(no subject)

[katallison]

So I posted something earlier today about getting back into writing, and in a comment, cesperanza pointed out that I'm really a "Method" writer, one who (like a Method actor) spends a lot of time upfront thinking through characters' emotions and motivations, and then has to struggle to figure out what the characters should do to express those; whereas she writes in what she calls the "British" method, analogous to the great British actors who stand *here* and say the line and then walk over *there* and do that piece of business, and work back from there to discern and build in the emotional underpinnings.

And now I'm fascinated by this, because I just assumed that everyone goes about writing in the same way I do, more or less, and I'm having fun trying to get my head around what it would be like to simply have some scenes in mind, and write them out, without having already done a lot of sort of preparatory emotional outlining to guide the process. And because I have a ton of other stuff I should be doing, I thought that instead I'd -- that's right, do a poll!

[Poll #511623]

Comments

[flambeau.livejournal.com]

I love this idea of looking at it, and I probably should have checked "a little of this, a little of that." It depends on what I'm doing. Comedy is British character acting all the way, and might not even have all the tons and tons of emotional underpinnings, depending on what level of comedy/fluff we're talking about. Certain types of emotionally expressive scenes, and definitely sex scenes, are all about the Method acting. erm. That sounds more suggestive than I meant for it to be. It's not that I personally need to experience those feelings, but I'll sit and focus and try to get at what it feels like to be that focused on something (it's kind of an onion-y layer thing of perception, I guess) in order to be able to write the POV of someone who is at that moment in time that focused on something, whether it's the next touch of someone's hand or the next words out of someone's mouth.

Generally, though, I have a set-up and I have the characters, doing something, and then I sort of figure out from what they do and say how they're feeling about things. Which I guess is the "something else" option. Then... oo, ticky box.