ON METHOD WRITING

What do Meryl Streep, Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman have in common? Not only are they all multiple Oscar winners, but they all practice Method Acting. Developed in New York in the 1930’s Method, builds closely on the system of a Russian actor and director, Stanislavski.

Interesting history. But why does it matter? In a nutshell, Method Acting promotes ‘being’ over ‘acting’. Stanislavski describes “the art of experiencing” vs “the art of representation”. Essentially, anyone can act by pretending to be someone else, but it takes discipline, talent, craft and multi-layers of deep understanding to win an Oscar as an actor.

Writing is just acting. With words.

Writing isn’t much different. Pretty much everyone can write. It’s a technical skill that requires an understanding of clarity, accuracy and grammatical convention. If you can read, you can write. Mostly. But the craft of writing goes deeper. Just like acting, painting, or any form of art, craft goes beyond the technical to create something that makes people feel.

What’s my motivation?

In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavski takes students through a series of exercises and learning experiences to help them develop their craft and dig through layers of conscious and subconscious facts and emotion to genuinely understand the motivation of the character. That’s when ‘representation’ becomes ‘experience’. Less saying, more being. And that’s why you can feel the difference on screen.

Good writing is good acting. With words.

Same, same with writing. While there’s 120,000 words in the English Language, most writers stick to the same 20,000 that most people readily understand. And these can roll in pretty much any order. So why choose the words you choose? Good writers think about tone, tension, pace, cadence, context, rhythm, repetition and more. Great writers don’t even think about it. They just feel.

Because that’s the craft of writing. Pushing past what something says to get creative with how to say it. How it sounds, how it feels – and how the reader will feel when they read it. And that’s why some things make you want to read them – while others feel like words on a page.

The ‘magic if’ and perennial ‘why’.

Stanislavski’s system talks of a ‘magic if’ – what would I do if I was in this situation. It plays to the heart of motivation and makes the acting real. The writing equivalent is understanding why. Not just what we need to say, but why we want to say it. It’s the heart of our motivation in making people feel.

So, if you’re chatting with a writer and they ask about ‘why’, take the time to talk it through. It’ll make the writing better. Because good writing needs craft and motivation. And in a world that’s full of words on every page and screen, it’s always great to read good writing. So the more we can do to help people who write to push further to become writers, the better the world will be.

That’s what I reckon, what do you think?