How Improv Techniques Enhance Fiction Writing

August 27, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Bloggity blog time. Insomnia has been kicking my backside this week, though I had decent sleep by this afternoon, so I am going to blabber at you and fair warning, this will not be perfect.

Stock image, okay, that’s good. Anyway, hi. No plan for this entry, which fits, because that does jibe with my original plan, so maybe that works. Let’s go with that. A month or so ago, I had mentioned in an online group I’m in, where the topic was how we express ourselves. I mentioned that I am a novelist and blogger, and that if an acting opportunity were to drop in my lap, I would jump on it.

Well. As so often happened, I not long after that found a notice in our local subreddit, offering a free four week improv class for adults, very close to where I live. I did indeed jump on that. I hadn’t had formal improv training in decades, but the second I entered the room, it was like no time had passed. Here are the top three lessons from improv (which I love and one thousand percent intend to pursue more in the future) that I am applying to my fiction writing.

Yes, and…; this is the first rule of improv. Take what your partner offers and add to it. You had it in mind that your character would be an astronaut, and your partner offers that you are driving a tractor in a cornfield. Instead of refusing that, “yes, and” might look like finding a way to combine the two. Yes, they are driving a tractor in a cornfield, and they are also astronauts. What are the odds that they got assigned to the first corn farm on Mars?
Blurt: this goes directly against my innate urge to overthink, but it works. What the instructor suggested was that if we go for the funniest thing, we’re going to overpopulate our brain and then we can’t make any decisions, and the scene dies. Blurt out the first thing that comes to mind and trust that your partner will add to that. This definitely works when writing in collaboration, and it does work with solo writing as well. As Nora Roberts once said, “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank one.” I need to remember that. In the case of solo writing, for me, my characters can count as my partner in such cases.
The Next Obvious Thing: This one met with the most resistance from me, but I am warming to it. Reference the overthinking from above. The overpopulated brain bit does resonate. Case in point, let’s say we’re doing a scene. My partner starts with “Hi, Dr. Jones. Thanks for responding to my request for a consult. My patient is over here.” What’s the next obvious thing? Dr. Jones would want to see the patient, so, as Dr. Jones, I would go to where my partner indicated the patient is. If my partner doesn’t offer anything, like name a symptom or ask me to look at xyz, the next obvious thing might be to ask questions. With no offer given, I have no restrictions, so I can have some fun. Why is the patient upside down? So, they are complaining of ABC? This patient again? This is the third time this week. Anything. Refer to blurt, above. When there are too many options, what is the next most obvious one?

These are not the only lessons that improv has taught me, which I can bring over to fiction and blogging, but they are the — you guessed it– first most obvious ones. There are others, which I may go into later: celebrate failure, make your partner look good, be observant. Most importantly of all, there is this: when you take the stage, you have everything you need to complete the scene. I may need to make a sign for that one. What do you think?

illustrated image of a redheaded woman writing in a journal as her calico cat observes. — as always, Anna

Typing With Wet Paws: Papa’s Birthday Eve Edition

August 14, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Tails Up, Storm Troopers! I’m Storm, you’re awesome, and this is Typing With Wet Paws. We are still in the cat days of August, which are mostly me lying in front of our air conditioner, Koolio, during the day and doing most of my cat stuff at night. Mama Anna had her special talking vet appointment yesterday, and tomorrow is Papa’s birthday. We are going to do whatever he wants, which will probably be at home, because he is a homebody. That must be where I get it. He will probably ask Mama Anna and Aunt Linda to go get cannoli, because he likes that better than cake (which is still good.) I think the Italian side of the family must approve.

this is about what I look like during the days

Mama Anna is chugging along with the writing stuff. When the sun is on her desk chair, she can go to the soft office, which is the big bed. She got a lap desk she can pop on the big bed and work with her laptop from there. It also works for writing longhand, which is where she does the most of her composing. I like to be on hand (or paw) to supervise and inspire.

