The 75-25% Rule
guest column by John McInnes
Today is a guest column from John McInnes. If you want to pitch a guest column, send me a few sentences of what you’d write about and what improv teaching/performing credits you have at will@wgimprovschool.com.
John is an Scottish improviser who helps run the Glasgow Improv Theatre and performs with their house team Couch. He ran Kitchen Rules Theatre in Bristol and studied at UCBTLA. He also learned from UCB teachers visiting London back in 2016, before it was "hip". Enjoy!
Today I’m going to discuss a rule that I’ve been passing on to teams for a couple years now. It derives from a workshop I did with Jonny Svarzbein at the 2018 Del Close Marathon. In that context we were using it for premise initiations but now, I suggest it is applied to every line in an improv scene. The rule is the following;
“The first 75% of every line of dialogue should be normal, the last 25% should be unusual (if an organic unusual thing is obvious to you)”
To be unambiguous; the “normal” part of a line should contribute to the scene by adding non-comedic specifics. The “unusual” part of the line should contribute to the scene by adding comedic specifics.
This single rule ensures 3 properties to a scene that I think makes them better
Line order is “right”
Heightening is grounded
Scene feels more organic
Each of these properties is more subjective than the last, so let me try and justify them.
Line Order
You don’t have to be a comedy nerd to notice that this rule reproduces a “setup-punchline” structure. If you’ve done stand-up you’ve probably noticed that jokes written in this order tend to be better received! By doing the normal part “first” and unusual part “last” you’re imposing a specific order on every line in the scene.
People don’t typically think of jokes in this order. Your brain already contains the underlying context you need to understand any joke you create. But other people don’t live in your head. By providing the non-comedic context first to contrast against your comedic idea, it is easier for other people to immediately “get” a joke.
For example, if an opening gives us a premise like “snooty uber driver”, let’s look at two potential initiations, one that puts unusual first and one that puts normal first.
“Want some music for the ride, maybe some opera? I’m your uber to Costco.”
“Hey I’m your uber to Costco. Want some music for the ride, maybe some opera?”
The first one has higher potential for confusion for the audience and your scene partner. They don’t know anything about the scene beforehand and may fairly assume the opera stuff is just a normal aspect of the base reality.
Doing all scenic dialogue with this order also fixes a similar but slightly different issue; failing to react to what your scene partner just said. Newer improvisers will think of a game move before their scene partner has finished talking and then say that idea, instead of responding normally to the last thing they heard. It comes across like they weren’t listening, something every audience appears to naturally hate.
Grounded Heightening
Here’s another helpful property this rule ensures; it grounds the unusual character in reality and ensures the voice of reason heightens the game.
Unusual characters that exclusively say unusual things become alien and untethered from the scene quite rapidly. Quick, unrestricted heightening causes unusual characters to become unappealing sociopaths who only care about whatever their game is. By requiring the unusual character to firstly make normal contributions to the scene they stay tied to reality and their heightening tends to be easier to follow.
Let me try to illustrate how this could happen with our “snooty uber driver” premise, if the unusual character is not responding with normal stuff first.
“Hey I’m your uber to Costco. Want some music for the ride, maybe some opera?”
“Honestly I’m not really an opera buff, just whatever is on the radio.”
“Oh no, an uncouth curr? In my chariot?! I will be a disgrace at the next box social!”
“You’re being pretty snooty for an uber driver.”
“Sir I demand satisfaction, I will retrieve the dueling pistols from the glove compartment.”
To me, this kinda heightening isn’t uncommon, the unusual character is playing a pattern but it’s inhuman, it’s not tied to reality and they barely seem to care what the other person is saying. Here’s a version that maintains most of these same moves but adds normal contributions to the base reality.
“Hey I’m your uber to Costco. Want some music for the ride, maybe some opera?”
“Honestly I’m not really an opera buff, just whatever is on the radio.”
“Sorry my radio got stolen last week, crime is terrible around here. Let me play some Puccini, that’s quite accessible even to the uncouth ear.”
“You’re being pretty snooty for an uber driver.”
“Oh because I’m an uber driver I can’t enjoy the fine arts? Sir, I demand satisfaction…”
I like this more, it’s still an improv scene but the unusual character feels more human, I can at least see each line respond to the last. Each game move is given its own moment to shine and heightens relative to the last thing that got said.
Voices of reason are essential to most scenes but many people have played a voice of reason and felt afterwards like they were “too negative”. That’s probably because they were doing lots of good normal contributions to the scene such as asking questions, but they didn’t actually add any unusual contributions. By requiring the voice of reason to share the heightening burden it makes that role feel more fun for the performer and audience.
Let me modify the example above to give the voice of reason some reasonable contributions to the game. It feels more fun to me!
“Hey I’m your uber to Costco. Want some music for the ride, maybe some opera?”
“Honestly I’m not really an opera buff, whatever's on the radio…wait is that a Victrola instead of a car stereo?”
“Yeah my radio got stolen last week, crime is terrible around here. Let me play some Puccini, that’s quite accessible even to the uncouth ear.”
“You’re being pretty snooty for an uber driver, you know you’re driving a 2008 Honda Accord right?”
“Oh because I’m an uber driver I can’t enjoy the fine arts? Sir, I demand satisfaction…”
Organic Scenework
Every artistic medium has at least one innate “superpower”, the thing that medium does that doesn't translate to other mediums quite as well. Movies provide visuals you’ll never actually see, TV shows evolve characters over huge amounts of time, novels capture the feeling of emotional inner monologues. The same is true about the sub-genres of comedy, and when it comes to improv, it’s superpower to me is that funny lines of dialogue feel organic, on the spot.
If the comedic content of any line exceeds 25% it will come across to an audience as mechanical and forced, the game moves will feel like an uninspired box-ticking exercise. This is that feeling that “robotic” improvisers give off when they are attempting to “write sketches on their feet”. It is happening because there is not enough fuel in the base reality to organically improvise game moves, therefore they must brute force the game moves.
By keeping a 75-25% ratio you are throwing out just enough non-comedic scene contributions that you will frequently find organic game moves that “pay off” an earlier normal contribution to the scene.
The caveat at the end of the 75-25% rule means you can contribute a 100% normal line to the scene, as that will be far less damaging than forcing a game move. It will provide more fuel for an organic move later in the scene. The feeling of unexpected organic game moves is exactly the feeling that is unique and original to improv, so you want that to happen in shows as much as possible!
Let me add a final part to that example, trying to at least illustrate how you can pay-off some earlier contribution to base reality later in a scene.
“Hey I’m your uber to Costco. Want some music for the ride, maybe some opera?”
“Honestly I’m not really an opera buff, whatever's on the radio…wait is that a Victrola instead of a car stereo?”
“Yeah my radio got stolen last week, crime is terrible around here. Let me play some Puccini, that’s quite accessible even to the uncouth ear.”
“You’re being pretty snooty for an uber driver, you know you’re driving a 2008 Honda Accord right?”
“Oh because I’m an uber driver I can’t enjoy the fine arts? Sir, I demand satisfaction. Wait, where are my dueling pistols? They’ve been stolen too!”
Conclusion
I’ve really written a lot of this article as if comedic improv is an exact science, which it clearly isn’t. But when you find little rules that help you do better scene work, it’s a very comforting feeling I think! It makes doing good scene work feel less like random chance.
I like when you can “test” things in improv, so I encourage you to go and try this out;
Try performing a show where you rigidly stick to this rule.
Try performing a show where you frequently break this rule.
What worked better? Report back to me your data and we can compile an academic paper (rather than actually do any actual improv).
Thanks John!