Acting and Writing Are The Same Thing...Kind Of

At this point, I’m only writing this because no one has begged me to stop, which quite frankly has surprised me to no end. But since no one has protested and my misgivings haven’t reached a self-inhibiting level, I will continue onward. I’ve struggled to figure out what this post should be about or what it is exactly I think might not bore you all too dreadfully. So far I’ve discussed mostly writing and its pursuit, which is logical since I am pursuing a career in writing. Now, to move passed stating the obvious (one of my pet peeves by the way) and to subvert expectations negligibly, I’m going to discuss acting…and connect it to how it has aided me in my writing.

From my childhood, I had the desire to trod the boards or stand before a camera and bring to life a character and inhabit that individual with all the joys that make-believe brings. But for all my aspiration one insignificant yet annoyingly overpowering thing—like a mouse before an elephant—stood between me and my goal: fear. At that point in my life, I had a terminal case of shyness and the thought of standing in front of anyone while potentially making an unmitigated fool of myself stoked levels of anxiety within me that had me wanting to crawl under my bed at the mere thought and never venture back out thereafter. Time went on. I grew up. And luckily, out of my shyness. So it was in university I summoned the necessary courage, memorized a Shakespearean sonnet, and the rest as they say is history. I was cast as the villain in the very first play for which I ever auditioned. A tall order for a neophyte such as I was, but one I took on with relish. A delight that burrowed into me and settled into my bones. It led to the undertaking of classes and plays and other such projects over many years’ time.

One principle got hammered into me through that process of time and teachings—I suppose some would call it experience; I think of it as tempering, a sometimes repetitive tempering. Motivation is everything. Plenty of other concepts and principles surround the art of acting, however the aforementioned takes center stage and beats off all other competition like a diva defending her spotlight.

I know it’s the stereotypical thing for someone portraying an actor in a movie to ask the overused, “What’s my motivation?”, but stereotype comes from a place of truth albeit a horse-beaten-to-death-resurrected-then-beaten-to-death kind of truth. It remains, however, truth nonetheless. Motivation drives everything. It informs an actor’s decision on how to deliver a line; it justifies their movements; it transforms an actor from a body pulled along merely by the plot’s current into an agent that creates the story in the first place.

At this point, if you don’t already see where I’m going, I’m worried for and about you. Unintentional slights aside, motivation is often overlooked, especially by new writers. When developing a story idea, if an author doesn’t ask what a character wants more than anything else and what they are willing to do to get it, then there is a serious problem, for ultimately the characters and their goals and the obstacles they have to overcome to achieve them are the story. If one wants to avoid the heinous crime of creating a plot driven narrative, one which drags the characters along unwillingly and forces them to do things without motive or desire, then a person has to ask what a character wants and how they are going to get it. The beautiful thing about this principle is that it can be scaled up and down to inform the character’s choices in an individual scene and throughout a chapter, for the course of a novel and over a series. Writers can and must ask these questions in every moment of storytelling in order to reveal the characters and create the story through their choices.

For those who outline their stories, this can help to no end, especially when stuck. Always go back to, “What does my character want? What are they willing to do to get it?” Ask and answer those questions enough times and no roadblock will stop you because the characters will naturally seek out and use different tactics and methods to achieve their objectives, and, in the end, you’ll have the sketch of a story that is interesting, dynamic, and full of conflict because inevitably different characters will have goals that are at cross-purposes to each other.

Now, I’m not telling every author or aspiring writer to go out and take an acting class or audition for a play, though heaven knows those organizers of community theatre probably wouldn’t mind. I am suggesting that there are many lessons applicable to the craft of wordsmithery found in the other art forms. I found this powerful one quite by accident, and I’m curious to see what other ones I will either be led to or stumble across in the future.