Method Writing

By Lis Anna-Langston

I studied Dramatic Arts at a Creative and Performing Arts School from age eleven until graduation. There wasn’t a creative writing program, but I was able to write my own material. 

Acting has never been my favorite. There isn’t much I like about it. But being in the program day in and day out created a complicated relationship. People like Stella Adler became my heroes. 

It’s impossible to study acting and not love Stanislavski. Brando said, “If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It’s the ultimate hustle.” Oh, Brando. Sigh. There is so much to love about Method Acting that even typing this thrills me to the core. And yet, I’d do anything to avoid acting.

In North Carolina I continued to study Method Acting. It actually led me to the staggering 9 ½ year mark of study. Wondering why on earth I’d ever spent that much time studying something I’d never use, a fellow writer commented that I’d sorta carved out a new niche: Method Writing. I’d never seen it from that angle, but it was true. An intense inhabiting of my characters, like a skin suit, and wearing it to see what it felt like until it felt real. Motivation, magic, subtext, observation, and the body as an instrument are just some of the tools in acting. 

Another common tool is to tap into “emotional memory”. A quick summary of EM: you bring your own memories, and the feelings associated with your memories, and use them during a performance.

Feel.

Feel is at the heart of Method Acting. Feel is at the heart of my Method Writing.

How does the world feel? From climate to culture, what is the feeling? Method Writing feels so real to me because I start by going in search of a single truth and building up.

I had a woman follow me into the breakroom during a workshop and blurt out, “I am so sorry about your childhood.”

I hadn’t been writing about my childhood, so I was curious what she was referring to.

“The stories you just read aloud. They’re about you, right?”

“No,” I said, “I did not grow up in a trailer in South Carolina with a mother who is an exotic dancer.”

“Oh,” she said, cheeks flushed. “Your stories feel so real.”

“They’re supposed to. That’s the job,” I said, pouring a cup of coffee.

“But how did you do that?”

Method Writing. That’s how.

To the best of our ability, our job as creators is to walk the paths of our characters. Stand in the dark city. Put on the corset. Move surreptitiously through a crowd. Send the secret message. Then, link this to how a character feels and what it means to them.

Method Writing is a lifelong pursuit. At its core, it is the simple act of choosing something real from my life, environment, experience, dreams that drives a real feeling. Find something great and build up, creating a multi-dimensional character, flawed and vibrant, with a feeling that anchors to a moment in your life. The choices are endless.

Confiscating Others’ Experiences

By Sharon May

During last year’s Halloween frenzy, Peggy repeated her story about being required to collect money for UNICEF while politely refusing her neighbors’ sugary treats as commanded by her parents and teachers. Not the Halloween her seven-year-old mind had envisioned, particularly given that she had received candy in previous years.

I’ve heard the story often in our 17 years together, but this time I felt her resentment and connected it to mother-daughter stories she had also told me over the years. When I say Peggy is resentful about being robbed of her Halloween fun, I don’t mean that she remembers being resentful, but that she experiences the same deep emotion she did at seven. With that realization, I began envisioning a short story about deprivation.

I began working on my it, and realized I had drafted a similar plot some 30 years ago that was now languishing in a file drawer after meeting an early death due to my inexperience with life and a lack of craft. I dusted off a draft and read it. The basic premise is that a college professor takes her fiancé home to meet the family she had willingly learned to live without. Her conflict with her mother and their confrontation over old resentments drive the story. Sounds a lot like what I had in mind with Peggy’s story.

So, maybe I didn’t have a new idea, but a resurfacing of an idea I was too young to write about. I guess the idea was being seasoned till the right moment, when I can understand how a 66-year-old slight can endure and shape a person. Had I tried to write it previously, I would have had a confrontation with a 30-year-old woman and 50-year-old mom. I envision the exchanges will be more complex if the women are older. There is something more humorous, as well as sad, if both mom and daughter have to hash out old memories that have been smoldering for years.

No matter how the story turns out, I will always think of it as Peggy’s story as it will have bits and pieces of Peggy in it. The daughter in the story she is a college-educated woman who taught at a small rural, liberal arts college as Peggy did. They are also both from small towns they desperately wanted to, and did happily, escape to make a better life for themselves. Both had troubled relationships with their mothers, though for different reasons and outcomes. Peggy never had a chance to discuss with her mother her experiences or feelings about them, as her mother died young when Peggy was in graduate school.

But there will be lots in the story not based on Peggy because characters come to life on the page and tend to do and say what they want, surprising the author as much as the audience.

The Book Isn't Ready

by Kasie Whitener

 

Last week I had the longest conversation I’ve had with my agent since she said she wanted to sign me. We spoke for nearly two hours about the first 100 pages of my manuscript. After reading them for the second time, she wanted to share her thoughts.

 

I took four pages of notes in a separate Google document while we spoke. Everything she said was spot on. She had questions I couldn’t answer about the world I’ve built. She found contradictions and inconsistencies. She found confusing motivations and no motivations and inconsistent motivations.

 

She found out the book isn’t ready.

 

And this creates a lot of work for both of us. Me on revision, her on reminding herself that I will make her money someday. Just not today.

 

I knew Being Blue wasn’t ready for an agent or a publisher. I knew it even as I sent it to her. But I also didn’t know exactly what to fix. The exchange went like this:

 

Me: You rep vampire novels? I have one of those.

Her: Send it to me.

Me: It’s not ready. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it.

Her: Send it to me.

 

And here we are, eight months later, talking about what it needs to make it ready. To make it irresistible to any editor she shares it with. She didn’t drop me. She told me to revise it.

