Improv Blog: Why Do We Say No Instinctively?

If you are interested in performing improv, you’re likely to come across the concept of ‘Yes, And’. It is probably the most commonly used term in improv, and it promotes the idea that when you’re in an improv scene/game/exercise that you should accept whatever offer is given to you and build upon it. But over the years of performing, teaching and directing improv I’ve seen that so many people instinctively head to ‘no’ much more than they go to yes.

To break down ‘yes, and’ slightly more, the ‘yes’ part of yes and indicates that a performer should say yes to the offer, which may be an idea from another performer or a suggestion from the audience. The ‘and’ part indicates that you should be ready to add to the original offer.

For example, if a scene partner says ‘shall we go to the beach’ you should say yes to accept the offer of going to the beach, and you should follow this up with ‘and…’ followed by something your characters could also do in relation to going to the beach. For example ‘yes, and when we’re at the beach we can ride donkeys.’

This is a powerful concept in creating improvised performances as the alternative would be to say ‘no’ to an offer. Shall we go to the beach? Followed by a ‘no’ to reject or block the offer leaves the characters stood there not only not going to the beach, but actually not doing anything. In this situation the performers will have to continue the scene until they can agree upon something they want the characters to do.

This is a simplistic example, as the accepting of an offer doesn’t always have to be one character asking another if they want to do something and the other character saying the words ‘yes, and’. For example, one character could declare that it is raining outside, and the second character could say ‘I’ll get our umbrellas’. Saying they’ll get umbrellas is an acknowledgement of what the first character offered as an idea. You don’t literally have to say the words ‘yes, and’ as long as you accept and build upon the reality that you are creating as a team.

To take this a step further, the concept of ‘yes, and’ doesn’t mean you have to fully go along with whatever offer you are given as long as you build upon it. For example if the first character said ‘do you want to go outside and play in the rain?’ the second character could say ‘no, the aliens always come out in the rain’. In this case the second character has said no to an idea, but it’s not a full rejection as it builds upon the idea of the rain in that now the audience will understand that rain equals aliens.

On the other hand, if the response has been ‘no, the aliens are invading’ that would be more of a block as it just replaces the idea of rain being in any way important. The difference here is subtle, but the idea is that it is a more successful practice to accept and build upon each other’s ideas rather than reject or replace them.

In my experience many people seem to find the concept of ‘yes, and’ to be a difficult one, at least initially.

As someone who teaches improv to both children and adults and directs people of all experience levels in improv shows, a pattern I’ve noticed is that people are more likely to say no and reject ideas than they are to accept and build upon ideas. It’s like it’s most people’s default position.

I say this as an observation rather than as a criticism. If you’re going to effectively teach or direct people doing improv you have to really pay attention to what your students/cast do.

I’ve seen countless scenes where the dialogue will run like ‘shall we go to the shop? No’ or ‘it’s raining outside.’ followed by ‘No it isn’t’ or ‘How are you mum?’ followed by ‘Do I know you?’ Things that instantly set the progress of the scenes back.

I taught a class a few weeks ago where we played a game of Questions Only, which if you’re not familiar is a game where performers can only say sentences which are questions. About eight people took part in the game, and the idea was that if you said something that wasn’t a question or hesitated for too long you would be eliminated, and the next performer would take your place in the scene.

This scene was set in a pub and I was surprised when no less than six of the students had joined in the scene and despite the pub setting not a single character had been served with a drink. Every time a new performer joined the scene the conversation would roughly follow the pattern of one character asking the other if they wanted a drink and then the other character questioning why they were being asked that, or who the other person was or why they should accept a drink from them.

On the surface it appeared that the students were playing the game and sticking to the rules, but as I pointed out to them, the scenario that the audience (other students) had suggested was a pub setting. I’d say it was a reasonable expectation of anyone watching a scene set in a pub that characters would be served and consume drinks of some kind. In this instance the performers had failed to ‘yes, and’ the suggestion given by the audience and the scene was going nowhere fast.

I pointed out that if they had accepted each other’s offers of having a drink in a pub in the scene that they would then be able to move on and develop the scene in any number of directions. Instead, the entire scene was just stuck around the idea of ordering drinks and not accepting that.

And of course there are a million things that could happen in a pub setting. Someone may propose, there could be a fight, someone could do a business deal etc etc. But the students didn’t go down any such route. Their instinct was that a pub scene should be about people buying drinks, but one by one they said ‘no’ to each other with this initial offer and the scene went nowhere.

This got me thinking about how often I had seen students or performers in shows just flat out knock back offers in scenes. It also got me questioning why the default position for so many people was to start with ‘no’. I think there are multiple reasons, but if we come to understand why people may lean towards no instinctively, we can acknowledge this in ourselves and challenge if we really do wish to say no, or if saying yes is a better approach for success.

No Keeps Us Safe

An observation I’ve had working with young people, and in particular by observing the behaviour of toddlers who are just learning to talk, is that one of the first things we really learn as humans is to say no. I have a family member who has a child who is a toddler and the child is going through the phase commonly known as the terrible twos. The young age where toddlers start to act out and be difficult. They say no to everything. Do you want to play? No. Do you want to eat? No. Do you want to sleep? No.

Why is it that from such a young age people instinctively learn to say no all the time? I assess that it’s a survival instinct. If there’s something a toddler isn’t sure about they are safer if they say no. As a child develops and starts to get an understanding of the world around them, there are all kinds of scary things and dangers that they have never experienced or had to negotiate before. It’s like a built in survival instinct that saying no keeps you in the current state that you are, but saying yes means you will try something new and that new thing may be good or may not be good to do. So ‘no’ keeps you safe.

