Three Improvisation Games You Can Use To Get Better At Public Speaking

Have you ever wanted to get better at improvising when you were on stage presenting a message to an audience?

If you haven’t checked out my article on the importance of improvisation for public speaking skills, then check it out here.

If you have or you just want to know exercises that can turn you into a better public speaking with regards to improvising, then here are three exercises that I believe are awesome ways to improve your ability to think on your feet.

1. The Improvising A Story Game

This is a game you can do with about 2–3 other people. It starts out by saying a word and then going in a circle. The next person in the circle has to say another word that connects to the last word said in order to create a story. The goal of this is to enhance your creative skills and have you improvise some part of the story that is cohesive with the rest of the parts as you hear a new word.

Example:

The — Dog — Walked — Into — A — Bar — And — Asked — For — A — Drink — Then — Paid — With — His — Puppy Face

Each word will continue to build the story and since you are doing it with other people, each person will hopefully say a word that makes sense but also forces the next person to be creative in trying to create the story.

2. The Emotion Improvisation Game

You need a couple of people to do this game. Take down 10–15 index cards and write a bunch of random emotions on those cards. Those can include happy, angry, sad, etc.

Start having a conversation with the people you are with. There should then be a moderator randomly deciding what card to pick. Whatever emotion they pick then must be the tone for the rest of the conversation. As they keep picking new emotions, the conversation must stay the same — but the mood and tone of it must switch to the emotion.

The purpose of this activity is to mainly practice emotional flexibility. During public speeches, you may have to tell stories or describe moments that require specific emotions in order to add depth to the story. You may not be feeling those emotions at the moment, but the ability to improvise and act as if you were is extremely important to the skill of improvisation.

3. The Connecting Two Things In Any Way Game

This is an original game I came up with while I was working on my own improvisation skills. I didn’t create it with the intent to enhance my improvisation, I just always used to play the game in my mind and then I realized it was a fantastic way to get better at improvising.

The game starts off with naming two of the most random things you could possibly think of. When I mean random, I mean random. There should be no way to find a connection between these two subjects.

Then you play the game. Find the connection between them.

The goal of the game is to reach within the depths of your creative mindset and find some way, no matter how much of stretch it may be, to connect two topics.

Here’s an example of two things my friends told me to connect when I introduced the game to them and they didn’t believe I could do it:

Two Topics to Connect: Homework and A Red Ribbon

My connection: “When you go to school, you usually like to learn. When your learning in school, it is very important you understand the concepts of your learning. In order to do this, you have to do homework. You have to reinforce the concepts your learning and practice the skills to get better at the material. So next time you go to class, take your homework and wrap a red ribbon on it. Then you should give yourself the gift of knowledge because, at the end of the day, that’s all that homework is.”

As you may be able to tell, my friends were in awe. It took me about 10 seconds to brainstorm and then I came up with what I’ve said above. That doesn’t mean every connection takes me 10 seconds or that it would take you 10 seconds, but that does mean that when you do this over and over again, your brain may start to stimulate connections between random topics and then it will be easier to find connections with them.

Improvising is essentially about finding a connection between topics when there seem to be no connections, so hopefully playing these games will help you do that.

The first two games were given to me by this website, the third one was my own original game.

If you would like to gain more tips on public speaking, subscribe to my youtube channel here. You can DM me on Instagram here for any specific questions!