Actor and Novelist?

[Lisamer]

Although I spent most of my life in NYC and Boston, I took no interest in acting until I moved to Colorado. I'm curently rehearsing my second show this season.

Question for writer/actors: Do you find that your experiences as an actor help your your skills in developing the characters for your novels? If so, what sort of roles helped you the most? Have you ever had to play a different gender? If so, did that help you develop your novel characters of the opposite sex?

I guess I should answer my own question. My first role was Melissa Gardner in Gurney's Love Letters. Obviously not very challenging, since the play is based on a series of letters. However, it really helped me understand promiscuity, alcoholism, obssesion and suicidal tendencies without having to go research them myself! ;) I've been able to use a bit of that for one of my characters.

At present, I'm rehearsing Midsummer Night Dream. There are more women than men in our company, so I have to play Peter Quince. I SO wanted to play Titania, but they wouldn't give that role to a newbie.

While I'm not terrible, I tend to be too "feminine" in the role. My husband suggested that I think of myself as a woman who for some reasons disguising herself as a man so that she can get work in order to feed her family. Although it works for the role, it does not offer me insight into my fictional male characters. It does, however, create the possibility of another female character.

Thoughts?

[maestrowork]

I find my experience and training help in many ways:


1. dialogue -- actors deal with dialogue a lot and we develop a ear for it
2. conflict -- especially the subtle ones between characters
3. motivation -- that's the buzz word for actors and I find that it helps when developing characters: What are the motivations? What does he want? What is at stake for him?
4. action -- it's easier for me to visualize actions, gestures, etc. because as an actor, that's what we do -- creating characters and expressing the character's inner state by externalizing everything
5. show vs. tell -- much of acting/film/play is external... at the same time, you do have to get inside the character's head. So the translation from "internal" to "external" becomes natural. Acting is "show."

As for the gender issue, I don't know. I have never played female roles and I don't think my acting experiences help in any way. However, as actors, we observe. And my observations and "trying to figure people out" do help.

But...

I think it was Uncle Jim who said this: all arts are related to each other. I am sure a musician or a painter or a photographer can tell you how her skills and experiences help her write better.

[scribbler1382]

I haven't done any acting in years, but there was a time, back when I was young and thin :) , that I *thought* I wanted to be an actor. As it turned out, as my self-awareness grew, I realized what I truly wanted to be was a writer. I've talked to a lot of writers who had the same problem. The vocations seem to get mixed up quite a bit. But really, why play one or two characters, when as a writer you can play and control them ALL? :)

[PattiTheWicked]

I think a lot of writers are secretly actors. I went through a stage where I thought it would be neat to go into acting -- and I still do admire anyone who's got the perseverence and stamina to do it. The thing about writing is that I can be all the characters. I write dialogue in my head as I'm driving down the road, and I'm the hero, the villian, the innocent bystander, and the spooky housekeeper all at once.

[brokenfingers]

Hmmm, that's interesting. I never made that connection.

I performed for two years in an American Youth Repertory that rehearsed and staged productions in the Minskoff building and Minskoff Theatre in NYC on Broadway when I was young.

Maybe because I was so young (13 or so) at the time I haven't been able to see the similarities and comparisons with writing.

Hmmm....

[James D. Macdonald]

All the arts are related.

Writing, like acting, is part of the entertainment industry.

Here's something that novelists can try (I'm told that actors play this game to see if they're fully in character): Have your buddies ask you questions about ... anything ... which you answer as your character. If you have the character down, you won't hesitate a second to answer "What church do you go to?" or "Where did you go on vacation last year?"

Even if it isn't the book, the fact that you know the character cold will make him believable.

[Christine N.]

Acting is believing.

Gotta love Uta. :) For me, it's about motivation. In acting, what drives the characters is what makes them real on stage. When writing, it's not just about the "and then this happened," but also about "why?" What motivates our charaters makes them real on paper.

[Azure Skye]

Question for writer/actors: Do you find that your experiences as an actor help your your skills in developing the characters for your novels?

I'd like to think so. As an actor I always liked to get deep into the characters I played and I tend to approach my story characters in the same way.

If so, what sort of roles helped you the most? All of them really but Ann Deever from All My Sons is probably the most memorable.

Have you ever had to play a different gender? If so, did that help you develop your novel characters of the opposite sex? Yes. I played Curtis (a whole 15 minutes on stage woohoo) in the Taming of the Shrew. No to the next question. What helps me in writing the opposite sex is the fact that I have five older brothers, have lots of nephews and was nanny to two boys for a long time. While I'm familiar with how men are I'm still very much a woman and will never really understand what it's like to be a man.

Being an actor has helped me with dialogue more than anything. I had to do a lot of script analysis in my day and I seem to have pretty good handle on dialogue.

Another thing being an actor has helped me with is understanding structure. When you break a script down into beats and units it opens a whole other world up to you as an actor and now I find it applies to writing my stories as well.

[hpoppink]

Writing has helped my acting more than acting has helped my writing.

I like to write up the backstory of a character that I am playing in order to make the role more realistic, complete. This chance to create beyond what is in the script is the writer in me more than the actor, and while it is excellent and crucial preparation for acting, it is not the acting itself; performing in character is the acting piece.

To parody an Uncle Jim-ism: Thinking about acting is not acting; developing character background is not acting; only acting is acting.

If acting were to help my writing, I imagine it would involve something along the lines of acting out a role before writing it into my manuscript. (Didn't Dickens do this?)

I have never done such a thing.

[Lisamer]

I think a lot of writers are secretly actors. I went through a stage where I thought it would be neat to go into acting -- and I still do admire anyone who's got the perseverence and stamina to do it. The thing about writing is that I can be all the characters. I write dialogue in my head as I'm driving down the road, and I'm the hero, the villian, the innocent bystander, and the spooky housekeeper all at once.

You just became the catalyst for a Eureka moment! When the other actors in our company are not in a particular scene, they usually go off to work their own lines, or, they go outside to chat. I can't do this. Once rehearsal starts, I have to be there, and totally absorbed. At first, I chalked it up to being a newbie. Now, with Patti's reply, I realize that it's the writer in me that wants to vicariously be all the characters.

The upside of all this, is that even though I am the least experienced actor in the company, I'm one of the only ones who never misses an entrance!

[Christine N.]

I had a habit of memorizing everyone's lines. During a summer production of Godspell, the lead would always run off stage and say "what's next?". For every performance LOL

I could have done all the characters. Would have looked strange though.