Improv Specialist Reveals How Anyone Can Create Amazing Stories From Scratch

Craft compelling narratives in less than 5 minutes to elevate your content.

“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”

-Marshall McLuhan

Which content creation skills will you need to succeed in the future?

There’s a sea of content online. And the number grows each day. Exponentially. Why would someone choose to consume your content instead of someone else's? For your brand to stand out now — and in the future — the biggest challenge will be making sure you become the go-to resource amongst all the noise.

And the competition grows by the minute.

Why Education-Focused Content Isn’t Enough: The Importance of Entertaining Your Audience

I’ve been creating content for several years now.

It started as a byproduct of working in various digital marketing roles:

• When I ran digital ads, I developed the ad copy for the campaigns.
• When I helped brands with their email marketing strategy, I developed content for their emails.
• When I built out marketing and sales funnels, I created copy for the various landing pages.
• And when brands needed social media or blog content, I generated content aligned with their brand.

Content creation came with the digital marketing territory.

I soon discovered that it was one of my strengths: I kept receiving positive feedback, and I found that writing put me in a flow state. It seemed like a no-brainer.

So I started doubling-down on content marketing.

When making this shift, I became obsessed with figuring out how to make great content.

And I mean, extremely obsessed. My experience with running marketing campaigns and creating copy taught me the importance of education. It’s how you build trust and convert leads. So I took an education-focused approach to my content.

I wanted to figure out how a reader could always walk away with a powerful insight.

So I obsessively explored various psychological, developmental, and learning models so my content could generate insights in the readers’ minds.

And as a consequence, my writing style became very “to-the-point.” One day, I received a perspective-changing email from one of my friends:

After reading one of my newsletters, he emails me:

“It’s good… but it’s a lot to process.”

Huh. A lot to process?

Hearing this, I took a moment to reflect and began looking through my content archives. There was a pattern. It’s true, my content was “cerebral.” Due to my education-focused approach, I found myself sharing lots of ideas, concepts, and models.

Readers would learn something.

But it was like reading an academic paper — not as boring, I hope.

Imagine a professor struggling to read his students’ essays, holding back the urge to fall asleep. I doubt my professors even fully read my essays. Anyways. I thought to myself:

“How do you make something both entertaining and educational?”

The answer seemed obvious: Great stories.

But storytelling had always eluded me. Having learned copywriting and marketing, I knew scripts and different approaches for creating a story that sells stuff. But it felt forced and seemed limited to a sales context.

So I sought a more versatile way to create compelling stories, for a couple of reasons:

• If you’re creating a lot of content, building a story “on-demand” is helpful.
• And knowing how to generate stories for different marketing needs— short-form, long-form, sales copy, case studies, lead magnets, etc. — is a powerful tool.

So, throughout 2021, I explored the world of storytelling and began experimenting.

After trial and error, I received responses like this:

I had a lightbulb moment.

“Ahh. So this is how you craft a good story.”

Now, I don’t consider myself to be a magnificent storyteller. And this is an important point: Anyone can create a great story. It just requires knowing an effective story structure and a bit of practice.

Now, whenever I create content, I’m always looking for ways of blending education and entertainment.

Unleashing Your Creativity: Storytelling And Improvisation

An effective storytelling model unleashes your creativity by leaving room for spontaneity.

To illustrate this, musician and researcher Dr. Charles Limb has run experiments showing how the brain works during musical improvisation. And he’s shown that there’s a neurological basis between improvisation and creativity.

Using an fMRI machine, he compared the brain activity of jazz musicians and hip-hop rappers.

He sought answers to two questions:

1. What happens in the brain during something memorized and over-learned?

2. In contrast, what happens in the brain during something spontaneously generated (or improvised)?

He had the jazz players create music in two distinct ways:

1. Using the scale paradigm, players would perform a scale up-and-down by memorization.

2. Then, he had the jazz players improvise on a scale.

He ran a similar experiment with hip-hop freestylers, where he compared brain activity from memorized and freestyle rap performances.

