I thought my script was tight. I had edited it multiple times. I had cut the obvious filler — the throat-clearing openers, the redundant instructions, the qualifiers that weakened my statements. I had gone through the recording-and-listening process. I had polished the language until I was genuinely satisfied with it.
Then I did the highlighting exercise, and I discovered that roughly forty percent of my script was filler.
Forty percent. Of a script I thought was finished.
The exercise came from a principle in Ken Weber’s Maximum Entertainment that stopped me cold when I first read it. Weber defines three categories of desirable audience reaction: rapt attention, laughter, and astonishment. Everything in your performance should target one of those three. He adds a reluctant fourth category — necessary instructions or explanations — that should be minimized as ruthlessly as possible.
Then he delivers the line that haunted me: “If I’m not enthralled, amused, or amazed by your words or your actions — every word, every action — then I’m on my way to being bored.”
Every word. Every action. Not most words. Not the important words. Every single one.
That is an impossibly high standard. And it is exactly the right standard, because the audience does not give you credit for the good parts and forgive the weak ones. The audience experiences your performance as a continuous stream, and every moment of filler is a moment where their attention begins to leak.
The Highlighting Exercise
Here is what I did. I printed my script on paper — the full thing, about four pages for a twenty-minute set. Then I got three highlighters: green, yellow, and red.
Green for every line that directly targets one of the Big Three reactions. Lines designed to create rapt attention — dramatic moments, emotional beats, fascinating revelations. Lines designed to get laughter — humor, wit, playful moments. Lines designed to create astonishment — the buildup to reveals, the language surrounding impossible moments.
Yellow for necessary instructions and logistics. Lines where I tell the volunteer what to do, or set up a physical element that the audience needs to understand. These lines are not targeting a reaction. They are housekeeping. They are necessary, but they should be as brief and efficient as possible.
Red for everything else. Lines that are not targeting a reaction and are not logistically necessary. Lines that exist because I wrote them, not because the audience needs to hear them.
I went through the script line by line. Some lines were easy to categorize. The opening story was clearly green — it was designed to engage the audience and build connection. The instruction to “think of any word” was clearly yellow — logistically necessary.
But many lines fell into an uncomfortable middle ground. They were not obviously filler, but I could not honestly say they were targeting a specific reaction either. They were… fine. Acceptable. Not boring, but not exciting. Not unnecessary, but not necessary either.
Those went red.
When I finished highlighting, I spread the pages on the desk and looked at the color distribution. The amount of red was staggering. Not in large blocks — I had already cut the obviously weak sections in earlier editing passes. The red was scattered throughout the script in individual lines and phrases. A sentence here. A clause there. A few words tacked onto the end of an otherwise green sentence.
It was death by a thousand small cuts. No single red line was a catastrophe. Each one was minor — a few words, a beat or two. But cumulatively, they represented nearly half of the script’s total length. Nearly half of the words I was saying on stage were doing nothing to earn the audience’s attention.
What Filler Actually Looks Like
Filler is not always obvious. The most dangerous filler is the kind that sounds like it belongs. Here are the patterns I found in my own script.
Throat-clearing sentences. Lines at the beginning of a section that exist to warm up the thought rather than deliver it. “What I am about to show you is something that I find absolutely fascinating.” That sentence tells the audience nothing. It is me revving the engine before driving. The audience does not need to be told that what follows is fascinating. They need to experience it as fascinating. The sentence is filler dressed as setup.
Restating the obvious. Lines that tell the audience something they already know or can see. “As you can see, the envelope is sitting right here on the table.” The audience can see the envelope. They have eyes. Describing what they are already looking at is not information. It is filler.
Hedging and qualifying. Phrases like “I think,” “kind of,” “sort of,” “in a way,” “to some extent.” These weaken whatever they modify and add nothing. “This is kind of amazing” is weaker than “This is amazing,” which is weaker than just letting the amazing thing happen without commentary.
Transitional fluff. Lines between sections that exist solely to announce that one thing is ending and another is beginning. “Alright, so that was interesting. Now let me show you something else.” Two sentences. Zero content. The audience does not need to be told that one section has ended. They experienced it. They do not need to be told that something else is coming. They are watching.
Nervous repetition. Saying the same thing twice in slightly different words because you are unconsciously hedging against the audience not understanding you the first time. “I want you to think of a number. Any number at all. Just hold a number in your mind.” The first sentence does the job. The second is clarification that may be needed. The third is pure repetition. Cut it.
Self-commentary. Lines where you comment on what you are doing rather than just doing it. “This is the part where it gets really interesting.” If you have to announce that it is getting interesting, it probably is not. Let the moment speak for itself.