Since my “days” begin at night, one of my favorite parts is when Mama Anna comes to bed after her bath and watches an old English tv show on her tablet. It’s like The Walking Dead but in the 1970s in England, and there are no zombies, but lots of farm animals. Obviously, she likes it a lot, and it inspires her to do more world building and character lore development for her medieval post-apocalyptic stories. Zombies aren’t a problem in this show, or in her books, but questions like “crap, where are we going to get salt?” and “oh no, the sheep ate the wrong grass; does anybody know what we do now?” are super big deals. Mama. Anna. Loves. It.

Reading is kind of not happening right now, which she is not liking, but the Talking Vet gave her some tips that she will try. That happens sometimes. She has plenty of books, so that is not the problem. My suggestion is to keep watching stuff and give me belly rubs.

We have Papa’s presents ready to go, and he gets to pick what dinner will be. Yes, I will be getting a special treat as well, because I always do on holidays. Usually, we share a can of people tuna.

What’s up for your weekend?

Intentional Writing: Writing a Holiday Romance

August 1, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Finally, it is August, and I am doing what many of my romance writer comrades are doing- writing a holiday romance novella. This one will center around Christmas, for a planned collection my contemporary cohort, Melva Michaelian, and I have in the works for 2026. While we have written a novel with holidays in it (Queen of Hearts gets three holidays plus a wedding) this is the first time I have set out to write a story where the holiday is the whole point. Never mind that it’s technically a few days before the holiday story and most of it takes place in a car. (forced proximity, yep, plus second chance at love)

This time, I am being very intentional in my pre-writing, and paying attention to what works for me now. For new people, hi. I’ve been through some stuff and it kind of affects this writing thing. Anyway, this time around, I am leaning into the way that makes the most sense for me. This also plays into my desire and intention to use the good stuff because I am worth it, dangitall.

Part of that is setting up the sections I can envision myself reaching for/turning to, which I figure out by putting the blank dividers in, with filler paper that has nothing on it, and then see what I would like to have there. If that doesn’t make sense, that’s fine. It only has to make sense for me. Results may vary with others. Right now, I am working on my character lore.

Normally, when I am the only person writing the story, A) I am writing historical, and B ) I stare at the screen, making noises like “huh” when I run into something I don’t know. This time, I am going at the character lore (or backstory; I will use the terms interchangeably.) in a different way. Part of that is influenced by the improv class I started taking this past week (awesome, loved it, will probably blog about it more later) — think of the next obvious thing.

If my classmates noticed the lightbulb that popped up over my head when the teacher mentioned that, well, they rolled with it because that’s what one does in improv. When researching a historical romance, for instance, I have a framework of where I need to look for what I need to know about the people, places and things in my story. Contemporary, though, has always been different. It’s now. I live now. Shouldn’t I know about now?

Well, yes, but I am me. I was born where I was born, brought up the way I was brought up, and my characters are different people. The hero (I am Gen X; I’m going to say hero and heroine) has a different career than he did when the heroine knew him. Okay. How did he get to be a Career One Guy? What degree did he need? Where could someone who grew up where he grew up get one of those? When he changes to a Career Two Guy, not only why, but how? What does he need to do to get to do that? Commence searching. In most cases, a few clicks gives me what I need, because this story is about a couple (re)connecting and not their professional CVs.

I won’t go into all the questions I have been asking myself and/or the interwebs, but my goal is to create a master character sheet that I can use for all my projects, historical, contemporary, or otherwise. Things like birth order (it’s more than just first, second, third, etc) and enneagram, MBTI, archetypes, etc. I have books on all of those things, as well as history, and my beloved books of names from the dark ages to today, in various specificities. I don’t want e-book copies (though I may acquire some) and I don’t want to take out library copies (though I may, if absolutely needed) and I would prefer not to buy new copies. I want my copies.

The issue with that is that they are in the back of the storage unit, where we have not been since we started the dang thing. I don’t know exactly where I drew this line in the sand, but there I am, setting up the binder for this story, and I’m working on what I need to know about my characters, and I Want My Existing Books. This is not negotiable. This will involve blocking out a day or days to haul furniture out of the unit (it’s indoors, climate controlled) locate the research books and my top tier keeper classic historical romances, and Bring Them Home. (cue Alfie Boe’s “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables)

There’s probably something symbolic about this, and I will be mentioning it to Therapy Dude at our next session. For right now, though, I will be taking it at face value, yes-and-ing the heck out of that and doing the next obvious thing. Behave as if. Tell the story I want to read. Hopefully, you’ll want to read it, too.

