(WARNING: This essay contains Breaking Bad spoilers up through S4.)

I was running a rehearsal once where the following scene occurred:

Person 1: Have you seen the donut I left in the break room that I was saving for later?

Person 2: Oh? This one? I ate half of it.

Person 1: But I was saving that!

Person 2: Oh, sorry. But your chocolate milk is still here (drinks some of her chocolate milk, then hands it to her) well, half of it. I also ate half of your lunch because it looked so good in the fridge…

At this point I was beside myself and had to stop the scene. “Are you telling me,” I asked, “that this guy’s entire M.O. in life is eating half of people’s food?! That’s no one’s M.O. He’s inconsiderate, he has bad boundaries, maybe, but he’s not the Half-of-Food-Ruiner. That’s not a thing!” Once I settled down from my tirade, we discussed calmly what had made Person 2 make the decisions he did in the scene—he’d learned about finding the “game” of the scene, and about heightening, and he’d done the simple math: The “game” was taking half of things (because it was the “first unusual thing" that had happened), the heighten was to first take half of the thing secretly, then do it in front of the person, then do it to something bigger. All technically sound, I guess, but obviously wrong in execution. The scene, as experienced from the audience, felt both flat and absurd.

This was an acute example, but the experience occurs almost anytime an improviser takes that ubiquitous and dangerous “game of the scene” shortcut I like to call “you always.” “You always take the last popsicle!” “You always cheat at cards!” “You always do this!” The “you always” is a shorthand indicator that we’ve just defined a character by his most salient characteristic, but the problem is that that first action or statement, in all it’s particularities, is almost never indicative of a larger sense of a character’s motives, feelings, etc. And by limiting them to “always” doing that one narrow activity, you basically turn them into two-dimensional caricature who obsessively engages in one tiny cluster of odd or annoying behaviors pretty much all the time.

Enter Walter White. One of the biggest arguments among Breaking Bad fans is whether Walter has been changed by his experiences since we met him at the beginning of Season 1, or whether he’s simply been revealed to be who he has always been. I mean, how could a mild-mannered chemistry teacher become a ruthless, murdering meth dealer in such a short time? Was it just that something snapped when he was faced with his mortality? Or was it that he was finally free to be his true self? The arguments are seemingly endless (I know, because I’ve been caught in the middle of them at parties before—people take their Breaking Bad very seriously). The truth is, it’s got to be a little of both: like anyone, he can’t possibly act in ways completely outside of his true temperament, while at the same time the acute experiences of his current life have certainly shaped the direction his temperament turns in.

But, and here’s the real lesson, it’s not the same or even particularly similar behaviors every time. It’s not, “You always obsess over insects that get into your lab” or “You always purposely blow up the expensive sports car you bought your son rather than return it to the dealership.” And yet, the same person does those two very, very different things. Of course he does. Because the “you always” is deeper than the present activity—it’s about one’s values, how one views himself, his relationships, and the world around him. It both explains previous behaviors and predicts future ones, regardless of the change in circumstance. And it’s cumulative. That’s why, actually, I prefer “if this is true, what else is true” to “you always” when building out a character. Because the first statement opens up an expanse of thematically related but distinct behaviors, while the second seals off the character in a tiny box of singular compulsion.

An appropriate response to this argument as I’ve laid it out at this point would be, “Okay, but that’s a serial television show that has hours and hours of story within which to develop nuanced and complex characters. In an improv scene, we get maybe two minutes, and saying that someone ‘always’ does something is just an efficient way of endowing them with a focused persona quickly.” Yes, absolutely. You’re right. We don’t have the time to allow each character to confront scenarios where their true natures can be slowly and subtly exposed. Or the budget.

But I would argue that the most important choice you can make about character, whether it’s a high-budget scripted television series or a two-minute improv scene, is not reliant on budget or time or, if you get really good at it, even script. Because the most important choice you make about your character is the second choice you make, and it takes the same amount of time to make a choice that gives a character depth as it does to turn them into a gag. That second choice determines the type of pattern you are establishing for your (or your scene partner’s) character—and if we hit that sweet spot in the pattern, that choice will be plausible enough to seem like it’s just what that character would do, but surprising enough to make us feel like we’ve learned something new about them.

