Waffling: When the mouth runs faster than the scene
You know the feeling. You're on stage, your partner has just offered something great, and suddenly you start talking. And you don't stop. You ramble about the weather, explain at length why you're taking off your shoes, or get lost in details about an aunt who isn't even in the room. By the end of the scene we've talked your partner's ear off, but actually nothing has happened.
That's "waffling" in improv: the umbrella term for verbal padding that goes nowhere. It's one of the most stubborn defence mechanisms we have. In the moment it can feel safe, because no awkward silence sets in, but for the scene it's often a sure killer. We bury the action under words until nobody knows what it's about anymore.
Why we talk the scene to death
Why do we even do it? Why is it so hard just to shut up for a moment? Keith Johnstone, one of the giants of the improv world, breaks the phenomenon down into two flavours: strategic waffling proper and panicked babbling.
Waffling proper is basically strategic blathering. We don't talk because we have something to say, we talk because we want to stop the situation from changing. If we keep philosophising about banal stuff like the trash bag or the search for parking, we don't have to commit to a real emotional connection. It's a kind of safety loop. We keep circling in the air, refusing stubbornly to land, because down on the ground a conflict or a real emotion might be waiting.
Babbling, on the other hand, is pure brain-data garbage. That usually happens out of panic. We're afraid of emptiness and assume that silence is unbearable for the audience. So our mind produces "sentence trash" to fill the void. The problem is that while we're chattering, we can no longer listen. We block our scene partner because they can't find a gap to set their own impulse. The scene becomes a monologue, even when two people are talking at the same time.
The curse of explaining: Don't tell, SHOW!
Another master, Del Close, had a quite radical view on this. He hated it when players did "exposition". That's the typical explaining-the-world: "Oh look, we're here in this old, dark cave and I'm really hungry."
Close would say: "Don't tell me, show me!" If you're hungry, then go and look for food. Rummage through the cupboards, gnaw on your shoe, do something physical. Anyone who talks just to explain the situation is treating the audience as stupid. They believe the spectators won't get what's going on unless it's pre-chewed for them. Yet the audience is much smarter than we often think. A strong physical action is a thousand times more interesting than an explanatory sentence.
Another problem Close fought hard against was so-called puttering. That's talking about people who aren't there. We call them "ghost characters". When we stand on stage and spend five minutes gossiping about what the neighbour said yesterday in the stairwell, we're not in the here and now. We're not building a relationship with the human being right in front of us. The scene loses intensity because we escape into the past or to absent people.
Out of the head, into the room
Viola Spolin, the mother of improv theatre, called this problem head-tripping. We're stuck in our own head, trying to control the scene intellectually. We're already cooking up the next joke or how the story might end. While we do that, we start blabbering to buy time for our planning.
Spolin's solution was the focus on the space and on the physical task. If you're fully busy emptying an imaginary, heavy bin, careful that not a drop hits the floor, then you have no mental capacity left to chatter unnecessary stuff. Physical reality often makes the words superfluous. When the body is working, the player is "in the play" and no longer in their head-cinema.
The fear of silence
In modern improv it's often pointed out that silence is a form of courage. Susan Messing puts it perfectly: "Shut up and be." We have to learn to love our characters enough to trust them to be interesting in silence too. We often talk only because we're afraid of being boring. But true intimacy and "high stakes" often only emerge in the moments when nothing is said. When two lovers look into each other's eyes for the first time, that moment is much stronger if they do it silently than if one of them immediately says: "Nice to meet you, what do you do for a living, anyway?"
The logic of indecision
Mick Napier sees in waffling above all a problem of indecision. Players often beat around the bush for so long that they hope the partner will finally make a clear call. It's like a verbal feeling-out where nobody dares throw the first stone. Napier demands: make a decision immediately! When you open the cupboard, decide right away what's inside. Once you've made a decision, you don't have to debate it any more. The scene gets a direction and the "waffling" stops.
Will Hines from the UCB school also warns against talking the comedy out of a scene. He calls it talking past the game. Often something funny or unusual happens in the scene, and instead of reacting and letting it land, the players just chatter past it. Every line should either assert reality or explore it. Anything else is "fluff", filler that just bloats the scene needlessly.
When chattering is actually fine
There's an exception, of course. Keith Johnstone draws a sharp line between the player's unconscious waffling and the character's deliberate waffling. If a character chatters because they're nervous or because they think they're terribly important, that's a wonderful offer. A chatterbox as a character is a comedic form in its own right and can carry an entire scene.
The key distinction is the Johnstone test: is the talking serving the story, or is it protecting the actor? If you're talking to buy time or to feel safe, it's a mistake. If you're talking to show your character's nervousness or to establish a personality trait, it's a gift to the scene.
How to stop the talkfest
So that we play with each other on stage again, instead of just blasting words at each other, here are a few radical techniques:
- Silent scenes: Try not speaking at all for the first two minutes of a scene. That automatically forces you into the body and lets real emotions emerge.
- One-word sentences: An exercise where you can only speak in single-word sentences. That makes waffling impossible and forces you to carry real meaning with every single word.
- Physical tasks: When you notice you're tending to chatter, give your character a complex physical task. Repair an imaginary engine, sort tiny screws, lay a festive table. With the brain busy on the action, the unnecessary blabber usually stops on the spot.
- Gibberish: When you take away the familiar words, you have to convey meaning through voice and body. You can no longer "talk over" emotions, you have to express them directly.
- The power of the first thing: Get used to making a decision immediately. Once it's clear what's going on, there's no reason left to ramble.
Summary: less is more
In the end, improv is about the connection between two people in the here and now. David Almond often compares a scene to a symphony. Silence in that comparison is the bassline, the foundation. Words should only be the peaks of an emotional wave. If your character's inner life is strong enough, you only need a fraction of the words to tell a great story.
So dare to leave the gaps unfilled by text. Let the moment land, look your partner in the eye, take a deep breath. Most of the time, much more interesting things happen in silence than in a thousand hastily blurted sentences. Whoever talks less ends up playing more.