When do you, as a writer or reader, start thinking about holiday romances?

Typing With Wet Paws: Fully Nipped Edition

July 27, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Tails up, Storm Troopers! I’m Storm, you’re awesome, and this is Typing With Wet Paws.

Mama Anna went to her first improv class in many cats last night, and she loved it and is going back next week. According to her, there were zero cats there, but she had fun otherwise. She also was working on her next project with Aunt Melva before and after class, and today, she worked on cover design for Aunt Melva’s nonfiction project. Safe to say there is stuff going on around here. In case you were wondering, I sat on the pizza box for about an hour. That’s how comfy Koolio keeps us here. The flowery thing behind me is Aunt Linda in her new dress. she looks nice.

Speaking of nice, I have a new toy. It has catnip in it and my humans tell me that Bigger Sister Olivia and Biggest Brother Ginger both loved this toy. Big Sister Skye was a straight edge kitty and did not indulge in catnip. This one was so nippy that I smelled it before it was even out of the packaging and came from another room to yell at Mama Anna to tell her that was mine and I needed it right away. Thankfully, she understood and opened it on the big bed so she and Aunt Linda could both watch me play with it. Papa is off at work. Suffice it to say I love this toy. It is great. I will be playing with it a lot.

Mama Anna and I binged a show on Netflix the other night. It is called The Survivors, and it is Australian. At first, she thought it was going to be some kind of zombie or adventure story. She likes both of those kinds of stories, but this show is not one of them. It is a drama, which Mama Anna also loves, and one of the characters appears to have some form of dementia, which she knows because of some people in her life. She says the representation there was excellent, both of the person with dementia and their caregiver. There was also a story about a missing person and an unalived person and some caves in the ocean. It also had two timelines, and she really, really likes two timelines.

She also finished The Survivor Wants to Die at the End, by Adam Silvera. It is number three in the Death-Cast series and she wants the next one right now, please and thank you, but it is not out yet. I suggested she read something else. Reading got hard again, but she is working on that. In case you want to read this series, she says it is one hundred percent a read in order series. I don’t know what book she will pick next, but probably a historical romance.

Oh wait. She is reading Tears of the Wolf, by Elisabeth Wheatley. It is a fantasy romance but heavily Viking-flavored. If you are new to this author’s books, this is a good place to start. She still wants to read a historical romance, so I will keep you updated on that.

What are you all reading this week?

Snoop Bloggy Blog

July 24, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

This is one of those days when I don’t know what I want to blog about today, so you get unhinged blabber. We are in the start of back-to-school season, the most wonderful time of the year for us stationery dragons. I have spent the morning organizing things around the home, and now come to the part of the day where I have to actually tackle the writing stuff.

The front pocket situation is an ever-evolving sort of thing. I’m not used to the sideways pockets (I am sure there is a name for that kind of pocket, but I don’t know it. I do know the secretarial (big vertical) pocket. That one is for sticky page tabs, which are immensely useful. This blog has a section, Storm’s blog has a section, and there are other sections. I like to keep everything I need for one project on hand, so I only have to pick up one thing. Neither the big nor small dot stickers fit my aesthetic, but they are easier to transport than a bunch of dot markers. The flowered card in the middle pocket is just pretty.

The dashboard is a clear pocket with inserts I can change at will. This one is from one of the boxes from Cora Crea. Inside the notebooks themselves are a collection of big furry messes because that’s how I think. Washi borders, stenciled phrases, homemade stickers, several different colors of ink, and wild blabber with the censor off. Lots of sticky notes

Today has been a boring day. I don’t think anybody wants to read about me organizing my sock drawer, but being excited over new sock drawer organizers actually does give me a dose of dopamine, so I will count it as a win. It also smells lovely, as I remembered the hack to stick a bar of scented soap (in this case, cedar and lavender) in the back of the drawer to act as a subtle sachet. Good-smelling drawers has always meant an elevated grown-up status.

