Thoughts on the Similarities between Acting and Writing

As a young actor I fell in love with the idea that there is a world underneath what is said. I studied acting from the age of 8 until I was 26. I have heard the late Gene Wilder speak about why he became an actor—how it was tied directly to his strong desire to entertain his depressed mother. How wanting and doing that made him a veteran entertainer, but deep down, he was a shy and melancholy person.

Like Wilder I learned to live through self-expression from a very early age as a way to combat my own disabling shyness. I grew up with a single mother who was overworked and stressed. I felt it was my job in the world to entertain her and to cheer her up. Acting was in my family. My older sister, Sian Barbara Allen, was a film and TV actress, and I wanted nothing more than to follow in her footsteps.

As with becoming a character, writing flash fiction involves working with the mysterious quality of absence. I believe my process as a writer is similar to what I learned while being a young actor.

Below is a photo of Richard Thomas and I on the set of The Waltons at Universal Studios.

I unknowingly developed writing tools while studying theatre; reading great plays (memorizing and performing lines) by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Muriel Spark. This helped me develop a love of the rhythm and music in language as well as interest in character motivation.

As the actor will focus a good deal on what happened right before the scene and on what happened many years ago to make this character who they are today— and so will the writer. The actor makes use of what isn’t said from the minute a scene begins.

Both forms involve emotional logic and thinking about a character’s unresolved needs. An awareness of a character’s backstory must be present. By not saying it directly, the reader must be able to “pick up its scent”.

Flash fiction plots are not the typical plots of other forms of fiction: they are often internal and psychological. In other words, the character tries to make sense of life and takes the reader with her on this journey and THAT itself is the plot.

It’s hard to create true-feeling stories in which very little is explained— but I love the challenge of telling as little as possible, showing it through odd details, holding out when it helps the story to be quiet. Letting the underlying truth of the story push its way out.

The photo below is of Richard Thomas and I on the set of The Waltons in Universal Studios, 1973.