Back to Breaking Bad. The first thing Walter White does, when he’s told his diagnosis (actually, while he’s being told his diagnosis) is to obsessively stare at a mustard stain on the doctor’s lapel. You think it might be because he’s in shock and spacing out, but when the doctor asks him if he understands what he’s said, he responds by saying back everything the doctor said. He heard him alright. So then you think, “okay, maybe this is just his way of avoiding dealing with his mortality.” But the writers of Breaking Bad are too careful for that. They’ve used this moment as a defining one—faced with his mortality, Walter White does exactly what Walter White would do. And in case we don’t get it, when he starts planning his meth-cooking business with Jesse Pinkman the very next day, sure enough, he’s obsessing over details, this time of a higher order. “No, this is a volumetric flask,” he tells Jesse as he tries to teach him about the proper equipment for making methamphetamine. “You wouldn’t cook in one of these. Volumetric flask is for general mixing and titration. You wouldn’t apply heat to a volumetric flask; that’s what a boiling flask is for. Did you learn nothing from my chemistry class?” Data point two. And that, right there, is Walter White. Mustard-stain obsessed, proper flask-using, detail-obsessed, judgmental, desperately seeking order and control in a world that thwarts his attempt to control it at every turn (whether it’s a cancer diagnosis, or, we later find out, being left behind as the business he started and abandoned becomes wildly successful). And it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. Do his behaviors become more monstrous, unethical, abhorrent as the series continues? Yes. But part of the brilliance of the show is that, if you go back at any point in your viewing to an earlier episode, the details may be different, but the people are the same. The Walter White who refuses to take orders from a meth distributor is the same Walter White who refuses to take orders from a car wash owner (and that, incidentally, is a lesson in heightening as well). Because the details serve the character, not the other way around, the “you always” (or the “if this is true…”) is never about the details—it’s always about the person.

Okay, but again, you’re in a scene, happening in real time, and you only have a few seconds to make this character make sense. How do you not use the details to inform the nature of the character? Well, you can. It’s not, like, evil. And some ways of doing it work better than others. For example, naming a similar thing you’ve done in the past that is different but still relatively concretely fits the pattern of behavior is better than simply repeating the behavior almost exactly to establish a “pattern” or “game” (“I eat half of your things”). And doing a tag out to actually show your character doing that similar behavior in a different context is even better than talking about it (“Randy, you ate half of these box lunches for homeless people!”). Sometimes this can be executed in a conceptual way by moving your character into a context that doesn’t actually match up to the character’s (“Randy, you ate up half the food in the Secret Annex and we don’t get another ration until next week!”). This is a smart way to heighten out when a pattern becomes too literal, but it does expend most of the comedic value of the scene pretty quickly (these tag outs usually heighten into a button and are then swept, the character never to return).

But let’s say we want to avoid this kind of literal pattern formation altogether (which is, after all, the point of my argument). How do we, in real time, open up a meaningful pattern of behaviors for our (or our scene partner’s) character? How do we avoid just eating half of everything in the room?

Practice. At rehearsal, sure, but start with the material that’s right in front of you, in your everyday life. Notice when you or a friend says “you would” to someone—why “would they”? People watch and ask yourself “what else might be true about this person that I can’t readily see just from looking at them?” Write a story about them in your head. Be generous and expansive in developing their “character.” Watch good films and tv shows that develop consistent but nuanced characters. Read novels that do the same. Realize that the reason these are satisfying is that, as human beings, we’re actually amazingly adept at recognizing clusters of behavior associated with the same core persona, even when those behaviors are seemingly very different on the surface. Then, let this natural ability guide you on stage. Forget the rules you were taught about “yes, and” and “playing the game,” and just be (or be with) the person in front of you. Let that second thing you do or endow your scene partner with flow out of the first without being stuck to it. And then let that pair of things define a whole person—a person who obsesses over mustard on a lapel the way he obsesses over the proper chemistry equipment for a meth lab; a person who eats half of the donut his colleague was saving for later the same way he signs his name so big on the office birthday card to Laura that there’s no room for anyone else to write anything. Because that guy? That guy is real.