In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Writing Fiction and Acting
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“Once you’re in the character you can do anything.” Clint Eastwood during an interview on Inside the Actors’ Studio (see Of Interest)
“Give [the audience] a chance to imagine with you, a chance to participate in the film, not just voyeur it. That’s something that will make the film a little deeper for them.” Clint Eastwood, same source
“Take your time and complete every sequence.” Clint Eastwood, same source
Writing Fiction and Acting
The catalyst for this post was an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, linked in Of Interest. If the following seems a little disjointed, please email me with any questions so I can clarify for you.
I’m always going on about allowing the characters to tell the story that they, not the writer, are living.
There is a distinct difference between what you, the writer, and the characters are up to in your lives.
In your own personal story, you’re a person who enjoys writing fiction. So in your story, you’re sitting at your computer with your fingers on the keys.
Or maybe you’re sitting wherever with a legal pad on your lap and a pen in your hand. (Please, never an erasable pencil. Draw a line through your mistakes and live with them. They too will inform your writing.)
And if you write into the dark, you have two roles:
- in your initial role as your characters’ Recorder, you write what happens in the story and the characters’ reaction to that through their dialogue and their actions;
- in your role as Presenter, you perform the above to the best of your ability with your current skill set (or at your current level of skill) and then present the characters’ story to readers either by submitting the work to magazines or book publishers or by publishing it yourself.
But at least some of we who write into the dark also ‘assume’ the role of POV character. In other words, we actually become the character through which the story is observed and presented.
Excellent stage and screen actors do exactly the same thing. (See the first Quote of the Day above.)
I’ve also mentioned before that the main reason I write fiction is so I can live other lives through my characters and vicariously experience situations, solutions, and outcomes that are interesting to me and that I haven’t experienced in my own ‘real’ life.
Of course, all of that occurs only after I’m invited into the story by the characters.
If you force your way into a story or “make something up,” you aren’t writing into the dark. Chances are you’re wrapped up in your own ego and the accompanying fear of failure as a ‘creator’. God complex, anyone? (grin)
I’m not like that. Way back in the day, like most of you, I just told stories.
Well, until I, like most of you, was actively taught by English teachers, deconstructionist critics, others who don’t actually write fiction, and all the silly innuendo in various television series and films that I was doing it all wrong.
They all taught (and still teach) the same thing: that if you take a long time to turn out a piece of fiction—and if you revise and rewrite ad nauseam as directed by critique groups, agents, other writers and publishers—you might eventually be published.
All of that—ALL of it—is hogwash (with apologies to people everywhere who earn their living by washing hogs).
As I’m writing fiction, I become the POV character in the story that’s unfolding as I write it.
If you don’t do that, or if you haven’t tried it, I recommend it.
And I’m no beginner passing out free advice like breath mints at a halitosis convention. My advice is based on my having put millions of words of fiction on the page in novels, novellas, short stories, and poems.
Compare that with the same ol’, same ol’ advice you read or hear from newbies out there: outline, revise, rewrite, etc. Chase an agent. Chase a ‘big’ publisher.
And yes. There are some successful writers out there too who suggest you outline, revise, rewrite, etc. And every one of them have nonfiction books to sell you that—surprise!—also hype outlining, revising, rewriting, etc.
Go figure.
Do the math.
Follow the money.
Any questions, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
Back tomorrow with Writing Fiction and Acting: 2. Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Clint Eastwood interview on Inside the Actors’ Studio (I found this well worth the hour and a half.)
2026 Warm Ups… Craft Great deals on the “Quick and Dirty Workshops.” Normally $150 each, now $350 for all five, so $70 each. A few years ago I’d have jumped on these. Just sayin’.
Book Marketing 101: How (and Why!) to Reach the Right Readers
Vin Zandri’s New “Ruthless” Kickstarter If you enjoy Vin’s work, here’s your chance to support it.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 820
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 820
Writing of Blackwell Ops 52: Sam Granger | Figuring Things Out
Day 1…… 4693 words. To date………… 4693
Day 2…… 3623 words. To date………… 8316
Fiction for November……………………… 60626
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 722667
Nonfiction for November.………………… 17870
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 257340
2025 consumable words………………… 972438
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 121
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29