The American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “action is character”, which means that it’s not what a person says that shows us who they are — it’s what they do. In fact, it doesn’t matter much what a character says they are, and sometimes it doesn’t even matter what they think they are. Some of the most interesting characters in fiction and real life are interesting precisely because there’s such a clear difference between what they think about themselves and what they actually do to others. Villains that think they’re our savior. Losers that think they’re the winners. And, of course, the insecure underdog that’s secretly our hero.

On stage, this is an important guideline because we generally have no access to a character’s interior monologue. The only way for an actor to express character is therefore through their behavior, or more generally their attitude. The key to great characters is to pick an attitude and stick to it. Then you apply that point of view to everything your character encounters. That consistency of character will quickly endear them to audiences, even if their behavior is sometimes troublesome — after all, everyone loves a good villain. And in the end, it is again the simplest, most effective way to improvise, which is what this article is all about.

Early in beginner courses, we invite a group of players up to show us their imaginary house. We don’t give them any instruction other than to not be interesting: it’s simply one character showing their house to the others, although all actors can contribute. This generally results in the actors trying their best to fill the imaginary space with interesting ideas. There’s no real rhyme or reason to these houses: things exist because they sound cool or weird. The actors are working really hard to keep the audience’s attention. After all, how exciting can a tour of the house be? Then we reset the scene. Our instruction is simple: they went through a door to get into the house. Make the door unusual. Then continue the rest of the scene with the following thought: if this was the door, what’s the rest of the house like?

People who opened a front door that resembled a safe found themselves in a maximum security villa. People who opened a creaky door with spiderwebs found themselves in a haunted house. A door with a computer greeting them became a futuristic residence. An old drawbridge created a castle. And houses with no door? Well. These people had no money.

Making a clear choice at the top of the scene made everything much easier for the actors. They no longer had to scramble for ideas — after all, they only had to be consistent with each other. If this house is futuristic, then the toilet is self-cleaning. There’s a robot helping out with chores. Food isn’t cooked but materialized. The windows are holographic. Easy peasy.

You might at this point be thinking: surely if the actors are just following through on the logic of the scene, then the audience can do the same. In fact, the audience could even start to predict what’s about to happen before the actors get there. And you would be right. Here’s the crazy part, which is true for improv and all comedy:
they love it.

Audiences love consistency (which is not quite the same as predictability). Mr. Bean can be counted on to do the exact same thing every time, because he is who he is. In Peanuts, Lucie holds a football up in front of Charlie Brown, who tries to kick it every time, and she takes it away from him every time, causing him to fall. Charlie’s a sucker — he’ll never learn. This doesn’t reduce our love for Charlie, Lucy or the gag. In fact, it’s what we love about the show. Consistency is also character.

The unusual door, of course, is a metaphor. In Ground Rules, we already saw how making strong choices about the scene (the who, what and where) makes subsequent improvisation much easier. The exact same thing is true for character. Pick a thing and stick with it. Here are the first two rules, then, for character work:

Make a strong choice at the top of the scene.
Be consistent.

Both these things have to do with clarity. A strong choice about your character makes your character’s attitude clear from the get-go, which grounds the scene and draws the audience in. Consistency then keeps that character clear. People won’t accept a selfish character donating money unless they have a clear reason why. The actor must therefore always ask themselves: if this is true about my character, then what else?

This is actually very liberating. Gone are the overwhelming options for where the scene can go. After all, for your character, it can only go a certain way: one that’s consistent with who that character is. Easier for the actor. Nicer for the audience. Better for the show.

There’s an important difference between consistency and predictability: consistency can still be surprising. For one, everyone’s brain works differently, so it’s possible for a character to be consistent with itself and still surprise the audience because the consistency is expressed in ways they didn’t expect. The second one is when this consistency is expressed: the audience thinks they have a clear idea of where a scene is going, and then suddenly the character does that thing they do in exactly that one moment that changes everything. These are some of the best moments in a show.

So clear choices and consistency are major building blocks for characters. The next questions then are when to make these choices and what these choices can look like. To illustrate this, let’s go back to our supermarket scene from the Ground Rules:

B: Don’t shoot! Just take it.
A: What, just like that?
B: Yeah, it’s not my money, it’s the supermarket’s money. I just work here.
A: Is it too much to ask to have a little company loyalty, though?
B: You’re robbing the place!
A: Yeah, but now I feel bad about it. If I knew how terrible its employees really were, maybe I would’ve picked someplace else.

Let’s assume for a moment that the audience specified the supermarket as a location. One player decided to rob the place and just held up an imaginary gun. That’s a clear choice right from the start: the supermarket is the where. The robbery is the what. Now all we need is the who.

On one level, the ‘who’ is already clear. There’s a robber and a cashier. On a character level, however, we have no idea who these people are. Contrary to what some politicians might think, not all criminals are alike. The audience is dying to know more. We actually get a lot of character in these lines already:

B: Don’t shoot! Just take it.