Limb found increased activity in the prefrontal cortex in the brain scans of both. But, at the same time, there was reduced activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex.

In simple terms: They became more self-expressive while simultaneously reducing self-monitoring.

Excessive self-monitoring causes most creative blocks, which prevent creative ideas from surfacing.

“Dumb idea.”

“That won’t work.”

“This doesn’t make sense.”

This implies improvisers have more creative output because they don’t judge themselves while they’re “in process.”

After familiarizing myself with the research, I had an interesting thought:

What if I could spontaneously generate a complete narrative and have it be entertaining and educational?

This differs from how I usually approach storytelling, which gravitates toward scripted storylines (and feels much less creative).

It turns out, someone’s already answered these questions.

This Professional Improviser Reveals How To Craft A Compelling Story

During my search for a storytelling model that unleashes creativity, I came across Kenn Adams.

He’s spent over 30 years performing, teaching, and directing professional improvisational theater. And his specialty is long-form improvisation. The ability to improvise a two-hour play sounds like a superpower! And if you can build a whole narrative and have it still be a compelling and cohesive story — well, I want to learn from that guy.

In his book How to Improvise a Full-Length Play: The Art of Spontaneous Theater, he shares the mechanics behind a great story and breaks it down.

Here’s why I love Adams’s storytelling approach:

• Given the nature of improvisation, this model allows enough flexibility to begin crafting any narrative spontaneously. This becomes valuable when you have to create a lot of quantity.
• But it also provides enough structure to ensure you’re creating a compelling story since all effective narratives have universal characteristics.

If you’re consistently creating content, then you’ll want a formula that allows you to generate tons of compelling stories.

This unlocks your creativity while adding entertainment value to your content.

Everything You Need To Craft Compelling Stories From Scratch

Kenn Adams shares a comprehensive breakdown of the structure of a full-length play, which he calls the “Play by Play Structural Map.”

Though most of us aren’t developing narratives for the theater, this storytelling approach works well for all mediums. And it will elevate your brand’s content. I’ll cover the simplest version of this storytelling model, which Adams calls the first evolution of the structural map.

It covers everything you need to start crafting compelling narratives for your content.

Let’s begin.

Five main components make up every well-constructed story:

• Beginning
• First Significant Event
• Middle
• Climax
• End

Next, we’ll look at what Kenn Adams calls the “story spine.”

It utilizes 8 key prompts to build out a narrative. They cover the main elements of our basic story structure. And when used for improvisation, they’re designed to unlock your creativity.

Story Spine:

1. Once upon a time…
2. Every day…
3. But one day…
4. Because of that…
5. Because of that…
6. Because of that…
7. Until finally…
8. And ever since then…

Here’s an image that combines the two:

Now, let’s cover this basic story structure and story spine in more depth.

The Beginning

The beginning of every story forms the foundation.

It provides context — the background, characters, setting, and other relevant information that lays the foundation.

Here’s an important attribute when forming the foundation of a story. The beginning must establish a routine for the main characters.

In other words, what’s life like on an ordinary day when nothing unusual is happening?

• Aladdin lives in the streets of Agrabah with his pet monkey Abu (stealing food to survive). Princess Jasmine resents the law for forcing her to marry a prince instead of someone she loves. Meanwhile, Jafar seeks someone worthy enough to enter the Cave of Wonders.
• Peter Parker is a nerdy kid trying to make it through High School. He lives with his Aunt and Uncle. And his best friend is Harry Osborn, son of wealthy businessman Norman Osborn (aka the soon-to-be villainous Green Goblin).
• Shrek is an ill-tempered, single Ogre who lives by himself in his swamp.

Despite the differences between each story’s beginning, the foundation establishes a routine. This is a way of life that is normal and expected for the main characters.

