Time to Write

An improv principle that can improve your year

The number one thing I learned when I studied with improv group The Groundlings and also with Keith Johnstone when he visited the UK is:

"YES, and..."

It has applications far beyond the improv stage, so let me give you a quick explanation of what it means, starting with an example:

Let's say you're on stage and another actor (one new to improv) comes in. You decide he's your dad, so you say, "Hi, Dad!"

The other actor says, "I'm not your dad!" thinking that's funny and it'll lead to conflict--after all, comedy and drama are based on conflict, right? Well, the right kind of conflict.

But in this case, now you have to come up with a reason why you thought this person is your when he actually isn't...or you have to say something like, "Dad, your dementia is getting worse!" In which case, I'm pretty sure the other actor would say, "I don't have dementia!"  

As you can probably imagine, this scene isn't going anywhere interesting.

Starting a scene by denying (saying no) to what you are offered is a dead end.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ACTOR SAYS "YES, AND..."

Now imagine that the other actor accepts that you're his son or daughter. He says, "Hi, Brad/Janet, I just wanted to find out whether you've decided yet."

Now you accept (say yes to) the idea that you were about to make a decision and make one up, like "I have! I'm not going ahead with the wedding." 

If you're working with a group, that could be the cue for the bride or groom to come into the scene and say, "This is the happiest day of my life! I never thought I'd actually get married!"

Now you have some conflict that has potential to become a funny (or tragic) scene and the conflict is rooted in something real.

The "and" is the secret sauce.

If you just said, "I'm not marrying you!" and she said, "Yes, you are!" and you said, "No, I'm not!" etc. that doesn't go anywhere.

But if you say, "Darling, I'm not marrying you after all, but (this is the "and" additional material) I know someone who would be perfect for you!"

Rather than her screaming "No!" her more interesting response might be, "Oh...who?" (which is another form of "yes, and...").

OUR 'NO' MINDSET

For some reason, probably to do with evolution in some way, most of us seem to be primed to say 'no.' Of course we have to be able to do that, but often that leads to a dead end, whereas saying 'yes' and adding something often leads somewhere interesting.

ONE TIME 'YES, AND' PAID OFF IN LIFE

Some years ago I was in a class and chatted with a young woman who asked what I did. I told her I was a writer. She asked whether she could read something I'd written. 

Some people are very worried that if they show their scripts, the ideas or the scripts themselves might steal the material. You can say 'no,' and thereby guarantee your material will not be stolen, but you'll also guarantee that nothing good will come of showing the script, either.

In this case, I said, "Yes...and I'll bring in a copy next week." (These days I'd just email it to her, but this was in the dark ages.)

I gave her a copy of a spec comedy script I'd written. The next week she said she loved it and that her boss wanted to meet me.

I had no idea what kind of job she had, but it turned out that she worked for a producer. She read my script at her desk on her lunch hour and he heard her laughing. He asked her what was so funny. She told him it was a script by a fellow student and he asked to read it. He liked it, too, and wanted to meet me in case any comedy assignments came up at his company.

I wish I could say it led to a million-dollar assignment; it didn't but it was still useful to talk to him and find out about his company--this was in the days before I had an agent or any other way to get to people like him.

I like that story because it proves that you never know what seemingly random event might lead to something useful. 

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING 'NO' TO?

Naturally we have to prioritize because we can't do everything. But often saying yes and adding something doesn't take a lot of time.

It might be worth thinking about whether this year you'd like to try saying 'yes, and...' to more things and seeing what happens.

That could be in your career or your personal life.

DO YOU SAY 'YES, AND' OFTEN ENOUGH...TO YOURSELF?

It may be that the person you say no to most often is....yourself.

For instance, maybe you think, "Hmm, I wonder whether I could learn a new language this year." 

It's easy to say, no, I'm too old, or I don't have time, or I probably don't have a knack for languages, or, or, or... dead end!

What if you said, "Yes, and I'm going to try it out by..." using an app like Duolingo, or taking a sample evening class, or finding lessons online, etc.

If you don't like it, you can still say no, but at least you'll have given yourself a chance.

Can you think of something that it could be useful or fun to say 'yes, and' to? Feel free to share (or to keep it a secret).

 

 

Three Tips for Keeping Your Mind Sharp

Three tips via Medical News Today for staying sharp, remembering stuff, and avoiding stress and depression:

TAKE A WALK!

Recent research led by the University of California, Los Angeles shows that taking a short walk each day can help to keep the brain healthy, supporting the overall resilience of cognitive functioning. They recommend at least 4000 steps per day.

SPEAK UP

According to a new study published in the journal Memory, we are more likely to remember something if we read it out loud.

Repeat after me: "I did turn off the gas!"..."Next week is our anniversary!"..."This, too, shall pass!"

CUT THE SUGAR, GUYS

Researchers found that men who consumed more than 67 grams of sugar daily from sweetened foods and beverages were much more likely to develop anxiety, depression and other common mental disorders after 5 years, compared with men with a lower daily sugar intake.

