Acting Lessons

One of my CPs and I have been talking these last few days about how important all five senses are when writing. What we’ve learned so far? It’s hard for both of us to incorporate all senses in every scene. Since I started working for a flavor company, I’ve had less trouble with writing taste and smell—spending all day, every day learning what chemicals make what scent or flavor is like doing writing exercises for forty hours a week. But that’s just taste and smell. What about the other senses? My CP said I make it look so easy and natural. It may look that way, I assured her, but I still have to work at it.

Her comment got me thinking. How do I know how to write all five senses? I’ve already answered about taste and smell. But what about the others? From reading, obviously…but that’s not all. What else?
 

It was Cora Carmack’s awesome NA series LOSING IT, FAKING IT, and FINDING IT that answered the question for me. I read all three of these last week (and if you’re interested in NA, I highly recommend them). It took me awhile, but I eventually connected my CP’s question with Carmack’s novels. The MCs in these three novels were college students who met through their theatre classes. One reason I connected so well with these characters? I took theatre classes in high school.
 

I took so many theatre classes in high school that I lettered in theatre. You might be laughing at me and thinking, “Aren’t letters for sports? What high school gives out letters for theatre???” Mine. If you want proof, here’s a picture of my letter jacket:
 

I don’t remember the exact requirements for my letter, but I know I took at least one theatre class per year (probably per semester). I also was involved with most of my school’s productions, a play each fall and a musical each spring. If you want proof of this too, here’s a picture of me onstage (in The Curious Savage by John Patrick):

Yes, I know. I had bangs then. My bad hair, however, is not the point. The point is, I learned so much about writing from my theatre classes, plays, and musicals. I didn’t act in all of the plays and musicals—I student directed some and worked on the crew for a couple of others—but I spent a lot of time studying words, people, motivations, reactions, feelings.

The key thing to know about a script is that the lines are about all you get, aside from a basic scene setting and a few stage directions. There’s nothing in a script to tell you how to say each line, where to stand in relation to other characters, how to react to them, what your character is feeling. You have to figure these out—you have to create them on your own. Sometimes, our teacher or director would tell us these things, but most of the time we were on our own. Sometimes, we even had to write our own scripts.

So yes, I spent much of high school doing theatre. This is where I learned how to pay attention to every character in a scene. Any person onstage can be seen by the audience and therefore has to remain in character at all times.  Some characters have very few lines, but that doesn’t make them any less involved in the action than the characters that dominate the dialogue.
 

I didn’t realize this until my CP and I discussed the five senses, but when I write I picture the scene as though I’m sitting in the audience, watching my characters move around a stage. I know where each of them is. I can tell you what each of them is thinking and why they’re thinking it.  I know what they’re saying, what they’ll do next, and how they’ll react to what the others are saying and doing. As much as working for a flavor company has taught me about taste and smell, high school theatre classes taught me about see, hear, and feel. My writing today is better because of the things I learned through my acting classes years ago.