.

Now, for writers, teams of characters come in all sorts of formats. And in my case, while the barbershop quartet ideal aspires to superficial similarity of appearance, mine couldn’t be more diverse (genders, ages, heights). It’s a lot like an improv troupe.

Timing and boldness are interesting metaphors, too. While improv or barbershop require instantaneous reactions from the performers which writing does not (how much time did you take to reconstruct that sentence over and over again?), the reader has instantaneous reactions to what he reads, and that’s the timing that matters to the feel of the tale. You need to present the story as a real-time event, like improv, no matter how long it actually took to produce.

Like any field of study on any topic, getting into any creative field in depth sheds unanticipated light onto other creative fields. It’s all grist for the mill.

What activities adjacent to your writing translate into the wordsmith field? How do you use those insights?