Writing Like an Improviser: Overcoming Writers’ Block – Playfully! Kat O'Brien, Instructor

Registration opens on Wednesday, January 22, 2025.

 

IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL

 

Spring 2025

 

Writing Like an Improviser: Overcoming Writers’ Block – Playfully! (Two-Hour Workshop)

 

Kat O’Brien, Instructor

 

Dates/Time

 

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

 

• 5:00–7:00 pm Iowa/Central Time
• 6:00–8:00 pm Eastern Time
• 3:00–5:00 pm Pacific Time
• 4:00–6:00 pm Mountain Time

 

 

Fee: FREE

 

 

Course Description

 

One of the best tricks for beating writers’ block is to learn how to get out of your own way. Discover how to recognize your editor brain, tell it to take a backseat, and liberate your creative muse in this fast and furious, two-hour generative writing session. Through a series of fun acting and writing exercises, award-winning screenwriter, producer, and story consultant Kat O’Brien will help you navigate dozens of new roads to write your way past blocks as well as seed new stories. We’ll explore improvisational acting techniques and apply the theory and practice to ideation strategies that are both generative and can also be focused on specific story problems and blocks in your work. And, we’ll have a lot of fun and laughs while we’re at it.

 

Takeaways:  

• Explore improvisational acting techniques.
• Develop ideation strategies to generate abundantly in a short period of time.
• Focus ideation on specific story problems and writer’s blocks.

 

Instructor

 

For over 20 years, Kat O’Brien has developed film and television for Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony, Anonymous Content, Focus Features, Rogue Pictures, Alcon Entertainment Morgan Creek Productions, Blue Star Entertainment, and numerous internationally renowned and critically acclaimed independent filmmakers and television producers. During the pandemic, Kat executive produced We Still Teach TV, for which she was awarded the Chicago Teachers’ Union LEAD award as a champion for education justice. As a world-renowned expert in story development, Kat has consulted for the Doha Film Institute and Film AlUla, and teaches at the University of Chicago, DePaul University, and The Second City Film School. She holds a BFA in Writing for Film and Television from the University of Southern California. You can read more and contact her at kobwriting.com.

 

 

Registration & Fees

 

This course is FREE.

Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Class size is limited to 300.

 

Refund & Cancellation Policy

 

If you need to cancel your enrollment, please let us know as soon as possible.

 

Terms & Community Policy

 

1.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to enroll in Festival workshops.

 

2.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/working environment of others. Participants in the Festival are subject to all University of Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, whether online or in person.

 

Questions?

 

Contact the Iowa Summer Writing Festival: iswfestival@uiowa.edu. Phone: (319) 335-4160.

 

Our small staff is out and about. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a detailed message!