an actor with a pencil/notebook/light-up keyboard.

^ the entrance to the comédie français, the famous paris theatre. [near the louvre; started by louis xiv (i think; the tour was in french), and where molière came to fame. and you know, died basically on stage.] ;)

alternate blog title: “i’m sorry for what i said when i was awkward.”

as chuck jones famously said:

“an animator* is an actor with a pencil.”

if you’ve ever seen a documentary on animation, you may have seen animators with mirrors at their desks. that’s so they can act out and then draw the faces of their characters as their facial expressions bend and warp, squash and stretch with emotion.**

i was listening to a shakespeare unlimited podcast episode this week (“patrick page on king lear and shakespeare’s villains”) and the thought struck me: an author is an actor with a pencil, too. (or a pen and notebook, keyboard, typewriter, what have you.)

listening to how much patrick page puts into his acting—the character work he does off-stage, well before a production or even rehearsals begin—it feels like all the same kind of work we authors put into our characters, too.

^ front window of my local indie bookstore, mjudson booksellers.

authors are often asked “which character is the most like you?” or “is this story inspired by your real life?”

and the answer is most often:  “well, sort of. all the characters are a little bit me.”

authors must imagine ourselves in all of their characters’ shoes. what they’d do given their choices. considering their backgrounds. their fears. their traumas and upbringings, their misbeliefs about themselves or their misunderstandings of those around them.

and then we get to create on the page.

i like to call it “editable improv.”

while i may not know the words to say when someone asks me a question in real-life and in real-time, i can put down a rough draft on paper. and then (oh, so thankfully) come back and make it better later. letting my characters refine their roles. doing more background work into what makes them the way they are. editing their reactions and wordy-blurty reactions to what just happened.

authors get to play set and costume designers, too. which was my favorite part of my faerie tale feet series of paintings: deciding what posture and clothing best communicated the character’s role in their tale.

^ good coffee always makes writing group just that much better.

and now that i’m writing books? i get to tell you how they sound, too.  what pillow they throw at their roommate. how they blush when someone accidentally runs into their crush. tell you the lyrics of the songs they’re inspired to write.

readers won’t always see the behind-the-scenes work.

how patrick page came to the conclusion that iago is, indeed, a sociopath—but only after more than a year of studying sociopathy.  and until he read robert hares’s checklist of a psychopath, he never considered any of his characters villains. he considered them from every angle until he could understand their sources (or lack) of empathy and conscience. but iago in shakespeare’s text checked off the whole list of twenty psychopathic attributes.

^my stand-up writing desk in my home studio.

you won’t see the scenes i’ve cut from my manuscripts. the (longer) conversations between characters left behind on my office floor. the outfits i’ve left undescribed because kids books aren’t supposed to be 200,000 words long.

but the work existed. and hopefully what’s left on the page is enough for your imagination to fill in the gaps.

letting you step into the story yourself. acting out and feeling each character as they move across the page with the lines and life i’ve given them. to see yourself in a new light. how you might react if you were them. or see yourself with more compassion if you are them.

i promise never to subject my characters to performing improv in front of you, though.  they’re allowed to proofread their lines first.

oh, for the power to edit IRL.

(p.s. i’m sorry for what i said when i was awkward.)

~

*fun fact: i used to want to be an animator. a traditional animator. the kind with a pencil and the custom 3-hole punch animation paper on the rotating lightdesk surface in the burbank, ca disney animation studios. (and i still have the lightbox with that animation paper peg my dad made me in high school!)

**i also do it when picking emojis for texting or reading a book; i have a rawther expressive face if you’ve ever watched one of my book review videos…