Day 274 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

THERE'S METHOD IN THE MADNESS AND MADNESS IN THE METHOD, GILROY!

OR

FICTION IS ALL ABOUT HOW WELL YOU TELL THE LIES YOU TELL.

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Acting or writing, it's all about whether you can inhabit the character that's going to make things come to life. That is what the method school of acting was about. The person playing the role would live with the script. They would eat, drink, and breathe the character they were playing, until they could find that point where they could stop acting and be themselves being the character.

 

I know, "What the hell did you just say?" Look, you already have the basic part down. You developed an idea of what a particular character looked like. Then you went ahead and worked on a 'Voice Journal' for each of your important characters. You let them tell you who they were and what made them that way. You heard how they spoke, how they looked while speaking, and how they moved through a scene as they spoke.

 

Now go out and find a real image of that person. The Internet is swarming with photographs, videos, drawings, paintings, digital creations. A little digging should yield an image very much like the one in your head. At that point you will know how that person looks and sounds. You will know what has created them as they are and what motivates their actions in the present.

 

You have spent a lot of time building this character. Now it's time to let them tell a story. The trick that actors like James Dean, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, and other greats learned was, once they knew a character inside out, it was time to be themselves being the character. In other words, they stopped trying to inhabit a foreign role from outside the story, they let the role become a part of their personality. Instead of trying to make every inflection and intonation, every look and movement the perfect representation of someone else, they found those key parts of their own character that echoed or closely resembled the trait and adapted that to the role. They became themselves being the character.

 

This lifts the burden of fabricating everything and allows you to feel what is truly necessary and representative of your character inside the environment of the story. Easy? I hope not!The best portrayals never come easy. That's just another well told lie by a master of the art of writing.

 

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Meanwhile...live, love, lie. But only in the context of the story!

 

 

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Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.