Today I mentioned to somebody in The Whizzy Group that I asked friends to help me workshop scenes in my 2016 novel.
It’s not something I think about often, but the idea plainly grabbed him, and he asked me to explain.
Rather than tell him directly, I said I would write this post, to share it with anybody else who might want a nudge to collaborate – to make their own project feel bigger, more “real”.
(It had always been my idea to use the Whizzy Group as a place to excavate ideas, and share them more widely.)
So: the picture below shows me on the first training I did in impro, with Keith Johnstone in (I think) 2012.
I’m in the middle, back to camera, with Steve Chapman
Soon after that mind-altering course, I wrote a short blog post, about some of the things I learned – I meant to go into more detail later – and how it inspired the workshopping that followed.
Later, my friend Ben helped document the whole process in this short film:
Additionally, you may be interested to read how I asked improvisers (and others) to lend me their beautiful modern faces for the book’s illustrations.
AND here’s a live video I recorded to say thank you to the individuals who read and commented on my manuscript:
My question for you: what project are you working on that could become so much more exciting and rich if you were to collaborate instead of doing it yourself?