While we are all isolating this month, let’s make the most of it!

This week we are shared a basic improv technique for spontaneous storytelling. Here’s an easy way to spend some time together and hopefully have a few laughs: create a shared story. It’s very simple. One by one, go around the room and gather some basic information, allowing each person to be as creative and specific as they want. The first person should name a type of person (cowboy, artist, businessman, circus leader, teacher, etc). The second person should name a place (the US, a laundromat, the underside of a swing). The next person should name a time (early morning, the second Christmas after the stock market crashed, in the distant future). The next person should name a problem (they are hungry, reptiles are crawling out of the storm drain, it’s raining). Now, continuing in a circle, each person will tell one sentence of a story. There are no rules, except that you should continue where the person before you leaves off, even if you take it in an entirely new direction.

Make this fun! Some families strive to tell a coherent story, where all the parts make sense, and they are really working together. Great stories can emerge, and you’ll learn something about teamwork and how to anticipate and respond to one another. Other families work to make the story as crazy as possible, shifting and turning with each sentence. No one can plan ahead because you simply don’t know where it’s going! You’ll all learn something about thinking on your feet and you will certainly laugh a lot.

Doesn’t matter how you tell it, storytelling can help bring you together as a family.