First Draft Episode #187: Will Hines

Will Hines, improviser and actor, host of the podcast, “Screw It: We’re Just Going to Talk About the Beatles,” and author of How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth joins me to talk about using his Tumblr to test audience engagement; the delicate nature of writing about a community you are a part of; his thorough approach to making the self-publication process as professional as possible; and his next (fictional) book about improv, co-written with fellow improviser Billy Merritt, Pirate Robot Ninja.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Josh Simpson, an improviser and teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade training school in Los Angeles, and co-host of The Meat, an improv podcast
• Jimmy Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and journalist, who wrote The Good Rat, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, and The World According to Breslin, and more
• The Upright Citizen’s Brigade, the improv group and school founded by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts.
• Will’s Tumblr, Improv Nonsense, which gained traction and has been featured on Vulture and elsewhere

• Truth in Comedy by Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson, considered one of the premiere books about long-form improvised comedy
• Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, the UCB training manual
• Improvise: Scene From the Inside Out by Mick Napier

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions of Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, a writing advice book that Will read as a young computer programmer
• Andrew Sullivan, a conservative author, editor, and blogger who featured Will’s post, “as-a-religion.html">Improv as religion,” on his site, garnering lots of attention

• The Life Changing Art of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• Repetition exercises as a part of the Meisner Technique study of acting

• Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders
• “A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room,” by George Saunders, a silly and slightly sci-fi short story that typifies his early writing and is the kind of humor writing that inspires Will
• John Hodgman, author of Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches
• In writing, Will is concerned about what he calls “The Kevin Smith Problem,” where every character sounds the same (a la Clerks, Mallrats, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back)
• Jason Mantzoukas, an actor, writer, and seasoned improviser who Will saw constantly improving his craft
• Offset printing, a style of printing on the page that is “the way to make your book look beautiful,” according to Will, but it is more expensive, and requires a minimum print run
• Artist Maëlle Doliveux, who drew the cover of Will’s book
• Chip Kidd, a well-known book designer of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton; Dry by Augusten Borroughs; and Naked by David Sedaris (he also has a hugely popular Ted Talk!).
• Daniel Clowes, a cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. His work is collected in the solo Eightball project.
• The Pirates, Robots, Ninjas theory, coined by Billy Merritt, a fellow UCB alum and teacher

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; and

• “Carry On, Jeeves,” by P.G. Wodehouse; and
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams are some of the funny books Will recommends
• Without Feathers by Woody Allen, a collection of his writing which Will read and enjoyed as a masterclass on comedy before we knew all that awful stuff about Woody Allen
• Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyre, a meta novel about a man who wants to write about D.H. Lawrence but finds himself wanting to focus on anything else
• Steve Martin, who blurbed Geoff Dyre’s book and has written his own, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (nonfiction) and Shopgirl: A Novella (fiction)

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