Chapter 3

Building Off of Other People's Ideas

So you are listening. You're making strong eye contact, and you are playing back the words that are being spoken in your head. You are nodding positively to outwardly show that you are engaged and interested in everything that is being said to you. Swell.

The upside to this skill is that maybe you are gaining and retaining a better understanding of what you are hearing. The downside is that now people think you are a great listener or “sounding board” and your newfound empathy has people wanting to bare their souls to you. Sorry about that.

Whether you want to become a more sympathetic confidant or just someone who wants to do more/try more/be more, so much of it starts with listening and building off of other peoples' ideas. What does “building off of other peoples ideas” mean, exactly? Does it mean stealing other people's ideas? Does it mean not being original? Does it mean subjugating your own creativity and individualism to constantly support other people's efforts?

Hells no! What it means is that you are learning to find inspiration from other things outside your own brain. Other peoples' ideas are the fundamental building blocks of improv, as a skill and art form.

As we have already discussed, the ability to listen actively and try to as best as possible understand what is being said is the first step in being able to improvise on stage. Yet if the only thing we do is listen, then we become a sponge, absorbing information but never really doing anything with it. If we are going to make shit up, we have to do shit with the knowledge and information we gain from listening so damn hard. That is where the “building” part comes into play. The building part is where we allow ourselves to find inspiration and add our own creativity and imagination to the initial idea or concept.

In any kind of team setting the ability to listen and build off of each others' ideas allows the group to quickly access many different concepts. Because each team member is a stakeholder in the chain of ideas, each member can lay claim to a certain amount of ownership of the final creation. Not only that, but individuals do not need to feel they have to be a superstar creative who has to come up with groundbreaking ideas all the time. If the culture is one where the group builds off of other ideas and makes incremental contributions to concepts already in existence, then even those team members that may naturally be more reserved can participate in the ideation and innovation phases without feeling the pressure of being “creative.”

In the world of improv we are trained to listen and positively accept our scene partner's “offers” or ideas. What this means as a basic practice is that instead of always having to think of something new, we can listen to somebody else's idea and associate and be inspired by what they say and whatever we hear.

An improv actor knows that the other actors are going to do the same thing, so each has the confidence to add on and build off of the initial concept. The goal is to take the thinking out of it and focus on listening, making a connection, and responding.

In the initial ideation phase, as long as you're responding to what was said by the other actor, it doesn't really matter what you say. As long as your response is inspired in some way by what your scene partner just said, then there is no wrong answer. Let's take a look at a basic Word Association exercise. I'll start with a word, any word; for example:

· Pineapple

· Chunk

· Goonies

· Movies

· Popcorn

· Butter

· Ball

· Masquerade

· Intrigue

· Assassination

All I did in this exercise is to associate directly from one idea to get to another. The initial concept is “pineapple.” By associating from one word to the next, I quickly build to the end concept, which is “assassination.” While this is a very basic ideation exercise, it essentially illustrates the fundamentals of improv: listening and building off of other ideas. The concept of pineapple doesn't have any direct connection with the concept of assassination. But by listening and building off of each previous idea we can quickly arrive at seemingly unconnected yet wholly original ideas.

I now can go back and evaluate which ideas I want to work with. Maybe the idea of an “assassination at a masquerade ball” is the first scene in a new novel. Or maybe it is the concept of holding a “Masquerade Butter Ball” charity fundraising event sponsored by the dairy industry. Whatever, we now have more options to consider simply because we listened and built off of earlier concepts.

This word association exercise is one you can do by yourself or with a team. The great thing about doing an exercise like this with a group is that once the idea is finalized, each member of team feels like they made a contribution to the end product. It may not be exactly what any one person originally thought it was going to be, but instead is a completely original idea with input from multiple members.

Another exercise we teach at Improv Asylum is something we call “Electric Company.” Named after the trippy children's educational TV show from the 1970s and 1980s, this exercise takes the concept of listening and building even further. In the first exercise that we did above, we used fully formed words. In Electric Company we respond to less fully formed ideas. This is how it works:

Person number 1 says half a word. Maybe the word he or she has in mind is “police.” Instead of saying “police,” the actor just says “po‐.”

Person number 2 listens to the first half of the word, in this case “po‐,” and comes up with an ending to the word. The next syllable might be “‐et,” creating the word “poet.” Maybe the actor comes up with “‐lenta” or “‐go stick” or anything else that he is inspired to say.

