In Character: Actors Acting

In Character: Actors Acting Review

A collection of photographic portraits featuring well-known actors assuming a variety of roles, accompanied by their comments on the art of acting. By the award-winning photographer and best-selling author of "Athlete and "Nude Body Nude.

The Actor's Menu: A Character Preparation Handbook

The Actor's Menu: A Character Preparation Handbook Review

Whether new to the business or a seasoned professional, this handbook provides actors with a personal, active approach to discovering and developing their talent. Beginning with appetizers and ending with desserts, actors learn how to prepare a character in the same way that a master chef chooses the most complementary dishes for a feast. From typecasting to reinventing a character's story, actors discover the key ingredients that will enable them to use their own unique qualities and emotions to develop strong, believable characters that people are interested in watching. How to identify and resolve problems such as hidden agendas that can disable an actor's work; distinguish between perception, feeling, and emotions; and find lasting sources of inspiration are among the issues explored. The importance of imagination, words, and story as well as the difference between intellectual and visceral choices (and the impact of each) are also discussed.

Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors

Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors Review

Proven techniques for creating vivid, believable characters

Want to bring characters to life on the page as vividly as fine actors do on the stage or screen? Getting into Character will give you a whole new way of thinking about your writing. Drawing on the Method acting theory that theater professionals have used for decades, this in-depth guide explains seven characterization techniques and adapts them for the novelist's use.

In this unique and practical book, you'll discover concepts that will help you understand and communicate the behavior, motivation, and psychology of every fictional character you create. Examples from classic and contemporary novels show you how these techniques have been used to dazzling effect by Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Steve Martini, Anne Rivers Siddons, and others. These simple yet highly effective techniques will help you:
* Create characters whose distinctive traits become plot components
* Determine each character's specific objectives and motivations
* Write natural-sounding dialogue rich in meaning
* Endow your characters with three-dimensional emotional lives
* Use character to bring action sequences to exuberant life
* Write convincingly about any character facing any circumstance