With August approaching and me noticing that I have fallen back into not-reading and not-watching tv/movies, this is the time to haul out the neglected reading journal. I know myself well enough to know that I will be more accountable if I have to tell somebody (like the interwebs) about what I have been doing for story intake. I am watching We Were Liars on Amazon Prime, based on the book by E. Lockhart, but through my fingers, and with breaks, because the ending wrecked me. So far, it’s a good adaptation, and I like that they give the older generation a little more to do than they did in the novel, which is YA.

That’s about it for right now. This is also a reminder to myself to start writing in the blog notebook before the day the blog is due (or two days after, in this case) because I don’t like coming to the creative space and my first thought being, “uhhhhh……” Another reminder that I need to be taking in story in order to put out story. Right now, I am doing most of my writing longhand, so there will be a lot of transcription going on in my near future.

What’s on your agenda for the week?

Embracing Change: My Journey to a Fresh Start

July 1, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Happy Canada Day to all who celebrate. June was an interesting month, so let’s call this a fresh start. Right now, my desk area, and most of the apartment, for that matter, looks like the middle of a hurricane, which means I am organizing stuff both physical and otherwise.

I can attribute part of this to the marvelous Eryka Peskin and her Reclaiming Your Dreams and Desires workshop, which is a-ma-zing, and I will be sharing some of my personal experiences with that in future entries here. She recommends starting a new journal for her workshops, and as a stationery dragon, I am waaay ahead of her on that front. Combine that with my current excitement over back to school season and other matters, and I have plenty of material for future journal posts.

As of last week, The Wild Rose Press has returned rights to Chasing Prince Charming, the first book in my Love By the Book contemporary romance series with Melva Michaelian, to us, the authors. If you haven’t yet grabbed your copy (hi, new folx) you will have about ninety days (more like eighty-three?) to get it from current sources. This does not mean the end of the story, of the collaboration, as Melva and I are going indie with the trilogy and beyond, so CPC will be available again, with hopefully a bonus epilogue. Our time with TWRP was lovely and hopefully, we can work with them again in the future. I will go into more details on Melvaandanna.com, because I find this new adventure actually exciting. We have many more ideas for couples in this story world to get their unique HEAs.

Then there are the historicals. I have had the rights back to My Outcast Heart and Orphans in the Storm for quite a while now, and they are in queue. I am most excited about getting my ducks in a row for A Heart Most Ardent (still dealing with red tape on the release of A Heart Most Errant) and finally, finally bringing Her Last First Kiss to fruition. There is new stuff brewing, and I love that feeling.

Storm will also be back at regular blogging this week, with lots of pictures and lots to say. I did not act quickly enough yesterday to capture her grand feat of turning my office chair so that she could sleep in it, not only directly in the sunbeam but directly in Koolio’s path. She’s a smart one.

Reading is coming back. I am still early chapters into Lace, by Shirley Conran, and am already super invested. I can already tell this is going into the idea soup already populated by The Wilds, Yellowjackets, and other similar shows, with a historical romance twist. I’m thinking gently-bred girls from some far-flung location, sent by ship to a fancy school in London, but a shipwreck delays things for a while. Better get an inbox started for that. I need to focus on the current projects first.

Gaming-wise, I am in love with the idea of a Sims 4 Forever Save. I may babble about that some here, possibly following one of my families. I think it has a lot to teach me about continuing story worlds. I still normally think in standalones, but this is a series market at the moment, so I want to find out how *I* do story worlds these days.

What’s going on with you?

Watercolors and Me: a Love Story

May 28, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Lately, I have fallen in love with watercolors. I’m not sure how it happened. Maybe it was part of my resolve to use my stash, but however it happened, I’m in and in deep. Do I know a lot about watercolors? No. Am I especially good at them? Also no. At the moment, I am mostly at the stage of figuring out how it all works, swatching paints, making pretty blobs, and watching endless YouTube videos on palettes and brushes and what sorts of pens work with the medium.

