(Distribute Reference Materials handout)

(When did I realize I was using “Method” acting techniques to create characters?)

Secret #1: Personalizing

Writing Problem Example: “All my characters seem the same.”

Writing Problem Example: “My characters repeat the same gestures.”

Goal: Create characters with distinct and unique traits and mannerisms.

Actors search for inner character values and observe character as it is portrayed in real life. The actor must pull together a composite of mannerisms that creates the unique character being portrayed. Novelists must personalize to avoid the pitfalls of creating clichéd characters. Both are doing the same thing here because personalizing uncovers the character’s inner values.

Secrets to Personalizing: Ask a lot of questions about your character until you can’t go any further. The last question should reveal a core truth or “inner value” about your character which will give rise to a trait. Then question some more until you can’t go further. This should bring you to a character’s mannerism based on the inner value. Inner values can affect the manner of walking, talking, gesturing, etc. This is an extension of the character analysis that we already do as novelists.

Mention my deluxe Character Analyzer available on my YA site (Character questionnaire).

Exploring levels of character:

Level A: Divide characters into general categories such as socioeconomic class, age, gender, and career.

Level B: Move toward specifics and create distinctions in what you've discovered at level A.

Level C: Personalizing the character. Ask deeper questions that move to the core of the characters … was your childhood happy? What are some of the defining moments in your life?

This whole process can be done through a very detailed question/answer profile of a character. Mine, available online, covers all three levels with a heavy emphasis on Level C, personalizing the character.

Exercise: What actors get from personalizing are mannerisms they can use to bring their characters to life. Novelists can do the same thing, only we use words to describe the physical actions actors present. One aspect: Manner of walking (Christine Brandle). Have session attendees walk as though they’re being pulled by a string from a particular part of their body. What are the characteristics and traits of someone who walks as though they are being pulled by the head, the shoulders, the stomach, the knees, etc. Take their favorite original character and walk for them the way they normally walk and decide from what part of their body they’re being pulled.

Secret #2: Action Objectives

Writing Problem Example: “Some of my scenes are boring.”

Writing Problem Example: “My character’s motivations aren’t always clear.”

Goal: Give each character specific objectives, for each scene as well as an overall objective for the story.

In studying for a role, the actor must determine the character’s objective through the play as a whole … and through each scene. EG: In my most recent YA novel Laura Dial: Rose Blood, the overall objective is found in my one-line description of the book: “A sixteen-year-old girl walks into an FBI office and asks for a job because a car accident that wiped out her family left her with the ability to read people's thoughts (super-objective: get a job with the FBI).” In one scene Laura meets with her electronics wizard/inventor boyfriend who helps enhance her cell phone to aid in her crime fighting ability (goes to her overall objective). Scene objective: Laura gets her enhanced phone from her boyfriend, but he comes on to her romantically. She’s been trying to avoid romance as it will get in the way of her crime fighting goal.

Search for the super-objective as the character's overall desire: The character's main objective that propels them through the entire novel. Provide barriers to the character's attainment of her/his desire.

Exercise: Go over scene outliner and where to find it (www.DakotaBalmore.com)

Secret #3: Subtexting

Writing Problem Example: “My dialogue feels forced and shallow.”

Writing Problem Example: “I don’t know how to use dialogue to further the conflict.”

Goal: Understand the motivation for speaking the lines of dialogue. Create the underlying meaning (or subtext) of the words. EG: “Willard, if you go ahead with this, you just may hurt yourself.” Underlying jealous meaning: “Damn you, Willard, I wanted to be the one to do what you’re about to do.”

An actor dives beneath the surface of the character’s dialogue to unearth their true feelings and meanings. The novelist must illustrate character communication through the subtexts of what the characters are saying in order to create realistic dialogue.

Develop thinking and dialogue that conveys meaning without actually saying it. (Scene from Strange Interlude)

Study subtexting in real life to be able to capture it in characterization and dialogue.

Guideline 1: Not wanting or not needing to state what a character is thinking must apply to that character’s motivation in order for subtexting to be considered in your dialogue. What do the characters want?

Guideline 2: If the scene depicts an ongoing conflict, subtexting may be appropriate; however, a major turning point for change often demands honesty. (Excerpt from Last Days of Camelot)

Guideline 3: The older or deeper the conflict, the more likely that subtexting will be appropriate.

How to Write Subtexted Dialogue:

1. Study subtexting in fiction.

2. Substitute the spoken words with their subtext.

3. Highlight descriptive words that convey meaning.

4. Highlighted words will fall into four major areas (TIME description)

a. Thought – What character is thinking displayed in narrative.

b. Inflection – Description of how character speaks.

c. Movement – How a character moves or gestures (body language).

d. Expression – Facial movements.

Exercise: Cast a short scene with session attendees and have them read their part in a scene read-through illustrating character subtexting using a home-spun scene from my own play Familiar Interlude.

Secret #4: Coloring Passions

Writing Problem Example: “My protagonist isn’t three-dimensional.”

Goal: To make the passion of the characters multi-dimensional.

An actor must focus on individual colors that make up the palette of the overall passion. The novelist must create three-dimensional characters utilizing three-dimensional emotions.

Dissecting passion:

Part 1: Find the Passion Components by examining the pieces of a character and the story he/she are in that create conflict. Look at inner values, desires, and the progression: from obstacles to denial, the inner values of the other characters, and the story’s resolution. Create scenes of conflict that allow the different colors of passion to appear.