I pointed out previously that this is a great line because it’s obvious, clear and relatable. Most of us wouldn’t want to die for our supermarket. This character immediately seems natural. In comedy, we call this the ‘straight’ character (as in straightforward). A straight character is a character that serves to highlight how crazy everyone else is being, and acts as an anchor for the audience. Beginning improvisers might dismiss the straight character as boring, but they’re often the most important characters in the scene — they’re the glue that brings everything together. They’re also a good choice for the beginning improviser because all their behavior can be created with that simple question: what would you do?

But, of course, unless we’re going for a completely natural scene, we don’t need two of them, so now it’s up to player A to define their character in a different way. Here, we go back to the ground rule of listening. The idea of the line ‘just take it’ is simple: don’t hurt me, it’s not worth it. But that’s not what they actually said. What they actually said was ‘just take it’. And if you take that sentence literally, it can also come across as someone who doesn’t care that much. Player A listens well, decides that this is how their character will interpret it (knowing nothing else about their character yet — that doesn’t matter), and says:

A: What, just like that?

Purposefully misinterpreting the intention of a line and instead using the actual line is a powerful improvising tool. It can create conflict effortlessly. It can also create character. What this response tells us is this: the robber didn’t expect this to go so easily. So maybe they’re new at this business. That’s already one character trait. Character B listens and responds:

B: Yeah, it’s not my money, it’s the supermarket’s money. I just work here.

This is, again, a perfectly natural response. It’s what many of us would be thinking, although not all of us are brave enough to say it. It’s the straight character doing their job. Player A again takes a sentence literally: they listen to “I just work here”, and decide to make that the sticking point. That’s a line that’s normally said by people who don’t take responsibility for their actions, or by people who don’t care much about their employer. Never mind that this is a perfectly natural response during a robbery: Player A takes the line and addresses it.

A: Is it too much to ask to have a little company loyalty, though?

This seems like a funny and surprising line to the audience. Who talks about company loyalty while they’re robbing a place? But Player A is just performing a simple trick a few times in a row: they take a sentence literally, and then take that sentence out of context.

By doing so, they suddenly make their character incredibly rich. We already know they’re new to the job because they’re surprised when people give up their money easily while a gun is pointed at them. We now also know that they oddly care about company loyalty. What kind of character would care about company loyalty? That’s right. A company person.

I guarantee you that Player A did not think about being a company person when they started robbing the place, and even if they did, it wouldn’t have worked. But if they’re a company person robbing a company, the rest of this scene suddenly becomes very easy to play. Their unusual door is the fact that they’re a robber with specific principles. They just have to stick to those principles. And they do, in the final lines:

B: You’re robbing the place!
A: Yeah, but now I feel bad about it. If I knew how terrible its employees really were, maybe I would’ve picked someplace else.

To summarize: Player B is going along with a simple principle: what would an average person do? Player A has a slightly more challenging role, but also applies a simple trick: listen well, respond literally rather than figuratively, and realize when you just created a character. This then brings us to rule three:

It’s better to discover a character than to invent one.

This has the additional benefit of the audience discovering the character along with you, which is often a highly entertaining process. And once you have the character, all you need to be is consistent. If we take this together with the first rule (‘make a clear choice at the top of the scene’), we know we have to start that process of discovery right away.

All of this may seem a little theoretical, but it actually works just fine with everything from before. Listen well. Agree with your fellow actor. Add something of your own. Then listen to your own reactions, and simply think: if this is true, then what else is true?

I’ve talked now several times about consistency and clarity. They have a natural enemy in improv, which is when people get creative and add all sorts of ideas that don’t flow naturally from whatever the character is. Maybe the robber is a big sports fan. Maybe they can’t stop chewing gum. Maybe their wife and children left them.

All of these things can be true, of course, but the moment you add them to a scene, you have to do something with them. It’s a good principle of all drama epitomized by something called Chekhov’s Gun. The principle by the playwright Anton Chekhov is as follows: every element in a story must be necessary. Never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. Otherwise, you are making promises you don’t mean to keep.

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Ernest Hemingway mocked this principle and said he purposefully liked to add meaningless details. He then also admitted that his readers would inevitably seek symbolism and significance in those same details. To the audience, everything matters, whether you like it or not.

If you’re chewing gum, we expect the gum to somehow be relevant to the scene. If you mention sports, we expect this to come up again later. Every element you offer is a ball you have to juggle for the rest of the scene. You can now see how beginning improvisers get in trouble: they get creative, add all kinds of ideas, and then either don’t follow up on any of those ideas, struggle to keep them alive, or end up contradicting themselves. Consistency of character solves these problems, because they’re only playing one single thing and extrapolating from that. Keep it simple. Stay lazy.

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Advanced improvisers do occasionally invent extra traits. They’re also good enough to incorporate all those traits and make them meaningful. Juggling training means starting with a few balls to throw in the air, mastering those, and then adding more when you know you’re ready. Improv is the same.

There’s an important reason why characters in improv need to be discovered rather than invented. A character doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If a cornerstone of improvisation is to listen and react to each other, it means that everything that’s created in a scene is actually a product of all the actors involved. Creating a character is therefore exactly the same process as the one for scenes: you construct one piece by piece. A brick, not a cathedral.

There is one notable exception to this: external traits. Obviously, a character can’t develop a limp halfway through a scene, or change accents or physical mannerisms. These need to be consistent as well, and are therefore choices that have to be made from the moment you step onto the stage.

