Kenn Adams’s story spine is a wonderfully simple and flexible backbone for creating or analysing stories.

I learned it from Dan Klein at Stanford as a fun improvising game: standing in a circle each person in turn takes on the next step of the story spine making up what happens. You’ll effortlessly produce some fascinating and amusing stories. We would extend the middle section as many times as felt natural to lead to the climax. An optional extension to the original spine was to add a final step of stating the moral of the story.

I have found the story spine very useful for coming up with on the spot bedtime stories. Also a fun game at the pub.

the second rule of improv: be spontaneous

Watch Dan Klein in action at TEDxReset 2014

The story spine

Fail cheerfully. Be obvious. It’s not about you. Dan Klein is my improv guru having had the fortune to learn from him a couple of times. Thanks Dan. And, as usual, improv tips tend to extend as good practice beyond improv.

The improv attitude

I was never one who liked making mistakes. So when I first did some improvisation my natural inclination was to stockpile good ideas and use them when it was my turn. I just had to be one step ahead of the game. But, fortunately, we did some exercises that went faster and faster until it wasn’t possible to stockpile and I had to, well, improvise. And right then I got it. The tremendous liberation, fear and confidence that comes with believing that you will do the right thing in the moment without knowing what it is beforehand. A confidence worth having.

Second rule of improv: Be spontaneous

The first rule of improvisation: Accept offers. The general principle of accepting offers is amazing for design, teamwork, getting on with other people and generally being a nice person. Children are amazing at this. Watch them playing with others and they can’t help but do it. Somewhere along the way we forget how to do it so easily.

Improvization sketches