Verisimilitude Versus Story-Tude

Improv Principle #11—Follow the story spine.

Truth Serum

Storytelling in Life and Onstage

From the essence of time, before neuroscience was an established subcategory that explained how what we perceive is translated by our brains, people have loved a good story. It’s a basic method that knits us together as individuals and groups. Take two strangers and one common experience and … Zap! … you get a story. It contains the lived experience, the essence of human relationships.

Much has been written about the importance of storytelling in terms of learning and cognition. Indeed, our brains seem (nearly literally) wired to accept story and make sense of the process it shepherds. Story leads to understanding, empathy, and memory.

Even babies seem to understand story. This fact was brought home recently as I held my infant grandson, who watched his older brother play with two makeshift puppets. One puppet, a blue teddy bear, went along happily (“Lalalalala …,” sang the brother), and the other, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, attacked poor Teddy Bear. The baby wailed! Brother changed the scene. Mr. Dinosaur kissed the blue bear, and the baby laughed. All this perceived at a mere seven months old.

As we get older, besides plain entertainment, a good story also helps establish credibility. We want to know the mission and vision of a company and an individual. We want to know what they stand for and why they do what they do. We want to know their story.

Author Simon Sinek defined this further. In a free market society, as producers of anything, we want to be viewed as authentic, so customers want to engage with us and purchase our products.³³ Our story helps establish a clientele.

As healthcare clinicians, we want to be viewed as authentic so patients/ clients will feel relaxed enough to trust our advice, feel better, and live more productive lives. Our story helps establish a trusting relationship.

As employees, no matter where we work, we also want to be valued. If we have no leadership title, we want to have a good story to establish our reputation as a team player.

If we have a title that denotes a position of leadership, we are expected to be a responsible individual who works to motivate others. In tense situations, our story establishes what we believe in and inspires others to follow our lead.

You may be thinking, “STOP. Not so fast. Some stories aren’t based on facts! If a true, new story equals news; an untrue story equals fake news. Improv is make-believe, ergo, it’s fake.”

Am I saying you should learn to lie?

No.

Just as an athletic coach guides the team in practice drills and experimental new moves, the improv coach guides players to practice improv story drills and experiment with new moves. With this type of deliberate practice, players and/or colleagues become more cohesive in the real game of life.

How?

The success of an improv story game depends upon our willingness to suspend our disbelief and trust the other players. Viola Spolin said the key was to get out of your head and keep the Point of Concentration, or focus, in mind.³⁴ That focus should always be the other person in the scene.

When we put our trust in others, when we force ourselves to block out everything else and focus on the other person, the effect is quite miraculous. With trust and focus, we find ourselves more willing to be changed. Almost as a reward for good behavior, a simple change in focus and attitude stimulates creativity and imagination to solve countless problems. When we seek not to interpret but to communicate, the work of storytelling is directly translatable to healthcare’s real-life problems.

The Practice of Imagination

In my many years as an actor, director, and improv facilitator, I have concluded that putting your imagination to work produces the most unlikely results. It never ceases to amaze me what happens in improv classes … in a good way. Students are continually surprised and delighted by what they and their classmates come up with. Certainly, these imaginative stories could come to life by no other means.

Unlike algorithmic plans for solving scientific problems or the insistence of some suffering artists who complain that they must be internally stimulated to entice the Creative Muse, the process of creativity in improv is more like gathering flowers than finding a cure for cancer. It should be more enjoyable and less depressing, because it invites spontaneity, adaptation, problem-solving, and team-building. These outcomes are predictable results when participants share a common, albeit fictitious, lived experience.

One of the reasons these creative exercises are so successful is because they are so much fun! Once students relax enough into the process and trust they will not be humiliated or blamed when they take a risk and things don’t work out so well, they feel free to take risks, speak out, experiment, and problem-solve in new ways. Facilitators must be careful not to blame or shame, but gently side-coach students to stay with the problem.

In order to be successful, your coach will present what playwright Kenn Adams calls the Story Spine with its parameters, to give structure to your stories.³⁵ This should be familiar; it is the same as every bedtime story ever told. It is also the framework of almost every Hollywood film. Interesting that the story spine can be developed in so many genres and that it never gets old!

Story Spine Example:

[Extra] The moral of the story is … Be careful who you ignore at work, because he might be the dirt bike you marry.

Group Exercises

Exercise 9a—One-Word Sentence

Now let’s practice active listening to understand, not just to respond, and create a story. You are going to take turns adding a word to make a sentence. Each person is allowed to add ONLY one word at a time.

Exercise 9b—Story Spine

Find a partner or have the group sit in a circle. Take turns adding to the narrative using the story spine framework.

Do it again!

Exercise 9c—Limericks

As a variation, try creating a limerick! Here’s the framework:

Debrief:

Notes