Here’s how much sugar is in a few common foods and drinks:

Naked Pomegranate Blueberry Juice: 32 grams

Coca Cola Original (330ml): 35 grams

Frosties cereal (30 grams with semi-skimmed milk): 17 grams

Mars Chocolate bar (51 grams): 30.4 grams

As you can see, it doesn’t take much to reach that 67 grams.

If things get too complicated at Thanksgiving...

If your family reunion at Thanksgiving gets too challenging, take a time out...

File under useless but interesting information

I'm not sure we'll ever have a practical use for knowing this, although it's possible item 10 might come in handy for a short story, novel or screenplay...

The full list of London City Airport's most-confiscated items is as follows:

1. Snow globes
2. Jams and spreads
3. Toiletries
4. Jarred chutneys and pickles
5. Olive oils
6. Wine
7. Spirits
8. Marmite
9. Nutella chocolate spread
10. Furry handcuffs

A talk on following your passion (it ain't all sunshine and roses, but what's better?)

Sometimes it's tough to do what this guy (Marcus Johnson) suggests, but it's worth a try. And, refreshingly, he doesn't pretend it's always an easy journey.

 

Why to be exceptional and an uncomfortable story about Gandhi

These days it's very easy to get discouraged when we see what's happening in the world. I like what an internet marketing guy named Derek Halpern wrote about this:

We must strive to Be The Exception.

“17 out of 18 women make less than $100,000 per year? We need to change this. But I will be the 1 out of 18 who makes more. #BeTheException”

“Two-thirds of people are obese? We need to fight against bad food. But I will be the 1 out of 3 people who lives at a healthy weight. #BeTheException”

“Born poor? Stay poor? We need to fix our education system. We need to make things fair for everyone. But I will get rich. #BeTheException.”

“People are lonely? We need to figure out what’s happening. But I will pursue healthy relationships that make me feel fulfilled. #BeTheException.”

It's tempting to say that we must either throw ourselves totally into the fight for social justice or to withdraw from the fray, but this seems to be a better approach. I guess it's a variation of "be the change you want to see" but it goes a bit beyond that.

A POWERFUL UNCOMFORTABLE STORY

A story that really touched me recently (in a not entirely comfortable way) was the one about the mother who went to see Gandhi and asked him to tell her son not to eat sugar.

Gandhi asked her to come back in two weeks. When she returned, Gandhi told the boy to stop eating so much sugar. 

The women asked Gandhi why he'd requested the two-week delay. He said, "Because first I had to stop eating sugar."

I haven't been eating too much sugar...wait, maybe I have--do energy drinks count? Oh oh!

Anyway, the reason it wasn't entirely comfortable is that any of us who teach anything really need to be doing what we teach, and sometimes I find myself slipping up, not being the exception. That's when stories can be a powerful reminder to get back on track.

The inspiring language of Joyce...in small doses

Although I admire his use of language, I've never made it all the way through James Joyce's Ulysses. How about you?

If you also found it too rich in larger doses, you might enjoy getting it in Tweet-size bits that allow you to savor his words.

The Twitter feed @UlyssesReader offers you the entire book, one short selection at a time. For instance:

"his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety."

If you like warming up before you start a writing session, these Tweets might provide a good prompt. For instance, if the day's tweet was the one above, how would you describe the eyes of your protagonist? 

***

For writing advice from the great writers of the past and present, get a copy of my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

The problem with easy solutions (in this case, for depression)

The Daily Mail and other publications have reported on a study of depression and saying 'thank you'. The Mail article starts:

"It is only two small words. But saying 'thank you' to others could be the key to beating depression."

Well...let's take a closer look.

THE STUDY 

The US study asked 352 people about their personalities in order to find out the degree to which they feel depressed or grateful, and how they deal with stress and other people.

They found that people who express gratitude are better at reframing negative situations and get depressed less often, and people who are frequently depressed find it more difficult to open up to others and express gratitude less frequently. 

Not that earth-shaking, is it?

If you have a positive outlook on life, you find more things to be grateful for and sometimes you express thanks when others do something nice. 

When you're depressed, the things you see as negative loom larger, there seem to be fewer things to be grateful for, and often you feel less like interacting with people.

THE CONCLUSION

And from this, the study concludes that "Expressing gratitude for small acts of kindness could be impactful to [the depressed person's] physical and mental health."

The problem is that the study didn't then get the depressed group to express gratitude more often and measure whether that made a difference to the extent or frequency of their depression.

CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSE AND EFFECT

The study established correlation, not cause and effect. That is, expressing gratitude and levels of depression are connected, but the study didn't show that changing the former will affect the latter.

This kind of unproven conclusion is very common, and publications, blogs, and websites love anything that smacks of an instant answer. The "Three tips for changing your life in the next five minutes without any effort on your part" kinds of posts get a lot of clicks.

GRATITUDE

Regardless of the weakness of the study, finding things to be grateful for and expressing that gratitude to other people or in a journal does seem like a good idea...just not a panacea. 