Right now, I am mostly planning on adding watercolors to my journal arsenal. There’s something almost meditative in plopping the colors on the paper and mushing them around. I even like when I flood the page too much for a wet on wet and paint goes places I didn’t intend. This reminds me strongly of writing. It’s alchemical, especially since I serendipitously found out that a book I wanted to read was included in my Spotify plan, so now I can listen to voices read me a story full of emotion and angst and hope, splash colors around and then boom, the next lines for a scene I’d been stuck on slipped in under the fence.

Apparently, I have found something that helps me get where I want to go. Therapy Dude will probably have something to say about that. Probably good things. My educated guess is that being in that space where I am new. where I don’t know all the rules, bypasses the perfectionist in me who, like a character in one of Melva’s and my upcoming books would say, you can’t fail if you don’t play. Technically correct, but not good for the long term.

At the moment, I am filling this journal with things like this. Squares, circles, rectangles. Squiggles on some pages, one turned into a worm or snake (could go either way) and then using the result at the base for more journaling in whatever form feels right at the time. Hopefully about the current WIPs, but we will see. In any case, it needs to be that raw and genuine and focused, but not pressured. Unless that’s pressure. In any case (augh, I said that already) the end product probably won’t look very much like it does at this stage, but I most likely will go back through it, several times, getting something new from it each time.

Sometimes a swatch is just a swatch. Sometimes it is a stepping stone to getting back in the groove. Last night, I put together a small watercolor kit, with a travel palette, water brush, mister bottle, and tiny pad of watercolor paper. I can take it anywhere. I don’t know that I plan on making “real” art (but isn’t all art real?) or sharing it at all, but I do know I want to do it more, and the more I paint, the more stories I want to tell. I call that success.

Babies and Puppies and Shortbread, Oh My

May 21, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Most of the travel fog has cleared by now, and there is still one more summer trip on the horizon, at the end of the first week of June. This past weekend’s trip was a lot happier than the one before, as this was for a baby shower, thanks to my delightful nephew and his wonderful wife with a baby on the way. The event was lovely, the company divine, and we are on a sugar high from the baked goods sent home by both grandmothers-to-be.

I can vouch for the deliciousness of this cake, only one of the many treats available for guests. The real treat, though, was friends I see far too seldom.

me (glasses) with Mary, aka paternal grandmother to be

The juxtaposition of the end of life and its beginning is not lost on me. Not only do I have the best shortbread ever (this kiddo is going to have only the best baked goods) but I got to see sonogram pictures, including a very clear full frontal face. I already have the best-looking great-nibling on the Eastern Seaboard. I am already planning on being that aunt who gives art supplies at the first opportunity and slips kiddo inappropriate books somewhere around the junior high level.

Speaking of books, I am waiting on one thing that is not under my control and then I can move on to another thing that is semi under my control and then I can deal with the uploading and actual publishing. For those who think independent publishing is as easy as pressing a button, it isn’t. There are parts of me that do wish we were in the days before the midlist cull of the mid-nineties, when there were more traditional publishers and Romantic Times magazine was on every newsstand. (Today, it would be an app, I am sure) but until we invent time travel for real, the market that exists now is the one where I can do my thing.

The cover for A Heart Most Errant is done, paid for, finalized, and gorgeous. The only thing keeping me from sharing it now is that I don’t want to do so until I have a firm publication date. As I have said many times, soon. I know that once I hit my stride with A Heart Most Ardent, things will start running more smoothly. The longer away, the longer the walk back, unfortunately so, but I know where home is, so I have that going for me. Also, I met a puppy!

My canine fur niece, Skye, not to be confused with my feline fur niece, Skye (like Storm, I will say Dog Skye or Cat Skye) Dog Skye is six months old and soft and bouncy and has big brown eyes and let me rub her belly within minutes of meeting her. If you ever need to get back in touch with what enthusiasm feels like, I highly recommend meeting a puppy.

How was your weekend?

Mermay

May 5, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

The only reason I am on time with this post is because my printer is running out of ink. quashing my plan of printing stickers. May as well get on to the next task. Storm is well aware that she owes a blog post, and will be subjected to an additional photo session in order to make that happen. For now, we will go forward.