Of course I’m not suggesting that people doing improv, even as adults haven’t progressed beyond that of a toddler, but do feel that there is possibly this ingrained instinct to reject new ideas as some kind of in built response. This may be true in how people conduct themselves in the real world as well, but feel this could be amplified in the imaginary world of an improv scene.

The world of an improv scene is created spontaneously so people are instantly thrown into something with undefined rules until they define them. Unlike in real life where you have had your entire life up until any moment to base how you judge situations, an improv scene may cast you as a character in a setting which is completely unfamiliar and out of your comfort zone. When faced with this our instincts may kick in and to protect ourselves from this unknown world of dangers, we start from the default toddler like position of saying no.

The more people do improv, the more comfortable they will get with it. Through experience they will come to understand that the imaginary world they are exploring doesn’t hold anywhere near the number of dangers as the real world. In an improv scene you have the opportunity to do and say things you may not be able to do in real life and discovering this can be very liberating and freeing. This may be a discovery which is conscious or it may be subconscious, but once people feel it is ok to say ‘yes and’ to offers their creativity can flourish.

And this isn’t to say that there are no dangers in the imaginary worlds created in improv scenes. As a performer you have to keep at least part of you grounded in the real world to judge and assess your improv actions. This is partly so you can practice good stagecraft, and continue as a storyteller, and act as your own writer and director, which every improviser has to do to some degree. But also, so that you keep the awareness that you shouldn’t carry out unsafe or inappropriate behaviour under the guise of it being your character. Even if you’re playing a supervillain that doesn’t mean you can attack your fellow performers without real world repercussions or judgement.

But the point is that we may say no as our first instinct to keep us safe from any of these such dangers real or imaginary. When we practice improv as a skill we learn where the boundaries are to say yes or no, and in an improv world it has much more scope for us to say yes.

People Want their Ideas Only

Another reason I’ve observed for why people will frequently say no, or reject an offer is because they may have an idea for what they want to happen in the scene and reject anything that doesn’t align with this idea. This is something that can often occur with inexperienced improvisers who have an idea of what a scene should be, or have ideas of what they want to do, and will try to force the scene to stay on this track no matter what.

Sometimes this may be because a performer is actively choosing to dominate a scene, but usually this is a sign of inexperience and that the performer demonstrating this doesn’t understand that this practice limits the teamwork in the improvisation.

One thing I teach where I see such behaviour is that as an improviser you should be open to whatever direction a scene goes in. As improv is usually created by more than one person you are all equal contributors. At times one person may hold the baton and take the lead but you should be ready to hand over the baton to your scene partner whenever they present an offer.

It may be that you feel your idea was better than what ended up happening, but this isn’t something you should be too concerned with as an improviser. If you want things to be precisely your idea it may be better to develop that idea as something scripted.

If someone says no or rejects ideas just to force their own idea it isn’t the best practice to take, but it’s almost impossible to completely avoid. I would imagine every improviser has at some point or another changed direction on a scene because they have an idea in the moment which they’re gonna make happen on way or another. This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing to do, but if it becomes a regular habit that you do instinctively or selfishly I would argue that it’s not for the better of the scenes or the team.

Saying No Feels Like it’s a Dramatic Choice

The last reason I’ll point to today (and there may be more) is that saying no feels like a dramatic choice. In real life many people will end up doing things they don’t want to because they are trying to be people pleasers, or may find it hard to say no to others. Many people want to avoid conflict and saying no to others can feel like conflict. As part of a person’s development when doing improv, that person may feel how freeing it can be that they can say no, and be brash and confident as their character compared to what they’d be like in real life.

To say no to someone can feel brave, or controversial. It certainly isn’t instantly agreeing. And this can be a trap for some performers as they may, with the best intentions lean towards an instant response of no or some other rejection as it feels the dramatic choice to make. This is understandable as almost all stories, plays, films and fiction books are usually about people overcoming conflict. An easy conflict to create is two people not agreeing, but there is a difference between creating a scenario where characters have opposing views and a scene which isn’t able to get off the launch pad because the performers involved aren’t able to negotiate working together to build upon offers.

Learn When to Say No and When to Say Yes And

You don’t always have to say ‘yes, and’ to everything. It’s my belief that ‘yes, and’ is a concept that will lead you in mostly the right direction, but shouldn’t be taken as an absolute rule. As a concept saying yes and to everything just indicates that you should accept and build upon ideas. I also know that some people will push ideas very quickly into the absurd and if done too much it isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes as a performer you have to lean more into your director/script writer/editor instincts and make judgement calls for when a ‘yes, and’ is one too many.

Characters should be able to be free to say no, or reject ideas of things that pushes boundaries, or is unsafe or is ridiculous or in some other way isn’t true to the character. Just as in real life there will be a threshold of what is acceptable to you, there will be a threshold for your character. In an improv world which doesn’t have the exact same rules as real life you may find this threshold allows for much more exploration of saying yes than in real life where there is much greater risk and consequences to doing so. But finding this balance of where the line for ‘yes, and’ and ‘no’ lies is something that will take time to explore and discover.

The important thing here, and if I have one message to leave you with it’s this. If you can have the understanding that for many people their default response is more likely to be a no than a yes, and you can by the reasoning I have laid out understand why this is, you can begin to challenge these responses of ‘no’ both in others and in yourself.

If the use of no in an improv scene is an instinctive reaction ask yourself is this just as a safety response, and is it needed or justified, or is it limiting your ability to explore in a scene? Is someone else or yourself saying no just to force the narrative on a set path that doesn’t have to be stuck on one track? And are you using a big old no, just to be dramatic? If you or someone else is doing any of these, my advice would be to explore saying ‘yes and’ and you may find the results open up a world of possibility in your improvisation scenes.

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