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.

Put Some Drama in your Writing

By Chris Mathews

As a drama teacher and part-time playwright for thirty-two years, I believe dramatic concepts can be applied to other genres. You can put more drama in your writing by understanding dramatic writing.

The Greek word for drama, translated, means to do. In good drama, action grabs the viewer’s attention, for, at the least, all good writing is interesting.

So what is dramatic action and how can it be applied to other types of writing? First, consider what action in theater is not. Dramatic action is not to be confused with action-packed, the sometimes mindless, extravagant thrills of the movies. Dramatic action has purpose. Characters want something, usually from another character.

A director, in analyzing a script, must analyze all of the characters. Director’s define the action of the play, as well as help each actor find what his or her character wants in the play. Actors choose the most active, transitive verb they can find. For example, Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac doesn’t just feel unrequited love, he wants to ravish Roxanne with his poetry (Roxanne is the object of Cyrano’s affections). If a character is not fully realized in your writing, try filling in this statement for him or her:

He/she wants + to + strong, transitive verb + object.
Cyrano wants + to + ravish+ Roxanne

Actors and directors look for strong actions because actions are playable; feelings are not. Even in short scenes of dialogue, check to see that each character has a strong, clear action. Actors are often told: you cannot play a quality, avoid the verb to be, acting is doing not being.

Show the character’s driving force through what they do, not just what they say, and the writing will engage the reader. If your writing lacks punch, it probably lacks dramatic action. If your story line is faltering, it may be because your characters are not committed to strong action. Make sure your character is doing and not just being or feeling.

In an even broader sense, conflict drives drama. If there are no opposing forces, there is probably not much drama. If your writing lacks punch, make sure there are forces pushing against each other. In theatre jargon, create obstacles, people or forces that thwart a character from getting what he or she wants.

Shakespeare mastered dramatic action. See how Iago plants the seeds for Othello’s destruction, tricking him with reverse psychology into believing his wife is unfaithful in the following passage:

Cassio, my lord! No, sure, I cannot think it,
That he would steal away so guilty-like, Seeing you coming.

Sometimes, writing can be drama-less because the stakes are too low. A teacher teaching a class could be quite boring, but a teacher teaching students who cannot learn because their home lives are in shatters has the seeds for drama (Freedom Writers). Make sure conflict thrives. To summarize, make sure your characters are doing not just saying, and that conflict drives your work.

Werewolves, Cinnamon Bun Pirates, and Other Ghosts of My Writing Past

By Amanda Simays

My parents are moving out of the house they’ve lived in for twenty years. Which of my belongings do I discard, and which do I make them lug to their new house and store for me until God knows when? My attempts to weed out parts of my childhood bedroom over Christmas taught me a lot about my priorities. Stuffed animals, summer camp t-shirts, graduation paraphernalia? Toss without a backward glance. But my packrat tendencies kicked in when it came to really valuable stuff like old American Girl magazines, my collection of 1967 World Book encyclopedias…and anything I’ve written.

I hang onto almost all of my writing, whether it’s in a notebook or a computer file. Partly because it represents a lot of hard work, but mostly because (to use a cliché), I’m scared to throw out the baby with the bathwater. What if, buried deep in the piles of writing rubbish, there’s a character, a line of dialogue, or even a phrase I might want to use someday?

During the creation of a 150-page novel I wrote when I was about fourteen, I also ended up with an 80-page rival document of deleted scenes. Most of the writing there I can’t see using in the future at all. There is, for instance, a long, digressive subplot about a pirate who’s so obsessed with eating cinnamon buns that even his name, Nubni Mannic, is “cinnamon bun” spelled backwards…and incorrectly. But the description of a character who has “greasy hair the color of a banana bruise?" Hmmm…worth hanging onto…just in case.

Even earlier in my past, my brother approached me with a request to write him a werewolf story, and his instructions were to “make it as scary as possible.” So I did, and it was very scary. You can tell how scary this story is right from the subtle opening:

Hi! My name is Billy. I’d like to tell you something. It all began four years ago when I was eight. One day I was packing for my camping trip with my mom and dad in the mountains. My family just got a new van and station wagon.

We were done packing and we were ready to hit the road. On our way we saw some blood on the road and some dead peoples heads. We saw some signs that said “DANGER."

The story just goes downhill from there, degenerating into a thousand-word gore fest. My brother and I read the story out loud to our dad, expecting him to shiver with fright and proclaim it a masterpiece of suspense. Instead, he was completely disgusted and gave me strict instructions to delete that story and never show anybody.

But I didn’t, and years later, I’m glad I kept it. At the very least, hanging onto very bad writing gives me reassurance of how far I’ve come in the course of my writing life…or lets me have a good laugh at myself.

Good Versus Evil

By Michelle Gwynn Jones

Not all novels require the presence of a villain, but a story can’t have a hero unless there is someone, or something, to overcome. When a story requires a villain, that character needs to be believable.

Villains vary in size, class and sexual preference. In any group of people, from a kindergarten class to a gathering of world leaders, there are the good and the evil.

If the protagonist and the antagonist are the two main characters they need to be equally represented. A villain should have a well thought out reason for why they do what they do or want what they want. Depending on the type of story the villain might need friends or minions. The job and lifestyle the writer chooses should enhance the character, not hold them back. If the reader is to follow the path of the villain, the character must have a few good qualities, no one is going to believe a person who is all good or all evil. Even the bomber running around the city blowing up buildings without any discernible pattern should still stop to open the door for an elderly neighbor and help carry the packages to their apartment.

Just as with the good main character, your villain must have a backstory. Many readers have trouble believing that the villain was just born evil. The backstory should reveal a traumatic incident that turns them from good to evil, like when Anakin Skywalker revenges his mother Shmi’s death by killing all the Tusken Raiders and taking his first step from Jedi apprentice to becoming Darth Vader. That incident should logically bring the character to where they are today, even if only logical to someone with evil in their mind and heart.

Keep in mind the setting and the goals of the main character and the villain. The hero’s response to the villain must be proportional to the threat. If the villain is an international criminal running his mercenaries for personal gain it may be all right for the main character to kill them off one at a time. However, this may not be true if the story is set in the small town of New Grace, South Carolina when the main character is taking down the evil leader of the Parent Teacher’s Association of the local elementary school. While the protagonist may do evil to succeed in their mission, it is rare for a book to be successful if the protagonist becomes more evil than the villain.

As a writer you can’t let yourself be intimidated by your own villain. If your villain is trying to take over the world, let them plan and scheme, don’t hold back because you can’t understand why anyone would want to do that. When the villain is a serial killer but the writer can’t actually bring themselves to write a murder, or describe a murder scene, the reader will never be convinced the killer is a worthy adversary for the protagonist.

Whether your villain dies or goes to prison, turns good or stays evil, the story must be completed. Even the villain that lives on from one book of the series to the next must be thwarted in their scheme in order to rise again with an even better plan.