In improv, “Yes, And” means accepting what your partner gives you and building upon it. But in solo podcasting, you are your own scene partner. Too often, we “block” ourselves by second-guessing ideas mid-sentence and hitting the restart button.
To unlock better content, you must treat your own thoughts as offers to be accepted, not mistakes to be erased. The first thing you say is often the default, expected answer. By forcing yourself to continue instead of restarting the sentence, you push past the obvious to find the unique “tertiary thoughts” where your true perspective lies.
In this micro-episode:
- Why you should treat your solo recording like a dance fitness class (never stop)
- How self-censorship prevents you from finding your unique angle
- The strategy of finishing the take before you judge the content
Resources: Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
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::In improv, yes and means accepting what your scene partner gives you and then building upon it. For
example, they might mention that you are their best friend that just showed up at their house with your cat.
So you receive that information about what's happening, you accept it, and you add to it by responding that
you prefer to groom Ruffleblatt at their house because they save Ruffleblatt's fur. And the scene builds
up because
::Neither of you block what each other adds to the scene. Both of those things are now true. And you and your
scene partner get to play with why in the hell your friend saves the fur. So for solo recording, your
episodes, your videos, you are your own scene partner. I do tons of solo improv as well, and I certainly
believe that most solo podcasters don't treat themselves like this. Even improvisers don't.
::because most improvisers don't do solo improv. And I had to teach myself how to approach both of these
things. I had to kind of teach myself these skills on my own. So what I discovered is common human habits in
the space. We really second guess what we say before we finish our own sentence. And because we're on our
own, we abandon these ideas before we really explore that world and explore what works.
::out of our own faces or even our own physicality as well. We really want to start over all the time. And this is
the very first thing that dance fitness instructors are coached and learned. The first thing that I was
told when I started doing it is we are not allowed to ever start over. We have to keep going. And learning that
because I learned that before I did improv was such a huge help for improv.
::You cannot start a scene over. You're with a scene partner. You're in that scene. You have to just go. You
can't stop. So you have to teach yourself this too when you're rolling solo that you can't constantly block
yourself saying things. You can't tell yourself no. And you'll get better results this way if you start
yes-anding yourself. Now what does this look like? You have to finish to the end of a segment or a section at
least before
::you restart. Or even better, finish the episode and then do a second take if you must. And when new thoughts
come out, you start a bit of a tangent or a story. Treat that like a gift or an offer from your scene partner.
You accept it, you build on it, and you see where it goes. Use your episode's notes or your structure to keep
you reined in a bit, but give yourself that space to explore. You can always edit later.
::You can do a second take. You can fix it. You can enhance it. But you can't do those things if whatever it is
that was about to come out never came out. So the interesting stuff is going to kind of exist past the
obvious. It's going to often exist past your notes. And the first thing that you say is quite often the kind
of default expected thing. But if you yes and those first,
::thoughts and you get to those second thoughts or there's tertiary thoughts. Those can be really
interesting and maybe sometimes where your perspective actually is. So be a generous scene partner to
yourself and say a lot more yes than no. I'm Jen DeHaan. This is the Credibility Minute. You can find more
episodes and get in touch with me at stereoforest.com slash minute.