A Writer's Guide to Acting: Putting it All Together

Setting. Relationship. Conflict. What the scene is really about. These are the first four building blocks to creating a believable character. Once you understand how to incorporate these four components into your acting, you will be amazed at how you ever tried to act without using them. Remember, however, to incorporate them one at a time and in order. It's not that there's any magic involved that requires absolutely that you use them in this order. In fact, once you get the hang of things, you may find yourself changing the order around. But for now, as you begin to learn how to use them, it will be much easier and effective if you add them in this order.

Setting, relationships, conflict and figuring out what the scene is about. Each of these components is important by itself, but all must be combined in order to fully flesh out your performance. Your job now is to put those components together. The location of a given scene helps to determine your emotions and behavior, but that behavior and those emotions will vary depending upon the relationships you have with the other characters. In addition, those relationships can vary depending upon who you care about the most and what you want most. Often, you may find your character conflicted about what he wants the most and why. And the intensity of the scene varies depending upon what changes within it.

At first it may seem an overwhelming task to successfully combine all these elements together. You may find yourself getting stuck on how you can make the location important, or where to locate the conflict. It's okay to stick with an individual element for as long as it takes. There's no time limit, though it's probably not a good idea to spend a terribly long time on one particular component. The best advice I can give you is to start with setting and location and rehearse over and over. Then add in relationships. You may be tempted to try a scene involving just how the location matters and then again involving how the relationships matter. I would strongly advise against this. Setting is the easiest component of acting to focus on independent of everything else. It's already decided for you and not open to interpretation. If the setting is a diner, you have to imagine a diner. Although how you use setting isn't concrete, the actual fact of the location is. There is nothing concrete about relationships or conflict. Everything about them is up to interpretation. That is why I started off with setting. It's the only component over which you don't have a multitude of options.

It may seem like a good idea to focus on one single component at a time, but it's not. Relationships are affected by the emotions of time and place. You can't focus on the relationship of a scene without taking into account where the scene takes place. You can't focus on the conflict of your desires without knowing how relationships have led you to those desires. It will be easier and more effective to focus on the components in order, adding them one at a time. In other words, once you've rehearsed a scene with what you've learned about setting, then add in what you've learned about relationships. Then add conflict into the mix and so on.

The best way to learn acting is to practice. Even if you think you've figured out exactly how setting and location works best in the scene, keep on rehearsing. Try something different. Approach the setting from an unexpected point of view. The rehearsal stage of acting is the most satisfying because you can dare fail. Take a wild chance that you might be scared to take in front of an audience. See if it works. If it doesn't, don't give up. Try to figure out if there's a way to make it work.

By the time you begin incorporating what you've learned about conflict and change into your rehearsing, you'll have a better grasp on your character by studying how setting and relationships affect characterization. Until you're comfortable with where the scene is taking place and what kind of relationship you have with the other characters, you won't be comfortable figuring out what who you care about the most and what you want the most. And until you figure that out, you may have trouble understanding what happens in a particular scene, or how things change.

Acting looks like an easy job. Big money. Lots of attention. Usually not much heavy lifting involved. And, best of all, you normally don't have to be that great at math. But in reality, great acting isn't easy. That's why genuinely great acting is so rare. There are a lot of famous actors in the world, but there aren't that many truly great actors. Acting is about more than just reciting lines that someone else wrote. The process of making a character come to life is a cooperative one, and while you as the actor as the most conspicuous member of this cooperative effort, you are hardly the only one. The writer is the creator of your character, and the director guides your performance as part of his overall vision of the play or movie, but it is up to you to interpret the scene and fully flesh out the character.

One question you may find yourself wondering is whether you are required interpret your character in the same way as the writer who created him. It's an important question to ponder and there is no simple answer. If your acting ambition is leading you to the stage and and potentially Broadway, you will often find yourself in close contact with the writer during rehearsals. On the other hand, if you dream of becoming a movie star or acting on television, you will discover one of the secrets of Hollywood. Every movie and TV show gives credit to a writer, sometimes more than one. But the fact is that most scripts, television and screenplays alike, often go through a series of writers who never receive actual credit. Usually, the only time this isn't true is when the director is also the writer. What does this mean to you as an actor?

When acting on the stage, the writer has much more clout and you may find that you are expected to keep your interpretation closer to the writer's original idea of the character. If you are acting on the screen, usually you have much more leeway and can take your character in a much different direction than the writer envisioned. Regardless of whether you find yourself acting on the stage on a set in front of cameras, however, you should always try to remain as true as possible to the words in the script and not just arbitrarily have your character do something or behave in a certain way simply because you would like him to. On the other hand, you also have no obligation to try to be the character the writer had in his mind when he wrote it. Unless you find yourself in the unfortunate position of being directed by the writer and he is one of those controlling types who insists that you play the character as he exists inside his head, once you pick up the script, you are free to interpret your character in any way you deem reasonable. By reasonable, I mean that you should be able to explain exactly and convincingly why you are choosing to play him in that way. Of course, you should also be aware that just because you consider it reasonable, and even if you can convince the director that it's reasonable, that still doesn't mean the director will allow you to play it that way. And while you have the right to play a character however you want, that doesn't necessarily mean you have the ability. If you have dreams of becoming a professional actor, you definitely should understand that no matter how brilliant your offbeat take on a character may be, brilliance is no guarantee of being hired.

One of the most important things to remember about acting is that your character should not and will not behave in the same way throughout a play or movie. Consistency is the enemy of good acting.