The Complete Improviser: Concepts, Techniques, and Exercises for Long Form Improvisation

clever premises can be a bit of a trap, because they can make us feel that once we reveal the clever premise we’ve done all the work we need to do for a successful scene. In fact, our scene, and our workload, have only just begun at that point. Strong players don’t need funny ideas; they make simple ideas funny by playing them well.

You must not only ask questions, you must ask smart questions. You must work to figure out and understand the absurd person’s point of view.

Rather than introducing some arbitrary disagreement or action to complete, continue adding information. What else might these people say? Trust that these characters simply being who they are is interesting.

Good argument scenes feature a reasonable point of view colliding with an unreasonable point of view. Inside Out and Outside In

“You gotta know the rules before you can break them.” I’ve never liked

What all good responses have in common is this: they find value in the initiation.

the audience quits believing in the reality of your scene, they’ll stop caring.

You don’t need a funny first line or funny response to have a successful scene.

Relationship scenes are not about clever premises; they’re about the friction between people behaving honestly. They de-emphasize the what. They are born not from words or clever initiations but from simple emotional reactions.

The solution here is the same as with any impasse: someone must lose without changing their character.