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Top-down thinking in improv for bottom-up thinkers

Top-down thinking your second beats and game when you are a bottom-up thinker. What does that look like?

If you are a bottom-up thinker, there are certain techniques in long-form improv that might work better if you try to do top-down thinking instead. Why would you do such a thing? And When?

Game and second beats might be challenging to a bottom-up thinker. You need to get used to wrapping up a bunch of details into a single idea, gist, or synopsis regardless of what direction you think in. The synopsis is where top-down thinkers start! Maybe it’s faster doing top down for this?

This episode includes a couple different examples of when I think I probably take more of a top-down approach as a life-long bottom-up thinker.

I also detail a pretty quick way to do a second beat using a form of visual thinking (hyperphantasia), since we were talking about it. Selfish tangent, that, maybe. But it’s in there too.

Listen to the episode

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Jen deHaan
Jen deHaan

Jen deHaan founded StereoForest in 2024 to focus on creating comedy podcasts, audio dramas, and audio fiction series that blend scripted and improvised material.

Jen has taught long form improv classes at/with World’s Greatest Improv School (WGIS), Compass Improv, Highwire Improv, and Queen City Comedy. She was also the WGIS Online School Director, and hosted a lot of improv jams.

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