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I have a few actor friends and sometimes they tell me about their craft. They talk about getting into character and trying to understand the thoughts and feelings of that person in order to bring them to life. When I hear them describe this process, I can’t help but notice the similarities between writing and acting.
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Now, writers don’t perform in front of an audience. Whatever “performance” we do is done when someone reads our work, usually unbeknownst to us. We don’t know of their reaction until they leave a review somewhere, if they do.
For actors, they don’t need to bring to life the whole scene with the description of whatever place a scene is taking place in or the vibe in whatever room. They’re responsible for bringing to life their characters.
But for us writers, so are we.
When I write my characters, I do feel as though I have to get into not only their heads, but their skin. I need to feel their feelings, know their life history, know their thoughts in order to make them come to life. I analyze my characters – especially the main ones – similar to my actor friends. I need to understand them in order to make my readers understand them.
When it comes to villainous characters, some actors say they have fun playing the bad guy. Judging by some performances, they do appear to enjoy themselves. I didn’t enjoy writing Daniel like that. That’s because to me, he is not a villain to have fun writing about. I have plans to do that for other villainous characters in my vampire trilogy. However, I didn’t totally hate him. I mean, yes I did, but I had to understand why he was the way he was and why he did what he did in order to tolerate him. Even now I do that. I guess writers and actors have to take a neutral stance sometimes with their characters in order to tell a story.
So, I take it this is another sign that writing is an art.
How about you? Do you see the similarities between writing and acting, or is it different for you?
NOTE: I won’t be posting this Friday, as it is the Thanksgiving weekend here in the U.S. To all my American readers, have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Megan Cashman 
I think actors are more on the spot. In the movies they can work to get scenes right, but there is still a time-cost. On the stage there is almost no room for error.
Writers, on the other hand, have the luxury of editing until they are satisfied.
Getting into the heads of characters, though… I often think of writing being like method acting. It is possible to get so into character head-space that even when not actually writing or acting the character still echos in the mind. For a long time (months) after writing S&tM, I could still feel Suzie’s hurt and rage resonating.
I think the attraction to writing and acting evil characters is more specific to characters who are uninhibited – who get to do all the things we wish we could do but never dare. Had Daniel cast a spell taking away Claire’s free will so that she would do absolutely anything to please him, then I dare say you would have had a lot more fun writing the cruel things he might have done to her. Written the way it is, however, the consequences (Claire’s pain and terror) make it impossible to enjoy Daniel’s actions.
I like how you point out that writers have plenty of time to get scenes right while actors aren’t so lucky.
I also agree that the attraction to evil characters is that writers and actors get to do what we wouldn’t dare in real life. But I think it depends on the context of the story. My story was seen from Claire’s POV and not Daniel’s. If it were done from Daniel’s POV and he was written from a sympathetic stance, I think then it would’ve been fun writing about what he would’ve done to her.
Writing is absolutely art in the sense of being an expression of concept and emotion. Just like artists. Writing is also eerily similar to acting because both involve transfer of emotion using tools that only partly represent the human experience and condition.. Funnily enough I have a post coming up on this myself. It is a huge topic to discuss.
Cool, Matthew! I’ll be on the lookout for it!
Lovely post Megan and well written.
Arran
Hi Arran, and thanks!
I am very interested in the similarities you mention in your post. I assumed the processes would be related. But to what extent I’m not sure. Thanks for posting on this topic.
No problem, Dennis!
I’ve often thought of this as I write. When I’m really engaged in my work, I feel my characters’ pain, anxiety, loneliness, etc. Sometimes I catch myself responding with appropriate facial gestures as well. In those moments, I feel like I have at least a tiny hint of the actor’s experience. That said, I can’t act my way out of a paper bag, and I have the old camcorder movies to prove it.
Acting isn’t my thing because of stage fright, so I guess I can say the paper or computer screen is my stage đŸ™‚
I have always equated writing with acting. When writing I might have to go though and action to know how to describe it happening. The same with an expression.
Thanks for this blog posting, Megan.
Definitely similarities! When I pen the characters and plots I’m imaging the mind screen with the action. Wishing you well.