As part of a recent book store appearance at Rowan University, a student reporter for the campus newspaper interviewed me. Most of the questions were run-of-the-mill and the young reporter seemed to be taking all of my answers as run-of-the-mill, too.That is, until he asked me what advice I’d give to writers who were “just starting out.”
“Acting lessons.”
His scribbling came to a halt. His eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped open. “Acting lessons?”
“Yup,” I nodded. “Acting lessons.”
Acting lessons teach you about infusing a character with life, about dialog and accents. They teach you about creating scenes, which are the building blocks to great storytelling. They teach you about intentions, reactions, apparent goals and hidden agendas. They teach you how to build tension through conflict. Most importantly acting lessons teach writers how to embody their characters — how to flesh them out. Actors think about a character’s history, likes, dislikes, phobias, dreams, goals, resentments. Even if none of that information is told on-screen, it is depicted — through the actor’s voice, movements, behaviorisms, etc.
The other bit of advice was: while learning the craft of writing, learn about the business of publishing. Far too few writers understand that publishing is a business, and that once their book is written, it’s not a work of art, it’s a product, a product to be marketed, a product that needs to find its consumer-base, i.e. readership. Authors should think of themselves as self-employed, as entrepreneurs, with their books as their products. Authors, not publishers, are now primarily responsible for doing their own marketing, advertising, and promoting. Authors should understand economics of publishing, the seasons involved, the concerns of bookstores, large and small.
Authors as actors? Yes. Authors as self-employed entrepreneurs? Most definitely.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Robert McKee recommends acting lessons, too.
I gather the “art part” stops around the moment you start querying.
Hi RhondaL! Thanks for commenting. Some would say that querying is an “art form” in itself. But I agree with you. A query letter is basically a marketing letter, seeking to draw attention to your product. It should not only discuss your book (i.e. product), but also describe your potential market (i.e., readership). There are a lot of wonderful websites out there that discuss query letters, by the way. Query Shark is one of them. Bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, who was a professional salesman, also shares the story of how he got his agent on his website, and displays his query letter. It’s worth checking out.
Interesting ideas – and definitely the right approach to a ‘run-of-the-mill’ interview. Excellent advice about remembering that writing/getting published is a business. It’d be nice just to be creative and starve in a garret until a rich benefactor came along, but times have definitely changed.
The other idea, about acting lessons, hadn’t struck me before but you’re right; that’s just what we do. We don’t stay outside our characters to create them, we live them and find ourselves taken in surprising directions by them.
But an offshoot of that is that actors usually have scripts to work with. The way they say particular lines can alter the meaning of the words. It’s interesting to wonder if, by reading our characters’ dialogues in different ways, a reader can actually change who they are.
If the writer’s using acting techniques, so (maybe) is the reader.
Yes, it’s true that actors have scripts, but they have to bring an arsenal of skill to the script in order to bring it to life. I’ve seen bad actors do terrible things to wonderful scripts and wonderful actors do incredible work with terrible scripts. Actors, good actors, recognize the unwritten story behind the story. They see the history, the past traumas and disappointments, that the dramatist has only hinted at. Of course, mounting a play is a team effort: unlike writers, who are responsible for all of the world-building themselves, actor enjoy the support and vision of the stage designer, costume-designer, director, etc. However, in the end, it’s the actor who has to incorporate the character. The skills that allow him to do that would serve a writer well.
As for whether readers change how characters, I’m sure they do. But if we’ve written the character clearly and delineated him well, then I would think the core interpretation would remain the same.