The Pros of Acting Things Out in Your Bathroom

Or your bedroom. Or any room of the house that you can act or shout things out loud without too much concern from your parents/the rest of your family.

This is one method that I will endorse to the ends of the earth. I’ve always had an interest in acting, personally. Not as in I want to go to Hollywood or star on Broadway, but more I really enjoy taking Drama classes at school and I was in the school play once. I played Theseus in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Had a beard. It fell off during our finally performance. That was a tricky situation. I nearly had a heart attack on stage, but just kept on acting until the Rude Mechanicals entered and stole the spot light to fix it.

But my escapade on stage are not why you’re reading this.

I have always believed that acting is a great way to help improve your writing. More specifically scenes than your writing as a whole, but still very beneficial. To act well, you really have to put yourself into the character’s mind. You have to try to think like them and feel what they’re feeling, and that’s really the best way to be able to write them. There’s just something different about acting or speaking their roles to yourself though. It makes the more real than if you’re just thinking of dialogue in your head.

It’s also a great way to figure something out if you’re not sure how you want a particular scene to go. Sometimes when I’m writing a scene I’ll just go upstairs to my bedroom and start acting the scene out with myself. Or sometimes I’ll explain the situation to my little sister and she’ll help me come up with something for it. Sometimes it doesn’t work and I don’t use anything that I came up with while I was acting it out. Then again, sometimes I end up getting hit with the perfect line and I have to run downstairs and type it up as quickly as I can.

I usually do this in my bedroom before I go to bed, or while I’m taking a shower, or as I’m washing my hands. It’ll sometimes happen while I’m sitting at my computer, but I find it works slightly better if you’re up on you're in a different setting. I would also suggest going somewhere where’s it’s not going to disturb too many people (or convince too many of the witnesses that you’re crazy. I made the mistake of doing something like this in my AP English the other day… staring at a wall talking in a Russian accent… yeah…).

Now, you do not have to do it the way that I do. Margaret likes to pace in giant circles making faces with music playing loudly. I think silence and sitting still helps better. It’s one of those methods that works better if you’ve tailored it to your own preferences and see what helps you out the best.

And the best part is it often helps with Writers Block too!

Have you ever tried this before? How had it helped you in the past?