Fannish etiquette note: “Yes, and...”
If you’re sitting around sharing headcanons or brainstorming fic ideas with somebody else, and you want it to be a happy, mutually pleasant experience, don’t throw cold water on someone’s idea just because you don’t vibe with it. (If you hate it, them, and all their works, maybe you’d want to icebath them, but this advice is intended for people who are like “But why can’t I make friends in fandom???”)
Improv theatre has what’s called the “Yes, and...” rule. If you want to encourage people to be creative and throw ideas around, you have yo foster that process with your actions. In simple terms, this means: When you’re doing improv with someone and they introduce an idea, the way to make it better isn’t to say “Nope, bad idea, I don’t like it.” It’s to say, “Yes, this is the idea, AND...” and then add something on that spins it in a more interesting direction.
If someone you’re building an idea with says, “AU where they all go on a relaxing beach vacation,” then yes, you definitely have the option of saying, “I hate tropical resorts because the workers are exploited and they’re bad for the environment.” That would definitely kill that idea.
You could yes-and by trying to ameliorate the things you don’t like: “Relaxing vacation... where they house-sit for a relative who’s off on a scientific survey, so they don’t get served drinks on the beach but they’re responsibly tied into the local economy and helping local nature conservation efforts.”
Or you could yes-and by using your concerns to flip the idea on its head: “Relaxing beach vacation at a resort whose workers all go on strike their second day there, and the whale-watching tour is interrupted by revenge of the psychic dolphins who commandeer the boat to rescue a whale caught in a fishing net.”
So many great things can happen when you remember that you’re not creatively tied to someone else’s ideas, but you do have the power to encourage them, but go off in your own direction.
This message brought to you by a tweet I just saw that literally replied to a fic idea to say, “I hate the idea of a [the fic premise] but I feel if it did happen [the characters would do the absolute opposite]”
You don’t need to tell someone you hate their idea! You could avoid the conversation entirely if you felt nothing good would come out of it—keeping your mouth shut is an underrated but truly noble choice.
But you could also just add a “yes, and...” by including a bit of affirmation and then trying out a new spin. Like, you could say, “Interesting idea! I don’t usually see the characters doing that, but when I think about it, I imagine them doing the opposite. Here’s my idea.”
It will make you way more friends than the other version. Trust me on this.