 

I’m not discouraged. In fact, Amy was so supportive of the work – and continually said she loves it – that I felt excited to jump back in. I felt like I stood in front of Gordon Ramsey while he tasted my dish and he said, while rubbing his lips together, “So savory. For anyone else, this would be great. But it’s not your best.”

 

Fresh eyes on your work can be transformational. Being Blue has been workshopped through Columbia II for years. I mean, years. Every scene has been in front of other writers. But Amy isn’t looking at this like a writer. She’s a reader. Even better, she’s a salesperson. She knows what readers buy.

 

I’ve been given painful feedback before. Everything from dismissing vampires as a misdiagnosis of rabies to being accused of being a Twilight wannabe. My vampire pages have been in front of readers who wanted to love it but didn’t and readers who wanted to hate it but couldn’t.

 

“It’s well written,” some reluctant readers say, not liking the sex, the cussing, or the killing. “But vampires aren’t really my thing.”

 

I’ve received painful feedback before, but Amy’s was like the day after a 120-squat workout. It’s a good hurt. You know it took effort. You know it built muscle. You know it’s the next stage that will get you to the next stage.

 

And since Tuesday, I’ve been working on the key fixes she identified for me so that the next time we talk, we can address a different set of fixes. Again and again. Until it’s ready.

Why I Journal

By Sharon Ewing

I believe the reason some writers have dismissed the value of journaling is due to its definition.  Webster defines journaling as “an account of day-to-day events”.  Notating mundane everyday acts isn’t going to interest anyone except the writer, with rare exceptions.

That definition pretty much describes the first journal I kept as a preteen. Growing up in a family of six, sandwiched between and sharing a bedroom with two sisters close in age, there was little privacy, but my precious pink diary had a lock and key.  My journaling experience had begun.

Writing after that consisted of school assignments. Then parenthood arrived, along with a teaching career replete with papers to grade and endless lesson plans.  Free time didn’t involve paper and a pencil.  All that changed one day at dinner as I listened to my kids teasing one another about an earlier childhood incident that I had forgotten.  I thought about how my siblings and I enjoy reminiscing whenever we get together, laughter filling the air as we share the events that keep us connected. I dug out a spare spiral notebook, and set out with a new resolve.

Soon a business opportunity initiated a family move South. Myriad changes that accompany new jobs and an unfamiliar location along with adolescent angst provided new fodder for daily entries, along with a new reason.  I poured emotions onto page after lined page.  Both writing and rereading the entries eased some of the turmoil impacting these years together. 

Journaling proved to be an even more valuable outlet when I couldn’t voice the agony of watching my dad sink into Alzheimer’s and when my husband suffered a heart attack miles away from home. It became my best friend in a place where I was a stranger.  Through the births of my grandchildren and the deaths of several more family members, including that of my daughter, I filled lined pages with questions and ramblings, emptying myself each night before crawling into bed hoping to sleep.   More recently, in our first covid year I began a morning journal with statistics attempting to find sense in all of it. It helped. 

Today my stack of journals, all shapes and sizes, are tucked away on a shelf in my closet, my memories, heartaches, questions, prayers, and ramblings, the pieces of my life.  I don’t know how or why, a cheap spiral bound book replete with ramblings of the soul can bring some peace of mind.  I do know that it doesn’t matter if I ever use them to create a memoir, a story or two, or even if I ever read through them again.  Their greater purpose, to complete me.

3 Steps to Set and Pursue Writing Goals in 2022

 original post December 2014, updated for 2022

By Kasie Whitener

The top resolution every year is to lose weight. It’s not a coincidence that most of us feel like we’re carrying a little extra baggage.

For writers, losing weight means something a little different. The baggage we carry around is often unrealized goals. As we move into another year, we again plan to be more productive, give more time to our writing, and make actual progress toward publication.

Rather than renewing the same resolutions and hoping for the best, try these three strategies to ensure satisfaction.

Review the previous year

First, review your goals from last year and determine how well you did against them.

For example, my biggest goal was to publish a manuscript. In August, the second book in the After December duet was released. It's called Before Pittsburgh and met modest success, like its predecessor.

What goals did you have for 2021? How did you do?

Set Realizable Goals

Be honest with yourself about what you want to achieve and how you plan to do it. Rely upon your knowledge of your own limitations to curb your most ambitious goals into achievable milestones. Set a goal that’s just beyond the work you’ve already done.

For example, my goal for 2022 is: complete the follow-up to Being Blue, the vampire novel currently being shopped by an agent. I also have two non-fiction projects and a non-vampire fantasy novel that all need work. I would also like to earn more literary journal publications and maybe an award or two in 2022. But focusing on the second vampire novel will position me for a successful sign if Being Blue finds a home. So that's priority one.

How much have you already done toward the goal you’re setting?

Plan Check-ins

Other people are not necessarily planning to help us with our goals. For example, literary journals are not likely to respond immediately to the work I send. A periodic check-in can remind me how long it’s been since I last submitted something. 

Word count, pages, chapters, and deadlines are all ways to measure my success toward writing goals. Checking in weekly or monthly helps me stay on track.

Are you moving closer to your goals?

I have a sign on my desk that says, “Is what you’re doing right now moving you closer to your goals?” The sign reminds me, every time I read it, to refocus, stop procrastinating, redirect when something’s not working, and be purposeful about the actions I take.

Begin with the end in mind and be prepared to seize the opportunity of a new year. With focus and a plan, you’ll find that even if you haven’t lost weight, you’ve managed not to gain any more in 2022.