What Would She Be If
What Would She Be If is a character-building and empathy exercise in which participants describe a person by responding to metaphorical prompts such as 'What animal would she be?' or 'What piece of furniture?' training dimensional character observation, indirect description, and the use of metaphor to access qualities that direct description misses.
Structure
The Setup
A participant, character, or real person is named as the subject. The facilitator poses a series of metaphorical prompts.
The Prompts
Prompts follow the form 'What [category] would she be if she were a [category]?' Examples: animal, piece of furniture, weather pattern, musical instrument, time of day, type of food. Participants call out responses.
The Portrait
The accumulated responses form an indirect portrait of the subject. The facilitator may invite participants to describe what this portrait reveals about the character's essence.
How to Teach It
Objectives
What Would She Be If trains participants to access and articulate character qualities through indirect channels. Direct description of a person is often flat. Metaphorical description activates a different observational mode that produces richer characterization.
Facilitation Notes
The exercise works well after participants have watched a scene or read a short passage about a character, giving them material to draw from.
Common Pitfalls
Participants choose obvious or literal metaphors. Encourage choices that feel surprising but true. 'A broken umbrella' tells more than 'a wolf.'
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Related Exercises
Portrait
Portrait is an applied improvisation exercise from The Applied Improvisation Mindset in which one participant poses while others describe what they observe. The exercise develops skills of attention, descriptive precision, and the ability to notice details without projecting assumptions onto another person.
Do It As If
Do It As If is an applied improvisation exercise in which participants perform a task "as if" they were in a particular emotional state, physical context, or character role. The exercise demonstrates concretely how framing, mindset, and context change behavior, communication, and perception. By performing the same activity in multiple different "as if" frames, participants experience firsthand the degree to which internal state and contextual assumption shape external behavior.
What If?
What If is an applied exercise in which participants generate hypothetical scenarios by completing the prompt 'What if...' and then exploring the implications of each scenario seriously, training divergent thinking, assumption challenging, and the capacity to follow speculative threads to useful conclusions.
Be Specific
Participants silently exchange imaginary objects in a circle, then trace how objects transformed, illustrating the importance of specific communication.
Who Am I?
Who Am I is a guessing game and character exercise in which one participant is assigned or endowed with an identity, fictional character, or real person visible to everyone else, and must determine that identity through yes/no questions or through reading other performers' reactions, training endowment, characterization, and observational reasoning.
Picture Story
Picture Story is an applied improvisation exercise in which participants create and share stories inspired by images. Players receive a photograph, illustration, or abstract image and must construct a narrative from what they see, developing the ability to find story in unexpected places and communicate ideas through vivid description.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). What Would She Be If. Retrieved October 14, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/what-would-she-be-if
The Improv Archive. "What Would She Be If." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/what-would-she-be-if.
The Improv Archive. "What Would She Be If." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/what-would-she-be-if. Accessed October 14, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.