Thank you for reading this post. :)

 

The diet that fights depression

The first large study of the role of diet in depression shows that what you eat can improve or hinder your chances of going into remission.

The study consisted of one group that was given help from a clinical dietician and one given help with social support.

At the end of three months, one-third of the dietary group were in remission from depression, compared to 8% of the other group.

Members of the dietary group were encouraged to eat vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, fish, lean red meat, olive oil, and nuts.

They were encouraged to avoid refined cereals, candies, fried food, fast food, processed meat, and sugary drinks.

The ones who stuck closest to these recommendations benefitted the most.

 

The study appears in the journal BMC Medicine (http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-017-0791-y)

If you want your 2017 to be different...

A gift for anytime of the year

The danger of focusing on "what if's"

As writers, it's natural for us to focus on "what if's":

• what if nobody wants to buy what we write?
• what if it's not good enough?
• what if I should have been writing that other thing instead?
• what if I don't figure out the ending? 

I'm sure you can think of some more!

Of course sometimes we come up with "what if's" that are more fun: "What if it's a best-seller? What if it makes me a LOT of money? What if it turns out as well as I hope it will?"

If we spend too much time on either (or both) what if's, it can hold us back, according to professors and co-authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in this video.

 

How the Trump Drama Will End

IF DONALD TRUMP WERE A TRAGIC PROTAGONIST...

If you were writing a drama in which you’d invented the character “Donald Trump” and all the events that are happening, how would you end his story?

I can imagine two types of ending.

One is YOU DON’T DESERVE ME, I QUIT.

The protagonist, feeling betrayed, quits but remains defiant. Secretly he hopes people will come crawling back, begging him to return, at which point he’ll have the satisfaction of telling them no.

The other is I’LL GO DOWN BUT I’LL TAKE THEM WITH ME.

Feeling that the opposition has him surrounded, the protagonist decides on a scorched earth policy, leaving as much destruction behind him as possible.

Both ways out leave him the option of believing that if only the people had backed him, he would have been great.

At the moment, it looks like the real Donald Trump is opting for the latter but I wouldn’t totally rule out a last-minute switch to You Don’t Deserve Me, I Quit.

How do YOU think this drama will end?

Do you follow the 5-hour rule for improving your writing or other skill?

The five-hour rule refers to spending at least five hours a week on improving your skill, and it's something practiced by Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and other very successful people, according to an article at inc.com. 

The article's author, Michael Simmons, says he found that these leaders usually spent those five hours doing three things:

    1. Reading. Oprah's dedication to reading is well known, and Simmons says entrepreneur Mark Cuban spends three hours a day reading.

    2. Reflecting. This can take the form of meditation, brainstorming alone or with others, journaling, focusing on a particular issue while taking a walk, etc.

     3. Experimenting. Simmons traces this back to Ben Franklin, who famously listed the qualities he wanted to exhibit and tracked his success daily. A modern example might be Richard Branson, who starts lots of businesses and quickly drops the ones that don't work out.

These days the unglamorous task of improving your skills, which often is not a lot of fun, tends to be overshadowed by stories of very young entrepreneurs and writers and artists who have huge success right away.

Unfortunately, for me and maybe for you it's too late to be a young genius, and I have to face the fact that i'm not even a middle-age genius. So continuing to try to improve is what's left. I'd better get started on this week's five hours...

PS: How to make sure you do it: I've found that the only way I consistently spend time on these kinds of tasks is to keep track of them day by day. You can do this on your calendar or whichever simple way works best for you. 

Related articles

21 traits of billionaires that you can start developing today

Science says these are the most common attributes of successful children

Pixar knows it's what the audience FEELS that counts

Pixar has the most consistent record of success of any current studio. Why is that? Songwriter and composer Randy Newman said this:

"The Pixar people always emphasize that the characters in their films are adults and deal with adult emotions. That’s really kind of a big idea. I always worry toward the end of their process when the picture is about to lock in terms of story, script and form if it’s funny enough. They never worry about that. They worry about emotion. Whether an audience will feel it. Whether it’s got, I think it’s called heart."

What's the source of this heart? Newman says, "And, about heart, you can’t put it there, like you sometimes can a joke. It’s got to proceed from who’s up there on the screen and if we care about what happens to them. It must be hard to do, but they’ve done it over and over like no other studio ever has."

When I was story editing a sitcom, I had the same philosophy: first, let's make sure the story works, meaning that it presents a conflict that we will care about in terms of how it might affect our protagonist, and it has a beginning, middle, and end. Then we'll make it funny. If you concentrate on the funny first, it's easy to get distracted from the story.

Randy Newman's quotes above come from the notes with the new Walt Disney Records Legacy Collection, which has 20 hours worth of rarities in 12 discs. Each disc comes with an illustrated book, adding up to almost 50,000 words. You can read more about it here. Warning: it'll put a dent into your pocketbook: £222.96 (on Amazon.co.uk) or $240.03 (Amazon.com).