The solution that applies most of the time is as follows: don’t. Funny voices or physical mannerisms are often a sign of that dreaded creativity. Remember, the best stuff comes from reacting. There are, however, some notable exceptions. Here are two.

Occasionally, a suggestion from the audience will serve as a framework for your scene, and it’s nice to make a choice that either acknowledges or subverts those expectations. If your scene has to take place during the French Revolution, it’s not only logical but also fun to give your characters French accents. You can also subvert expectations: the audience might suggest that you’re pirates. You can play them typically, or you can make the choice to have them be terribly polite. So even in those situations where you make choices for physicality or accents, there’s a simple question to answer: do I acknowledge the audience’s expectations, or do I subvert them?

The other exception is when you’re building a contrast with the other actor. Contrasts are funny and interesting. If the suggestion from the audience is ‘cops’, and one character walks on the stage in a gruff, brooding manner, it’s fun to pick the opposite physicality and enter in an overly composed manner. The conflict is practically built in. These characters have different attitudes, even before they speak a single word.

I would, however, not advise a player to do an accent if there’s no real reason to do so. The reason is the aforementioned Chekhov’s Gun: the audience will look for meaning in your accent, whether you like it or not. If you speak with a French accent during the French Revolution, the audience is satisfied and won’t question it any further. If you’re a French person on the streets of New York City, the audience will now have questions. Do you live there? Are you visiting? Failure to answer these questions will then make that element seem random and reduce its enjoyment.

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People don’t necessarily enjoy randomness. People who say they enjoy randomness sometimes mean they enjoy absurdity, which is an upsetting of expectations in wildly unreasonable manners. Absurdity therefore still requires a foundation.

This is also where accent work can get you in trouble: taking on the accent of someone just because you find the accent funny and not because there’s a reason for it makes the scene about you, the actor, and not the character. Don’t.
There’s an additional easy way to apply contrast to characters, and that’s the concept of status. Status is an attribute of both the characters and the scene itself (and I’ll therefore elaborate on it another time instead), but suffice to say that if one character is high status, it’s fun to take a low status character and vice versa. If they’re haughty, controlled, arrogant and dismissive, it’s good to be groveling, evasive and anxious. No one wants to see two actors fighting for the role of a high status character like a bunch of roosters. Remember the tug of war exercise? We’re working together.

There’s one final point to be made about characters, and it’s the most important point. If a character is defined by their attitude, and the best way to show that character to the audience is through that attitude, it stands to reason that we want to seize any opportunity we have to explore it, which brings us to a very important principle:

A character’s motivation should come from within.

Let’s take the cashier and the robber again. The most likely reason for someone to rob a store is that they don’t have any money. That, however, tells us very little about them. All kinds of people are poor, so it’s not any real indication of character (beyond that they would consider stealing to get it back). It’s therefore not terribly interesting.

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Beginning improvisers for some reason often jump to external circumstances. “I don’t have enough money. The engine won’t start. Someone drove over my dog.” None of these things are about character. The simple solution is to make everything your fault, always. “I gambled away all my money. I broke my car. I drove over my dog.” Assuming responsibility for your actions will quickly lead to moments of character. In real life, too.

The answer is always to make the scene about the characters. It’s their choices and actions that should drive everything, not external circumstances. For example, the scene can continue as follows:

B: You’re robbing the place!
A: Yeah, but now I feel bad about it. If I knew how terrible its employees really were, maybe I would’ve picked someplace else.
B: So pick someplace else.
A: You know what? Maybe I will. This company has enough problems.

This choice is now much more interesting. What’s stronger, the drive for money or the principles of the character? That’s a choice that comes from within.
Commit to your choices. The harder you commit to them, the funnier and more interesting a scene becomes. Never stand around discussing a point until you kill it. Remember, action is character. So to really show the character, take the action and make the choice:

B: You’re robbing the place!
A: Yeah, but now I feel bad about it. If I knew how terrible its employees really were, maybe I would’ve picked someplace else.
B: So pick someplace else.
A: You know what? Maybe I will. This company has enough problems.
B: Are you serious right now?
A: Yes. I don’t want your money. To think that the people working here give up so easily.
B: I just don’t want to get killed.
A: I never gave up easily! I did my job, every day. I would’ve gotten shot in the line of duty if it meant defending this place! So why is it me who got fired?!
B: …Jeff?

At this point, I’d like to share a pet peeve. Over the course of many years, you start to identify some patterns in how people think. For some reason, when given the suggestion ‘rocket’, most beginners tend to play astronauts preparing for launch. First their engine breaks down. Then they can’t operate the controls. Then they think there’s a stowaway on board. At this point, I often yell out: “Will you go to space already?!”

Don’t be afraid. Make the choices. All the good stuff will come – characters are action. The action drives the scene. In other words, characters drive scenes.

All great storytelling places the characters at the center of their story. Who are they? What choices do they make? How will they react when presented with a problem? This human element is the core of all great drama and all great comedy. Don’t get distracted by your environment. Keep it between the actors. Which brings us to the final principle:

Character is king.