At the start of a new month, I like to pick a theme for my planners and sometimes journals. Novel notebooks are a different story (pun intended) because they don’t depend on real life timeframes, and have their own, especially the historicals. Some months are easy: January is New Year, February is Valentine’s Day, etc. May? Mother’s Day is tricky, so that’s a no for themes. Housemate’s birthday is in May. I have given her the option to choose an element for the planner deco, and her only request was “cool colors.” That fits well with the theme many in the planner community follow: Mermay.

I like mermaids. I have always liked mermaids. I do have mermaid themed/coded supplies already, which fits well with my resolve to use what I have. In therapy terms, let’s act as if it’s safe to use our stuff. We can stay where we are. There will be more stuff. This may seem like a no-brainer, but trust me, this is something I need to do consciously at the moment.

Keeping to a theme for planning/journaling helps me to be more creative, because I know what I have to work with for this particular venture. That’s also another reason I am diving fully into my novel notebooks, which, surprising no=one, I am blundering into in my usual blindfolded in the forest with buckets on my feet method. As long as it gets me where I need to go, that’s fine.

A while back, I posted about things they don’t tell you about writing while homeless. I am not linking it, but it’s easy enough to find if you’re really curious. Right now, I feel like I am currently learning things nobody told me about writing while no longer homeless. We just renewed our lease. We’re good. I have a new desk, new computer, will soon be receiving new printer ink. I have papers, I have pens, I have tons of cyber-storage. What’s in the way? Isolation and crippling doubt. Thankfully, I have a good support system, so onward I go.

This would probably be an appropriate place to make some sort of comparison between my own journey back to my writer self and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Disney’s animated version was fun. I haven’t seen the live action remake, but the original text, that’s a classic. I would have preferred to have an HEA ending, but that’s what retellings are for, aren’t they? I am not saying never to a mermaid romance.

What are you doing to celebrate or lean into May?

Yes, I May

May 1, 2025annabowling Leave a comment

Welp, here we are at the start of another month. It’s the bridge between spring and summer, Since we have several colleges in our area, there is a definite shift in the community when the “kids” go home from the summer. The local small business ice cream stand is open (Haven’t gone yet, but will) and we will soon be summoning Coolio, our portable air conditioner, from his winter home (housemate’s closet.) Clothing-wise, we are on the cusp of dress season. I am loving the big screen on my desktop computer. Being able to see what I am doing is kind of a new thing.

Though I am an ambassador for the extremely talented Eryka Peskin, this is not a post she asked for, but one that I hope she likes. I am currently in her Celebration Circle group, which is, as Eryka would say, amazeballs. I like the challenge of finding things to celebrate, whether on a given topic, or freestyle, and I find that creeping over into other areas of life.

I am not going to lie: starting over as many times as I have (or perceive myself as having done) sucks because nobody wants things like serious illness, homelessness, injuries, deaths in the family, etc. At the same time, it’s awesome, because I am coming at t his, this time, with more experience, more wisdom, and, at times, more spite because that Bad Thing is not going to end me. Not only am I going to do the thing but do it twice and take pictures.

Didn’t mean to post sleeping Storm, but who doesn’t love a kitty picture?

Storm is pretty chill about coming into the new season, which is par for the course. She does have a few things to say about the new desk setup, as her usual sproing lands her on my keyboard. There is still some space for her on the desk, but at the moment, she seems best pleased to watch from the bed. She is getting used to the kitty sling. It’s one of her favorite beds at the moment. We haven’t tried putting her in it yet, but so far, so good.

One of the perks of this kind of experience (mine, not Storm’s) is that I have a wide experience on what doesn’t work for me. Lots of trial and error. Some successes. Some serendipitous discoveries. Some flying into the mist, as the late great Jo Beverley would say. Before I know it, I will be pulling the trigger on my first independent publication. (Though I did write for and publish fanzines beck in the day.) Then after that, Melva and I do the same thing with the second two Love By the Book books. I am writing my first planned historical romance series, on book two of four now, which is definitely a learning experience.

What I am getting at here is this: yes, I may. Yes, I may make mistakes. Yes, I may try something different. Yes, I may start something new. Yes, I may pick up where I left off involuntarily and make it through to the end. Yes, I may put a blog post up a couple of days late. The world will not end. We are all human here.

Typing With Wet Nails

for the love of romance

writing