Your Improv/Sketch/Story Bookshelf

Even if you can’t learn comedy completely from a book, you can learn from others’ journeys!

We often get asked for comedy reading recommendations and have compiled some reading that we love below!

IMPROV

o   The UCB Improvisation Manual, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh and Matt Besser

o   Improvising Now; a Practical Guide to Modern Improv. Rob Norman

o   How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth. Will Hines

o   Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out. Mick Napier

o   Improvisation at the Speed of Life. T.J. Jagodowski and David Pasquesi

o   Truth in Comedy. Charna Halpern, Del Close, & Kim “Howard” Johnson

o   Improvisation for the Theater (3rd Ed.). Viola Spolin

SKETCH

o   The Cheeky Monkey: Writing Narrative Comedy. Tim Ferguson

o   Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers. Mike Sacks.

o   What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event. Dan O’Shannon.

STORY

o   Save the Cat! the Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. Blake Snyder

o   Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. John Yorke

o   The Science of Storytelling. Will Storr

Check out our previous post on improv examples you can watch online.