In Defense of Long Form

I previously wrote a defense for short-form and narrative. It’s time long-form gets its due, though it’s probably the most common and the least in need of a defense.

Let’s start with a definition, though no one seems to agree on a good one. Therefore, I will just come up with one, and you will argue about it in the comments. To me, a vanilla long-form set is a montage—a series of mostly disconnected scenes with little to no setup in between. Long forms (the different established formats for long-form) go by many names, but they are different flavors added to the montage base. For example, adding a monologue before the montage begins is called an Armando. A La Ronde constrains which characters are in each scene. A Harold has several constraints added until it hardly resembles a vanilla montage at all. A Narrative constrains all the scenes to be part of the same story. A Narrative is long-form the same way a hot dog is a sandwich—technically fits the definition, but different for most practical purposes. So let’s talk about long form (excluding Narrative).1

Long-form is everywhere these days, and if you’ve been doing improv for a while, you’ve probably forgotten how strange it is to see it for the first time. Audiences at long-form shows tend to be mostly other improvisers, but for the few uninitiated, there’s a lot of, “Wait, is this a new story? Is this connected to the last scene?” and “Why did they just run across the stage with their hand up. What does that mean?” Have you ever tried to explain long-form to a non-improviser?

The people who care the most about long-form are other improvisers, and over time, long-form shows can start to cater to an improviser audience. Without an audience of regular people, a show can become starved for fresh air. In the anaerobic environment, the improv ferments, creating an acrid climate of snide in-jokes and cringeworthy meta-humor. This feedback loop makes the show even less hospitable for regular audiences.

Furthermore, we place far too much importance on forms. The conversation at improv mixers often devolves into litigating the distinction between a Spokane and a Pretty Flower2 or the canonical form of the Harold. The non-improvisers in the bar quickly lose interest, and the same is true of the stage. Audiences actually don’t care about the form. Lloydie James Lloyd’s blog post explains it far better than I can.

If you’re the type of person who reads improv blogs, long-form probably needs the least defending out of all the types of improv. If you pick a random improv show happening in your city, odds are pretty good that it’s long-form and for good reason. We want improvisers to live “in the moment” and to get “out of their heads.” Having to remember a complicated rule for a short-form game can put you in your head. Having to hold a complicated narrative plotline can put you in your head. Long-form distills out the heady stuff, so improvisers can dedicate their full attention to the scene.

This framing also gives us a perspective on forms and why they can be so contentious. A form ought to make it easier to stay in the moment, not add headiness. The monologue in an Armando should inspire scenes. If you find that tying the scenes into the monologue feels tedious, then it may not be the form for you. Everyone has a different brain, so what helps inspire one person might put another in their head. Figure out what works for you and your troupe.3

Short-form games emulate party games. Narrative emulates plays. Long-form is its own thing. What makes long-form difficult to explain to a non-improviser is perhaps its greatest strength. Long-form is improv that’s not trying to be anything else, and therefore, one could argue it’s the most improv of all the improvs.

In my experience, long-form can achieve the highest laughs per minute out of all the forms. Short-form takes too much setup. Narrative isn’t always going for laughs, because it needs to advance the plot. Long-form has allegiance only to comedy. There are certainly bad long-form shows, but when done well, long-form is an amazing form for comedy.

There’s a reason long-form is as popular as it is. Improvisers who have been performing for decades still do long-form. If you take improv classes today, you might cover some short-form and some narrative (depending on the improv school), but you will definitely cover long-form. Since Truth in Comedy came out in 1994, long-form has become the default type of improv practiced in the world, and it’s probably not changing any time soon.

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October 2, 2025

Most people I encounter in the world have either never seen improv or have only seen Whose Line is it Anyway (the Drew Carey version), probably on YouTube. If you’re reading this blog, I assume you’re familiar with it. To most non-improvisers, that is the canonical improv format—the host says, “In this next scene, these players are going to do a scene, …

In Defense of Narrative

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Jan 20

This weekend, I saw The Improvised Shakespeare Company, and it was incredible. It was a fully improvised Shakespeare play, which ran a little over 90 minutes. The five improvisers each played multiple characters to fill out the story. There were improvised soliloquies, rhyming poetry, and a song. I enjoyed it immensely, and I could tell the rest of the …