Teaching Narrative Writing with Frankenstories

Frankenstories is improvisational storytelling.

The demands of improvisation are different to those of normal "sit at your desk" writing because you can't go back and revise, and you can't plan too far ahead.

Instead, improvisational storytellers use a set of tools that are tactical, accessible, memorable, and almost blind compared to the more thematic, analytical, planning-oriented tools with which you might be more familiar.

Read Keith Johnstone's books

Much of what we've written in this lesson is derived from the work of Keith Johnstone, the creator of Theatresports and a seminal figure in improvisational storytelling.

We've adapted Johnstone's ideas to work within the context of Frankenstories—and hopefully incrementally improved on some of them.

If you want to go to the source, you should absolutely read his books.

Impro (1979)

This book is life-changing.

Impro for Storytellers (1994)

Extends and expands on Impro. Encyclopaedic. Not the kind of book you read end to end.

You'll probably find other books on improvisation or narrative helpful, but Johnstone's work is profoundly influential.

This "lesson" is more like a course.

Each page covers a single skill. We'll:

• Introduce a narrative concept.
• Look at how it applies in stories and Frankenstories games.
• Provide prompts you can use in Frankenstories games to practice the skill.

Many of the pages in this lesson come with videos and handouts that you can use for your own reference or in class as you like.

We recommend teaching one skill per session.

The effect is cumulative.

This lesson is about narrative structure, whereas other Writelike narrative lessons are more about voice and language, focusing on mechanics and patterns at the sentence and paragraph level.

They overlap and complement each other.

All the Writelike narrative lesson activities are available as Frankenstories game prompts.

This lesson is linear, except for the Creativity & Collaboration topic, which you can dip into whenever you like.

It provides advice and games to develop general capabilities and address common challenges for new writers, such as:

• How to work with an uninspiring prompt
• Ways to help the game even when you're stuck for ideas
• How to stop derailing, stalling, or otherwise killing the story

We'd suggest familiarising yourself with that section, and then interspersing those activities with the main narrative lessons as needed.