Then both actors speak in turn to say the new word: “poet.”

They both say the new idea together to reinforce the new concept. The game, as it were, is not necessarily to guess the original word that person number 1 was thinking, but rather to listen to the initial idea and be inspired to add on whatever ending comes to person number 2's mind. Instead of having competing ideas you have ideas that are owned equally by both people. Again, you can always go back and pick the one that you like best, but now you have more options, and no matter which one you choose both parties will feel like they had some kind of input, which leads to a greater sense of ownership of the final idea.

This may all sound great and inclusive and kumbaya‐ish, but as AC/DC said “I tell you folks, it's harder than it looks” (A Long Way To the Top If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll/TNT). For one thing, we are generally not raised to make other people's ideas better. Pretty much our entire lives we are taught that there is great value in being an original thinker. We are told to stand up and fight for our ideas. In the end my idea wins, your idea loses, I get the job, raise, promotion, blue ribbon, and all the accolades while you wallow in self‐loathing and a crippling jealousy of my unique talents. I mean, come on, why the hell would I want to make your idea better if that is going to put you ahead of me? And in a zero sum game where each individual is out for themselves, it doesn't make a lick of sense.

Ah, but here is the thing. In improv we are trained to create together. We are taught, not unlike sports or the military that the greater goal is for the team to succeed and not any one individual. With improv we create as an ensemble and try as best we can to stick to the ethos of accepting each other's ideas while also letting our own ideas get changed or modified.

Letting our own ideas be changed or modified is the second thing, and I think it's the biggest challenge. Fear of change is intrinsic to our basic humanity. Most of us love our own ideas. They are our babies. We incubate them and nurse them and feed them and only expose them to this harsh and terrible world when we are ready. They are a manifestation of what is inside us; our creativity, talents, and worldview. Once we allow our precious ideas to be brought forth for all to see and judge, the last thing we want to happen is to have them changed.

Imagine if you had a child, created under very delicate circumstances and nurtured and guarded with the utmost of care for nine months. In the midst of your insecure thoughts about whether or not you are good enough to actually take care of a baby, she arrives for all to see. You are a proud parent and after much deliberation you arrive at the perfect name for this one‐of‐a‐kind inspiration.

You name her Chloe. A group of friends and loved ones gather around to admire this astounding new creation of yours. They look at baby Chloe, admiring her rosy complexion and her thick black baby hair and immediately begin to suggest improvements.

“I love her hair, but imagine how cute she would look if it were red.”

“And the name Chloe, I mean, I like it, but what if we made it more modern sounding?”

“Ooo, oh yeah, how about instead of Chloe we call her Joey, but Joey spelled Joei so as not to impose any kind of meaning that may be attached to an old‐fashioned name like Chloe.”

You would be saying, “Hold the F on! That's my baby! You can't just go and change how she looks and what her name is. I created her. She is mine. You have no right to alter this perfect creation.”

It is the same thing with ideas. They are our mind babies. We cherish them and guard them and so often feel that they are perfect just the way they are. This is almost never the case and it doesn't matter if you are creating on your own or with a group. There is nothing that is created perfect and fully formed right out of the gate. It doesn't matter if it's a joke or concept or product, everything needs to be looked at, edited, and iterated. This is the process we use to go from basic or starter concepts to bigger and more expansive thoughts. It is also the process that requires the individual to let go of his or her ego, at least for a little while.

Letting your idea get changed even a little bit requires a certain amount of bravery and confidence. Bravery in the fact that you don't know if the changes to your initial idea is going to be successful, and confidence in the fact that ultimately you have many more ideas that you can come up with, and that any one particular idea is not the be‐all and end‐all of what you have to offer the team, company, or universe.

Each of these skills – listening and building off of other people's ideas as well as letting your own ideas be modified – becomes stronger with practice. The more you exercise your brain, the more your brain will become used to this process. What you will eventually find is that there is inspiration all around you. Initially it may come from listening to other people.

As you become more accustomed to associating off of the information that is given, you will start to see connections or possibilities in all kinds of unexpected places. Those unexpected connections are what lead to innovation.

Instead of racking your brain trying to come up with the next brilliant concept or idea, you will find it is more fun and far easier to open your mind and observe and listen to what is going on around you. You then build upon that initial stimulus to come up with new and exciting possibilities.

Full disclosure, I now own the concept of the Masquerade Butter Ball. Land O'Lakes, give me a call if you want to blow this concept out. This ball would be off the hook!