Experiences

Improvisers are taught that there is a moment in every scene when the 'routine' that has worked so far must be broken so that the narrative can progress. Timing is everything; do this too soon (before you've properly established the routine) and you confuse the audience. Leave it too late and you bore them.

'Breaking the routine' is a useful way to think about larger things like business, career and life. In life if you're trying to break a routine you really only have two options: -

1. Repeat an experience that had the desired effect in the past, or,
2. Try something for the first time.

It amazes me the lengths to which we'll go to avoid 'option 2'.  I'm in the process of pitching a TV show at the moment and the hardest task so far has been writing the 'X meets Y' paragraph of the proposal*.  The network has said that they want something genuinely new and different and we reckon that our idea is that.  Experience has taught my creative partner that because we don't have an existing relationship with them the pitch must be framed in the context of a repeat experience.

As much as they say they're looking for 'something new', most people (in televisionland at least) don't want these new experiences to come from new people.  Which is presumably why we see old faces in new formats; we've already been asked if the idea can be altered to make it 'a bit of a celebrity vehicle'.

I feel dirty and all I've done is written three pages of A4.

* The most famous (and best) of these being of course Ridley Scott's three line pitch: 'Jaws in Space', aka Alien