A lot of lessons you learn from acting can be transferred to writing realistically. Just as an actor has to step into a person's perspective, so must a writer. But a writer has a harder job.
An actor has to understand one person's perspective; a writer has to pretend to be as many characters as there are in his/her book.
A few things to keep in mind is that each character brings something new to a scene. Forty-year-old Tom wants to go the baseball game, twenty-year-old Brian wants to play football, and two-year-old Emily wants to play with blocks (or whatever babies play with these days).
The point is that each character stands seperate from the others. They have to have different motivations, speech patterns, manners, views on how they percieve the world, how they percieve themselves all the other things that makes a character unique.
If you can step into each interesting character's mind (but not their POV) in every scene, your story will have momentum and depth.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Writers as Actors
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7 comments:
I have a real tough time with getting out of one characters POV to go into anothers.
Man, with all these writing tips and things you hand out, you've gotta be an awesome writer.
-Judi
Naa...I've just done everything wrong at least once.:)
Jamin: Awesome. You sure know your stuff. l/p "G"
I don't have trouble with switchign POV...it seems awkward to me to carry on for too long with one character's viewpoint...
But getting inside of their minds even when you aren't focusing on them is indeed really crucial...for me, the more difficult part is writing from a point of view as if I didn't know anyone else's minds when, in reality, I do know them....makes writing a tad complicated at times...:)
:)Ian(:
Jamin, I know this doesn't really have anything to do with your blog, but I need your help anyway. We (meaning Judi and I) are trying to get our bloggy friend (HMS Avalon) to update her story--she's left us in suspense for two or three weeks. Check out my blog for details.
~Kiwifruit
I hate writing in one characters point of view for more than one chapter, because what if that characters the good guy? How are you supposed to show the bad guys without the good guy actually seeing it? That's the main struggle with POV for me. Also, when you aren't in anyone's POV it's easier to write a scene down. Because in someone's POV that's how THEY see it. Not how it actually happened.
!neveragain!
Yeah, Neveragain, it took me a few years and many rough drafts to finally get POV down. It takes a little work, but the reader feels more in the action when it's done with a third person POV. But I agree, omniscient POV can work just as well.
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