The Catholic Writers Guild

Ugh, right? The dreaded “writing exercise”: the bane of the high school English student, the busywork tool of the overworked high school English teacher who needs just five stinking minutes to get something done without having to deal with actual students. Most writing books are full of them, but why? Who needs writing exercises anyway? Aren’t we adults here? Can’t we think for ourselves? Besides, don’t those things limit my creativity? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Let me see if I can convince you otherwise.

First, let’s not call it an exercise. Let’s call it improvisation—improv for short. Think of the show Whose Line Is It Anyway? BBC or ABC, didn’t matter: funny stuff. Scenes from a Hat. Press Conference. Hoedown. Everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter. Take that idea—the idea of a prompt setting off a chain reaction of creativity—and run with it. No, write with it! Why?

1. Because practice makes mastery. In The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, John Gardner does not promise to show the “young” writer (which I read as “budding” writer—young not necessarily in age but in experience with fiction-crafting) a path to instant blockbuster success. No, Gardner suggests a writer is made through mastery. Mastery is only gained through regular interaction with whatever it is you want to master. I gained mastery of my dog by meeting his needs (food, walks, scooping up the you-know-what) and by getting him to respond to my commands. So it is with writing. Writing fiction improv gives you practice in small bites so that goal of mastery doesn’t seem so far away.

2. Because short is sweet. If raising children with a neurological disability has taught me anything, it’s taught me that the only thing that builds confidence is actual success. But how do we achieve success in a field that is practically defined by the word “rejection”? In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott suggests we use “short assignments” to help find that success. Nobody can take away from you the feeling that you started and completed something creative. Use fiction improv to help you gain both mastery and confidence.

3. Because limits focus creativity. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron talks about using children’s books as research material so that our creativity isn’t spread too thin with too many rabbits to chase. The limit provided in a writing prompt may be just what you need to help you pick just one rabbit.

4. Because you need to take yourself less seriously. When you’re writing improv, it’s like the host always says at the beginning of Whose Line. Everything is made up. The points don’t matter. It’s so easy, when we have a novel into which we have (or soon must) pour hours and hours of labor, to think that it’s more important that it really is.

5. Because assignments force discipline. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to start writing after a long hiatus? When nobody is expecting us to write, it’s so easy to let the discipline slide. Once the discipline slides, so does the writing. If no one expects you to start writing again, it’s really easy to give it up. The longer you give it up, the more you want to go back to it, the harder it is to go back to writing, the easier it is to give it up … and so on. Do the words “vicious cycle” mean anything to you? When participating in a writing improv, you have somebody expecting you to write. That really warms up the engine block. Hebrews 12:11-12 tells us, “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Starting with a small bit of discipline toughens us for the long run, and an improv assignment is a great place to start.

I used to belong to a writers group that started each meeting with a writing exercise—with improv. I can write these reasons to try improv because I know it works. That’s a big reason why I hosted the “Twelve Days of Fiction Improv” over at my blog. That’s a big reason why I’m hosting a new monthly improv, “Wildcard Wednesday.” If you’d like to try fiction improv, come on over and visit.

Have you ever participated in fiction improv? What was your experience? Do you know of another forum for improv? Share it here!

Erin McCole Cupp is a wife, mother, and lay Dominican. Her books, including the TOB suspense-thriller Don’t You Forget About Me (CWG Seal of Approval 2013), are available on Amazon.

Stephen Weisenbach

Stephen Weisenbach is a freelance copy editor and proofreader, and guest-posts editor for the Catholic Writers Guild blog. He has worked with a number of Catholic media organizations, including Scepter Publishers, Circle Media, Catholic News Agency, Tiber River, and FultonSheen.com, as well as ad agencies serving national accounts. You can reach Steve at sweisenbach @ ymail.com.