Writing Gyms
In 2019 I started running the Angel Comedy Writing Gym, a free community space where a rotating cast of comedy writers and performers leads participants in a series of exercises. When the pandemic started we moved to Zoom, running 4 workshops a week and reaching every corner of the globe. The writing gyms were a lifeline during the lockdowns and home to a wonderful creative community.
Planning writing gyms is always great fun. These are some of my favourite exercises I've brought to gyms. Many of them are warm-ups, some inspired by improv, or a few sourced from more talented people (credited). All of them can be done solo, from the comfort of wherever you want to do them that is comfortable or otherwise.
Please feel free to contact me if you use them! It would fill my heart with joy.
And if you use them and would like to buy me a coffee, I won't complain either.
Improvised stand up
Here’s a slideshow with 50 different topics. Grab something microphone-shaped (ideally a microphone) and riff on a random subject.
Self-portrait
The poet Edourad Leve wrote a book called Autoportrait consisting entirely of facts about himself in a style I find thrilling. Read the paragraph below and time yourself as you write your own self-portrait in that style for 12 minutes.
When I was young, I thought Life: A User’s Manual would teach me how to live and Suicide: A User’s Manual how to die. I don’t really listen to what people tell me. I forget things I don’t like. I look down dead-end streets. The end of a trip leaves me with a sad aftertaste the same as the end of a novel. I am not afraid of what comes at the end of life. I am slow to realize when someone mistreats me, it is always so surprising: evil is somehow unreal. When I sit with bare legs on vinyl, my skin doesn’t slide, it squeaks. I archive. I joke about death. I do not love myself. I do not hate myself. My rap sheet is clean. To take pictures at random goes against my nature, but since I like doing things that go against my nature, I have had to make up alibis to take pictures at random, for example, to spend three months in the United States traveling only to cities that share a name with a city in another country: Berlin, Florence, Oxford, Canton, Jericho, Stockholm, Rio, Delhi, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Mexico, Syracuse, Lima, Versailles, Calcutta, Bagdad.
Note: Of course you can do longer and shorter, 12 minutes is just when I have usually had enough.
7 deadly sins
Write a headline for a story from your life for every deadly sin: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.
Bonus round: add a headline for each of the seven heavenly virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity
Keep it short
Write a story in 250 words. Then write the same story in 100. Then write the same story in 50 words. Then write the same story in 10 words. Then write the same story in a tweet: 250 characters. The exercise works in any number of word-constraint and the purpose is to take the fat off our stories.
I first read about this exercise on The 3am Epiphany by Brian Kiteley and I personally find it very useful. I don’t have the book with me anymore so sadly can’t go back to the source, but that is my take on it.
ABC of yourself
This requires a bit of set up so here's a template on Google Sheets.
Make 4 columns. On column on the left write every letter of the alphabet.
Part 1: On the first column, write down something about your life (a fact, the gist of an anecdote, a belief) where one of the key words begins with that letter. It can all be very loose, don't worry too much. You don't need to fill every letter in their order, if you remember something for T when you're at G that's fine, you can go back. You also don't need to fill every letter.
If you're stuck: try the beginnings "I love [blank]", "I worry about [blank]", "[blank] makes me happy", "I miss [blank]".
They don't have to be new ideas! If there's stuff you're working on, by all means use that.
Part 2: Add a third column answering the question "how does that fact make you feel?"
Part 3: Add a fourth column answering the question "How do you think it would make audience feel?"
Liar, liar
A themed freewrite. Make a list of lies you tell/have told about yourself.
Fundamental truths about the universe
A freewrite list of fundamental truths about the universe: it can be facts (the sky is blue) or beliefs (most people don't follow their own advice). But it has to be things you really know to be true. Make a list. No self-censorship. You'll get lots of uninteresting things but a few that will be very valuable.
Part 2: Measure these beliefs against your writing, how can your beliefs shine through your material? What opportunities are there to make your material more personal and unique to you?
Part 3: Pick one or two of your fundamental truths, those that are beliefs you have about the world. What are some stories from your life that confirm that belief?
What are things you know to be true? Here’s three things I personally know to be true:
The sky is blue
Most people don’t follow their own advice
I should pay more attention to the “reuse” part of “reduce, reuse, recycle”
Who are you wearing?
Our clothes tell stories of who we are. Write a short paragraph on every item of clothing you are wearing and what those items say about you and your worldview.
Story Spine
Old but useful improv game, also called the Pixar storyline.
Complete the following sentences to create your own story:
Once upon a time there was…
And every day…
Until one day…
And because of that…
And because of that…
And because of that…
Until finally…
And ever since that day…
Apocalypse Now
Again, very much not my exercise, but a translation of one given by the author Joca Reiners Terron in the wonderful Mundial de Escritura:
The world is on fire and everything will explode in the next minute. List the 10 memories that flash before your eyes. They can be images, objects, people, places.
List them as a countdown, from 10 to 1.
Top tip: can be a crier of an exercise, make sure you’re in the mood.
How to make this useful to comedy: the exercise calls for urgency by asking you to see it from the lens of apocalypse, but if you’re working on a specific theme/emotion, you can use that as a lens. What is a countdown of 10 memories, images, objects, people, places that go through your mind through the lens of eg. heartbreak/cycling/adventure/learning French/etc?
National Anthem
Quickly google what song was #1 on the charts the week you were born.
You have 5 minutes to argue why this should be the new national anthem.
Variation: you can do this with the last song you listened to on your streaming service of choice.
Phone book
A few exercises from the same sourdough: do a few scrolls of your contact list on your phone and pick out 10 random names. Try and make it as varied as possible. People you love, you haven't spoken for a long time, tradespeople, airbnb hosts, allsorts.
Exercise 1: Have a list of themes/topics/stories ready. In your notebook or out loud, write/tell the stories or prompts as if you were telling them specifically to those people, or an audience comprised of the bunch you picked out.
Exercise 2: For each person, try and find an analogy/description that makes them universal and describes them to everyone, the most information in the least amount of words "he drives a pastel blue minicooper" "the kind of person who tips 20%"
Exercise 3: Write a best man’s speech to celebrate the wedding of one of the random people you picked out
Family ties
For this exercise, consider words and phrases your family or friends use within your group that mean something unique to you. Make a list of them and write the dictionary definition. You can write the story of those phrases if you want to.
It’s not so much a creative writing exercise as just a little time capsule for nostalgics like me.
This is called a familiolect, by the way. I’ve always been fascinated by familiolects.