Also on Impro: The inhibitions Johnstone describes in improv actors are exactly (IMO) the inhibitions felt by writers. We writers are afraid our work will reveal us as Boring, Perverted, or Insane. So we overcompensate by trying to be clever. Oops.

In general, I love books that have nothing to do with writing that, nonetheless, teach me how to write. Impro is at the top of that list, as is Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You, and maybe (haven’t cracked it yet) Gosling’s Snoop.

Your comment is great — thanks!

I just stumbled upon your blog and i love it! Writing is something that has always interested me. I’ve only looked through a few of your posts, but they’ve been incredibly informative and entertaining.
Anyway, I wanted to know your thoughts on how Adversarial Dialogue relates to ‘status’ as I understand it from the book “Impro: Improvisation and the Theater” by Keith Johnstone.
Obviously a lot of it has to do with improv and acting, but Johnstone talks about how what he calls ‘status’ is what makes a scene entertaining.

Characters are always trying to either raise or lower their status in relation to the other characters in the scene. He cites many plays for examples, specifically Waiting for Godot.

In a generalized (and bad) example from me:
tacking on an insult to the end of an otherwise loving or comforting sentence would be raising your status. Or saying something mean and then putting YOURSELF down would be lowering the other character’s status and then immediately lowering yours, thereby raising theirs (kind of like softening the blow of the mean line, since you raised their status immediately after).
As you can probably tell, this sounds very much like Adversarial Dialogue to me. Are they similar? related? Different words for the same concept?

Thank you for your time!
Jacob