A great improv show isn't a collection of unrelated scenes. It's a web — and the web is woven from techniques that connect what came before to what comes next.
Reincorporation is the engine: bringing back an element from earlier so it returns with added significance. The gun from Act 1 fires in Act 3. Keith Johnstone's core narrative skill — what makes improvised stories feel authored. Callback is its comedic cousin: the element returns for a laugh, for recognition and surprise. All callbacks are reincorporations; not all reincorporations are callbacks.
Connections are the Harold's magic — the moment in third beats when previously unrelated scenes reveal that they were always about the same thing. Nobody planned it. The ensemble was listening, and the themes converged. Beats are the structural rhythm: first beat discovers, second beat heightens, third beat resolves or connects.
Mapping takes one reality and lays it over another — a breakup played as a hostage negotiation. The gap between the two frames is where the comedy and insight live. Straight-man grounds the pattern: one player holds reality steady while the other explores the unusual thing. Without the straight-man, there's no contrast. Without contrast, there's no game.
Tag-runs accelerate: one player or game remains constant while partners are swapped in rapid succession. Each new context heightens the pattern. Elevating makes your partner's choice the most important thing in the scene. Justification takes what's already happened and retroactively makes it make sense — the improviser's superpower of backward coherence.
The connective tissue is what separates a set of scenes from a show, a sequence of events from a story.