Yes, and....
What does a classic improv rule have to do with a West German terrorist group and my revision on a new book? Maybe nothing. Let's find out.
Dear Writer,
I first heard about it as the 24-hour effect, where when something catches your attention, you’ll see it like three or four more times in the following 24 hours and you’ll be like, “OMG, THIS IS SO MEANINGFUL, THE UNIVERSE IS CLEARLY SENDING ME A SIGNAL,” when really, you were seeing those things at the same rate before, you just didn’t notice.
I usually experience this when I get a new car. I’ve been a Toyota girl since the early aughts, but recently, I bought me a Honda Fit.
Why? Not gonna lie, mostly because she was purple.1
I can promise you, I never noticed Honda Fits before I bought my Honda Fit. I didn’t even know they existed. I’d heard of Civics and Accords, but that was pretty much it.
Now, I see Fits everywhere.
This is known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
But you know how I said before that this phenomenon is the kind of thing one might assign meaning to, but really it’s a common experience?
I still assign meaning to it.
I’m trying to break this mental habit that I got into where when something is One Thing, I decide it can only be One Thing and then I dismiss the Other Things that it can also be. Look, just because they slapped the name of a West German terrorist group on this thing doesn’t mean that when you experience this phenomenon it’s meaningless.
A few days ago, I was listening to a podcast about something—can’t remember what it was, doesn’t matter—and someone brought up that they had done improv in college and the first rule of improv is that you never say no to anything anyone is saying. You don’t say yes, either. You say “Yes, and….” You run with their energy, and you add to it, and you send it back to them.
Let’s say we’re in a scene together and you walk through the imaginary door in the imaginary set of a black box room where we have nothing but each other and two folding chairs, and you serve me with, “How dare you leave me at the grocery store!?” How might I respond?
If I respond with a defense, we’re both dead in the water. “I couldn’t find you,” shuts down the momentum of the scene. First, I’m denying what you set up—that I actually abandoned you at the grocery story—and I’m also not adding anything to the scene for us to build on. The only possible response to “I couldn’t find you,” is a big shrug.
But if I yes, and you with something like, “Because you were having sex in the laundry aisle with the assistant manager,” then I’ve served additional energy back to you, and we’ve got a volley going.
Maybe saying that all the Honda Fits I’m suddenly seeing are meaningless is my way of saying no, but to myself instead of yes, and.
Maybe instead of shutting down a partner separate to myself, I’m shutting one down inside of myself. After all, I contain multitudes, don’t I? Was Whitman just talking about himself, or all of us?
Yes, and is a central idea to creativity, and I’ve seen it everywhere for the last couple of days. If I watch a YouTube video, someone mentions it. If I’m talking to a friend, they bring it up without me saying a word.
Yes, and. Yes, and. Yes, and. I’m seeing it everywhere right now, but since I know that this is an established phenomenon, my instinct is to deny its meaningfulness, to shut it down because of my deeply instilled programming that if something is one thing, then it cannot also be another thing.
But really… these are not mutually exclusive ideas. Something being both common and meaningful is absolutely possible… so what happens if I try to reprogram my thinking away from either/or and instead embrace yes/and in this specific situation?
For instance…
I’m mid-revision on Nothing is Ever Always and I’m thinking about where I can take scenes and what I can do to Make Things Worse—which is the thing I always want to do in fiction but try really hard not to do in real life—and this idea of viewing my writing as an improv exercise where I yes, and myself is coming in handy.
I’m what they call a spare writer; I like to get in, tell my story, and get out before I get boring. I don’t stop and smell the roses, nor do I really stop to describe the roses, and nine times out of ten, if the roses are not pulling their weight in that scene, I will rip those mofos out with extreme prejudice.
I like this about my writing, but I also feel like it’s possible to be too spare. So I’m bringing in some yes, and energy to my revision. I’m sprinkling in more specific detail where I can, and in every escalation scene, I’m adding in at least one thing that Makes It Worse and running with it. I’ve spent my whole life imagining every possible bad thing that can happen to me and my loved ones, why not shift that energy into the world of fiction where it can actually be helpful?
The biggest lesson for me here actually isn’t about the writing, and it isn’t that I found out this common phenomenon was named for a West German terrorist group (although that is ), and it’s not even that buying an older car is an awesome decision if she’s purple and she sparkles in the sun (did I mention she sparkles in the sun?).
It’s that meaning is never mutually exclusive to anything.
Maybe the meaning isn’t in that you’re noticing something more because you noticed it once.
Maybe the meaning is in that you noticed it in the first place.
Something to think about.
Everything,
L
And because she has a stick shift, which cars don’t have much anymore, and because she’s a cheap older model and I’ve been driving new cars for a long time and they never felt like mine, you know that feeling of dude this is so my car? I never had that with the new ones. They were all seductive with their Apple Carplay and heated seats and misleading warranties that actually cover as little as possible, but they were also wildly expensive, and I was more traditionally employed then. This is one of those times when I was financially forced into a choice that ends in dude, this is so my car and I’m really happy about it. Did I tell you she’s purple?
In Psychology 101, I learned that the phenomenon is cognitive consciousness. A much more clinical and less scary than a terrorist group name.
When my ex-husband was my boyfriend, we spent a semester going to college in Heidelberg, Germany and bought a cheap used car to see as much of Europe as we could. We were driving through Italy without the required international driver's licenses, blithely assuming no one would check. We did not take into account that Italian police were on the look-out for cars coming from Germany, at the height of the Baader-Meinhof crime spree. We were pulled over and asked for his driver's license, but in the meanwhile, they checked our trunk. There I had laid out a week's worth of just washed brightly colored bikini panties. The young Italian cops were so flustered that they forgot to ask for our papers and sent us on our way.