Cancelling
Also known as Cancellation, Undoing
Quietly erasing something that was just established (an emotion, a decision, a piece of the world) so the scene resets to neutral and loses its momentum.
Known for
- A subtler failure than outright denial: the offer is accepted, then walked back a few lines later ('I'm leaving you... well, maybe after dinner').
- Johnstone treated cancelling as one of the main ways performers protect themselves from the discomfort of their own commitments.
- Emotional cancelling is the most common form: a character flares with anger, then immediately defuses it, draining the stakes the anger created.
- The fix is advancing: honor the thing you established and let it cost the character something instead of taking it back.
Connected to
People