The Origin of the Story Spine

The Story Spine is introduced as a tool for teaching story structure in improvisation, developed by Ken Adams during his time at NYU. While studying playwriting, he recognized a lack of resources for outlining stories in improv and created the Story Spine as an outline for middle school students. This structure includes key phrases that guide the creation of a narrative, allowing performers to collaborate effectively. Ken later applied this tool to teaching improvisation, showing that it could be used to craft full-length improvised plays, a novel idea at that time.