Part 2: Find the passion's opposite by tracing traits back to their inner values; find secondary inner values for the characters; ask yourself in what situation you could place your character so that other inner values conflict with the first … thereby causing a character to be self-conflicted. To find the most opportunities for portraying the opposite of an emotion, look to other characters. EG: pp. 98

Part 3: Find the passion's growth as it transitions through a natural progression. Represent the transitional growth throughout the manuscript. Scenes progress the passion's development. EG: A character may start a story fearful and end it by finding courage, and we need to see this process in all its varied colors in a natural order that accurately represents life.

Exercise: Use Character Traits book to blend two adult styles: Table of Contents. Eccentric-Extrovert (pp24-25).

Secret #5: Inner Rhythm

Writing Problem Example: “Readers can’t connect with my character’s emotions.”

Goal: Tuning in on your own emotions to lend to your characters will enable the reader to “feel” your character’s emotions.

Beneath the external movements of a character lies the internal "movement" of emotion. Rhythm is all around us. There’s the lazy rhythm of sleeping late on Saturday morning; the frantic rhythm of dashing for a train; the lulling, hypnotic rhythm of ocean waves. Actors find this rhythm and transfer it into external character movements. Novelists create a character’s inner rhythm to avoid using only external action to depict feelings in a general way.

Hearing inner rhythm and translating it into action:

Technique 1: By involving your body, you can feel the inner rhythm of your character in a tangible way. Inner rhythm + personalizing + Action objectives = emotive action. Recreate a physical action specific to your character to tap into her/his inner rhythm. (EG: imitate the walk.) Whatever reactions are experienced can be translated into describing the actions of the characters, where translation is the key.

Technique 2: Be a psychiatrist and ask questions of your character moment by moment as he/she goes through each scene. (Dividing the scene into beats – EG: 3-beat scene: Parent on phone being informed that son lost job; son enters and parent confronts son as to why; son informs parent he’s leaving, going far away to get another job) As an exercise, you may write dialogue asking your character the questions you deem important to the scene in question.

Exercise: Offer several emotional states of being and have session attendees take out a rhythm to illustrate those moods. The lazy rhythm of sleeping late on Saturday morning; the frantic rhythm of dashing for a train; the lulling, hypnotic rhythm of ocean waves.

Secret #6: Restraint Control

Writing Problem Example: “My descriptions are long, but they still seem ineffective.”

Goal: Cut superfluous verbiage in your characters while using vivid verbs and adjectives to create a strong visual picture.

As a painter needs a clean, white canvas upon which to create a picture, an actor needs a body that is cleared of her/his own natural mannerisms and gestures so he/she may discover movements that are true to the character. A novelist creates a character through choice of words. Restraint and control allow the writer to use the best words possible to flesh out characters, create an aura, and move the scene forward.

Blending of technique and characterization:

While writing, the author must become two personas: Whereas one actor contends with only one role, the writer must jump from head to head and become each character; and the writer must remain as her/himself to manage the technical aspects woven into each scene.

Sentence rhythm. The rhythm of your sentences should match the rhythm of the scene. For action or suspense, shorten your sentences.

Guideline 1: Past participles (past tense verbs ending in "ing") are best used in quiet, easy rhythm scenes.

Guideline 2: Complex sentences work better in quiet rhythm; simple sentences work better for action.

Guideline 3: The higher the action level, the shorter your sentence should be.

Guideline 4: In action-intense scenes, divide the action and reaction into separate sentences or short phrases.

Compression: Finding verbs, adjectives, and nouns that are packed with meaning to make narrative and action more vivid and to use fewer words.

Harry Potter editing exercise. Handout of opening paragraph of Harry Potter book 6 and have session attendees edit it. Read a previously edited version that reduces the text by 20% making it far more active, and pass it out to the attendees.

Secret #7: Emotion Memory

Writing Problem Example: “I can’t write about my characters in certain situations because I haven’t experienced what they experienced for myself.”

Goal: Relive similar emotions from our own life to lend to your characters to provide the character with realistic emotional responses. EG: You have to write about a revengeful murderer. Take from your life a time when someone stole what was yours and convinced others it was his. Then to make it vivid use effective word choice.

Personal experience is the basis for character emotions. A method actor relies on his own emotion memory to re-create within himself all the sensations and feelings appropriate to his role at the moment. Likewise the novelist carries within herself the seed for every emotion and desire through her own emotional memories.

Accessing your emotional memory.

Use the five senses alone or in combination to release vivid memories from the subconscious.

Result 1: We can color far more splendidly passions of those characters whose experiences are similar to our own.

Result 2: We can create characters that are completely different from ourselves.

Step 1: Find an experience or emotion in your own life that is similar to that of your character.

Step 2: Relive your own experience by telling it out loud to yourself.

Step 3: Add any external stimuli that may help you relive the memories.

Step 4: Once you have connected with your own emotions, use them as the seed for those of your character.

Exercise: Sitting in a chair.

1. Your character sits in a chair by a window to watch her/his heart throb arrive home next door. Have session attendees evoke the correct emotion from their own experience or a similar experience.

2. Your character enters a dentist office to have a root canal and sits in the waiting room. Have session attendees evoke the correct emotion from their own experience or a similar experience.

3. Your character is strapped into an electric chair. Have session attendees evoke the correct emotion from their own experience or a similar experience (waiting my turn for a spanking). In this one, no attendee should have had the experience of being electrically executed, so all will have to drum up the memory in their life that fits closest.

Exercise: Crying.

1. Your character must cry over some great tragedy. Session attendees should use an experience in their past that made them cry to evoke tears and then tell everyone of the emotional memory they’ve evoked to start the tears.