List of Moves
This page contains a list of different "moves" you can make when improvising, organized beneath some overarching concepts that link them. As Dylan builds up the Narrative Experiment website, this page will contain many hyperlinks to other articles about these moves and ideas.
Filling the Scene
Build a specific character, with style, perspective, and progression. Endow relationship, backstory, values, traits, and setting with other improvisers.
Use suggestions as inspiration.
Relate > Reflect > Want > Change
Start with diverging thoughts to give the scene some freedom.
Start with yourself (and use your life) to make the most believable character.
State beliefs and opinions to avoid feeling [hollow].
Describe your emotions to seed [conflict and progress].
Describe your relationships to put everyone in the same story.
Play against negativity to avoid drowning in it.
Name the characters to start making them real.
Repeat names more than you think to avoid forgetting them.
Get specific to make everything more real.
Describe your beliefs, values, and desires to make your character feel deep.
Describe your history to make relationships feel deep.
Start by labeling when descriptions feel awkward.
Use physical descriptions to give the audience something to picture.
Describe yourself physically to give yourself personality and to give the audience something to picture.
Describe the scene physically to put you and your partners in a real space.
Describe things, people, and places that aren't here to make your scene feel like part of a real world.
Notice something unusual when you don't have enough to move forward.
Play against physical or situational plot to make the story feel deep.
Develop an objective to avoid stalling the story.
And then give it up to avoid stalling the story.
Giving and Taking
Landing sentences, taking space, giving space, supporting offers, entrances, exits, sensing beats, and cutting scenes.
Give more than you take to be a great teammate.
Land sentences to make your lines clear.
Land a silence to underscore the moment.
Perform an endowment to make your partners' [lines] believable.
Land an entrance to start a new beat.
Land an exit to shift the energy on stage.
Trade offers to avoid stealing the scene.
Balance the people on stage to avoid complication and confusion.
Change the pace to keep the audience interested.
Observe the impact of your offers to avoid strong-arming too much.
Indicate your intent to land a potentially unclear or abnormal offer.
Indicate your discomfort when a cast member might be about to do something you aren't [comfortable] with.
Embrace the spotlight when you're set up as the protagonist.
Offer strong support when you think you aren't the protagonist.
Observe trends over time to make your ensemble strong.
Trust the story of the moment to reduce anxiety and be the best you can be.
Looking Backward
Sensing what new offers and story beats will build most fluidly off of what has come before.
Identify Offers
Make Mountains from Molehills
Graduate Beats
Build & Escalate
Imply Theme
Progress the Meaning
Make It Efficient
Narrow the Path
Play on Audience Expectations
Intensifying Performance
Physicality, vocal quality, emotional sensitivity, and space work.
Change one trait (emotion, physicality, voice) to start making a different character.
Generate & Hold Emotion
Make Physical Choices
Make Vocal Choices
Get specific on space work to make the audience believe it.
Live in the Dream
Categories for Future Exploration
Flowing through Interest
Shedding the weight: letting the scaffolding go on autopilot and digging into what’s interesting (life, theme, imagery, questions, meaning).