Uta Hagen, an acting coach, came up with the following approach for actors, based on the Stanislavski method of inhabiting characters, which we can apply to our writing. As in my recent freaky character exercise where we imagine ourselves being in our characters’ bodies, this time too we’re getting right into the character’s mindset, but also thinking about their place in the entire story.
Whatever stage you’re at in your story, and whether it’s fiction, or memoir, ask yourself:
- What is the story about? What is it really about? Answering this pair of questions seven times will help you drill right down to the key message or themes at the heart of your story.
- What is the tone/genre of the story? Are you writing a light-hearted rom-com, or a dark supernatural thriller? Even if you know your genre – drill down deeper to find the right tone. EG: you can have a quaint historical murder mystery, or a grim political murder mystery. Once you have this clearly in your mind, apply it to your story throughout.
- Whose story is it? Which character is your protagonist? Even if you have multiple protagonists, one character will have a little more power than the others. See my article on managing point of view for more on this. This character’s journey through the story is the most important.
- What are the basic circumstances of the story (what has happened to the character, what is happening, and what will happen)? Remember your character must ACT! Action and movement, and character changes are not-negotiable if you want to write a story people will want to read.
- What does your character want? What is your character’s main story goal? To save the world? To find her daughter? To become a movie star? What is the outward goal, manifested in the physical world?
- What does your character need? What is their emotional or spiritual goal? On a deeper level, what is this character really yearning for. Often their physical goal will not bring them this. What will?
- How does your character change? What is their story arc? How do they learn and grow through the story? How can you show them overcoming their fears or weaknesses, and transforming them into strengths?
- What is the main conflict of the story? Put simply, what opposition is there to the character’s goals – both their conscious and sub-conscious goals. See Suspense = Hope + Fear for more on this.
- What is at stake? If the character fails to achieve their goals, what’s the worst that can happen? It doesn’t have to be the whole world blowing up, but it does need to feel like that for your character. If they don’t destroy the comet the world will explode. If she doesn’t find her daughter, she’ll forever be heartbroken. If he doesn’t come out, he’ll live his whole life as a lie.
Nutting the answers to these questions out before you start in can really help you narrow your focus and concentrate on what is most important to get across in your writing.
But really you can apply these questions at any stage of writing, second draft, half way through, 10 000 words in. Make sure there’s enough at stake and that you’re continually moving your reader between the hope that the character will achieve their goals and be happy, or the fear that they will fail and everything will be ruined forever. Make sure your character is taking action, not just reacting and make sure that no matter how good their intentions, sometimes these actions backfire and make everything worse!
Have fun playing with these! More next time.
Until then! Write like the wind!!
Lots of love
Edwina xx
Edwina Shaw 