Relevant Story Spine Prompts:

Once upon a time…

Every day…

The First Significant Event

Then we have “the first significant event.”

You could technically call this the “end of the beginning.” It’s the single action separating the beginning from the middle.

This is the single event that breaks the main character’s established routine and forces them to cross into the unknown.

• Jafar finds someone worthy enough to enter the cave, the street urchin Aladdin.
• A radioactive spider bites Peter Parker.
• Fairytale creatures flood Shrek’s swamp.

Relevant Story Spine Prompt:

But one day…

The Middle

The middle of a story is the rising action.

What is the rising action? Ultimately, it’s a sequence of cause-and-effect events that have consequences. And this happens until the climax.

The first consequence builds upon the first significant event:

• Jafar finds someone worthy enough to enter the cave, the street urchin Aladdin. And because of that… Jafar’s men arrest Aladdin and throw him in jail. Because of that… Jafar tricks him into entering the Cave of Wonders. Because of that… he finds the lamp and meets Genie. And so on…
• A radioactive spider bites Peter Parker. Because of that… he gains super cool powers. Because of that… he enters an underground fighting tournament. Because of that… a thief that Peter could’ve caught at the tournament kills Uncle Ben. Because of that… he starts saving the city from crime and becomes Spider-Man. And so on…
• Shrek meets Donkey, and fairytale creatures flood his swamp. Because of that… they visit Lord Farquaad to remove the fairytale creatures. Because of that… Shrek has to rescue a princess. Because of that… Shrek ends up catching feelings for the princess. And so on…

Relevant Story Spine Prompts:

Because of that…

Because of that…

Because of that…

The Climax

The climax is a single action that ends the middle and starts the end. It begins moving the characters on the final path home.

In the beginning, our main characters had an established routine. Then, something happened to break this routine, catapulting them through a series of consequences.

Now, you could call the climax the “transformational dilemma.”

It’s a big moment where the main character faces the most crucial event in the story thus far. And their response to it will result in either success or failure.

It’s a defining moment where the main character must transform themselves to face this challenge.

• Aladdin faces off with Jafar, who’s now a Sultan and powerful Sorcerer.
• The Green Goblin kidnaps Mary Jane, forcing Peter to rescue her.
• After Fiona leaves to marry Lord Farquaad, Donkey reveals to Shrek that he misunderstood the conversation between Fiona and Donkey. She doesn’t think Shrek is unlovable.

Relevant Story Spine Prompts:

Until finally…

The End

The ending concludes the story.

Do the characters succeed or fail?

Similar to the beginning, the key to the ending must highlight an established routine. However, in the ending, the main character establishes a new routine.

• The law in Agrabah now allows the princess to marry anyone she wants. So, Aladdin and Jasmine get married.
• Spider-man finds his footing as a hero and beats up bad guys as a side hustle. And as a consequence, he feels like he can’t be with Mary Jane… the whole “great power comes with great responsibility” thing.
• Shrek marries Fiona. He no longer has to drink his eyeball-garnished dry martinis by his lonesome. And he has developed a deeper friendship with Donkey (an emotional capacity he didn’t have initially).

Relevant Story Spine Prompts:

And ever since then…

Create Your Own Compelling Story In Less Than 5 Minutes

Let’s create a story from scratch.

You’ll see how quick and easy it is to develop a compelling narrative. This should take you less than 5 minutes to brainstorm.

Choose your document of choice, and copy these 8 story spine prompts in there:

1. Once upon a time…
2. Every day…
3. But one day…
4. Because of that…
5. Because of that…
6. Because of that…
7. Until finally…
8. And ever since then…

I’ll give you the first prompt, and you’ll be responsible for finishing the remaining seven.

Start with 1–2 sentences for each prompt. And later, if you want, you can fill in the details of the story.

Here’s prompt #1:

Once upon a time… a young man named Thomas dreaded working his 9-to-5 job.

The rest of this story is yours to create.