How might we
bring a greater awareness of our
characters or historic subjects (George Washington, Harriet Tubman) to the
page?
This is one
of my favorite exercises as a writer—and one my students of all ages seem to relish and learn from. It’s playful
and illuminating.
*Be your character or historic subject for a
day (or at least a few consecutive hours).
Try to bring all your senses to it.
*Put on the clothes (or at least some) she would
wear. Eat the breakfast she would.
Do chores of the time (wash
dishes, for example, or find a stable and pat the horses). Play a
game or read a book in the way your character would.
*Move like your character. Let yourself inhabit that excited child or
hungry dog or frightened slave. Skip
down the street or sniff your dinner
deeply or hide in a shed at night
and peek out. Walk as your character
walks. (For my picture book Underground Train, I rode the Metro in
Washington, DC numerous times while inhabiting my child narrator, trying to
experience the sounds and sights as she would.)
*Enact certain scenes, especially if
they have intense action or emotion (within reason, of course). For example, for an escape scene, have
someone truss you up and feel yourself first bound and then trying to figure
out how to escape.
*What does
your character really like to
do? Do that! What does your character hate to do? Try that too,
always being your character.
*Take on the physical proportions and usual posture of
your character. If your character is
short, get down on your knees and see/experience as she would. If your historic figure is tall, stand on a
chair. Is a character aggressive? Puff out the chest. Sad?
Let yourself slump.
*Jot down your reactions, thoughts,
feelings, etc. Weave into the writing or
be conscious of as you revise.
*This can be
done at any time during the writing
process (prewriting, drafting, revising) to deepen a sense of character/historic subject and their world, provide
more telling details, and heighten kinesthetic awareness.
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