The Conversion Exercise
Identifying filler is half the battle. The other half is deciding what to do with it. You have three options for every red-highlighted line.
Option one: cut it entirely. This is the simplest and often the best approach. If a line is not targeting a reaction and is not logistically necessary, remove it. The performance will be shorter and tighter. The audience will not miss what they never heard.
Option two: convert it. Take a filler line and rewrite it so that it targets one of the Big Three reactions. The throat-clearing sentence “What I am about to show you is something that I find absolutely fascinating” could become a specific, engaging question that creates curiosity. The transitional fluff “Alright, now let me show you something else” could become a callback to an earlier moment that gets a laugh. Conversion is harder than cutting, but it preserves the pacing of the original script while upgrading the content.
Option three: compress it. For yellow lines — logistically necessary instructions — the goal is to say the same thing in fewer words. “What I would like you to do is to please take this pen and write down the first word that comes into your head on this piece of paper” becomes “Take this pen. Write the first word that comes to mind.” Sixteen words become twelve. The instruction is identical. The delivery is faster. The audience spends less time in housekeeping mode.
I went through my script and applied one of these three options to every red-highlighted line. The process took an entire evening. Some lines I cut immediately — they were easy decisions. Some lines I wrestled with, going back and forth between cutting and converting. Some lines I compressed and then realized that even the compressed version was not necessary, and cut them after all.
When I finished, my script was about thirty-five percent shorter. The running time dropped from roughly twenty minutes to about thirteen. And here is the thing that surprised me: the piece felt longer. Not in duration — it was measurably shorter. But in substance. Every minute was now doing work. Every moment was earning the audience’s attention. The experience felt richer because the filler had been removed and the remaining content could breathe.
The Ongoing Audit
The highlighting exercise is not something you do once. Filler creeps back in. It is a natural consequence of performing and refining. You add a new line after a good audience interaction. That line earns its place for a while, but over time, as the context around it changes, it becomes filler. You extend a pause with a few words because the silence felt uncomfortable. Those words become habitual, and they are filler. You add a clarifying sentence after a confusing moment, and that sentence stays in the script long after the confusion has been resolved by better staging.
I now do the highlighting exercise every few months. I print the current version of my script, get out the highlighters, and go through it line by line. Every time, I find filler that has accumulated since the last audit. Not as much as the first time — the forty-percent shock has not repeated — but always some. Five percent here. Ten percent there. Enough to tighten.
The Emotional Difficulty
I want to be honest about something: this exercise is emotionally difficult. Not intellectually. Intellectually, it is straightforward. Identify filler. Remove filler. Done.
The emotional difficulty comes from confronting how much filler you have been carrying. When I saw that forty percent of my script was red, my first reaction was not productive analytical thinking. It was embarrassment. I had performed this material in front of real audiences. People had sat through those filler lines. Their attention had leaked through those moments, and I had not noticed because I was too busy performing to see it from their perspective.
The embarrassment faded quickly, replaced by something more useful: motivation. Because now I knew where the problems were. I had a map of exactly which lines were costing me the audience’s attention. That is not demoralizing. That is empowering. You cannot fix what you cannot see, and the highlighting exercise makes the invisible visible.
The Standard
That standard — every word, every action targeting rapt attention, laughter, or astonishment — is probably unachievable in its purest form. Some amount of instruction and logistics is unavoidable. The audience needs to know what you are asking them to do. They need enough context to follow the effect.
But the standard is not meant to be achieved perfectly. It is meant to be approached relentlessly. The gap between where you are and where the standard sits is the space in which improvement happens. Every line of filler you convert or cut closes that gap slightly. You will never reach zero filler, but you can get remarkably close, and the performances that result from that pursuit are qualitatively different from the ones that carry forty percent dead weight.
The audience can feel the difference. They may not be able to articulate it. They will not say, “That performer had very little filler in their script.” They will say, “That was really engaging” or “I could not look away” or “The time flew by.” Those reactions are the direct consequence of a script that respects their attention by giving them something worth paying attention to in every single moment.
The Test
If you want to know how much filler you are carrying, do the exercise. Print your script. Get your highlighters. Be honest.
Green for rapt attention, laughter, or astonishment. Yellow for necessary logistics. Red for everything else.
Then look at the colors.
The distribution will tell you exactly where you stand. And it will give you a precise, line-by-line map of what needs to change.
The first time hurts. Every time after that is maintenance. And the script that emerges from this process — lean, intentional, relentless — is a script that deserves the audience’s attention.
Because if you are not enthralling them, amusing them, or amazing them, you are on your way to boring them. And they came to your show for an experience, not for filler.