There are lots of tools the great actor has in her toolbox, but most of them really only gain utility with time. Script analysis, the ability to quickly access one’s emotions, physical flexibility, vocal projection—even memorizing lots and lots of text is a skill that can take years to learn.

But there is one tool that is pretty easy to use right out of the box: the character checklist. Exactly what it sounds like, the character checklist is a list of questions that, when answered thoughtfully, provide a wealth of information for the actor to draw from.

Writers stand to gain much from the character checklist as well. For the fiction writer, it’s a terrific way to sketch out a full picture of the character in your mind before writing, or even (oh yes) when you find yourself stuck. Let’s face it: most characters in fiction draw heavily on slices of the writer’s self; it’s nice to have a few other things to flesh them out into full-fledged bona fides themselves.

But another great use for the character checklist is to jump-start your own non-fiction writing. Bloggers have embraced the meme in a big way; it’s everyone’s favorite crutch when the well runs dry.

And pre-Web 2.0, the form was equally popular. From the emails that circulate with lists of likes, dislikes and quirky questions to fill in and forward on to the venerable Proust Questionnaire, people are endlessly fascinated with…themselves, yes, but other people, too. My favorite features in glossy magazines are usually the ones where the same five, 10 or 20 questions are asked of different people.

There are probably as many of these character checklists circulating among acting classes as there are memes proliferating across the blogosphere. I dug this one out of my old actor files, and it’s as good a place as any to start:

The Character Checklist from Colleen’s Old Acting Files (provenance unknown)

1. Name
2. Age
3. Occupation
4. Hobbies
5. Marital Status
6. Favorite Color
7. Favorite Restaurant
8. Favorite Song
9. Favorite Movie
10. Favorite TV Show
11. Pet
12. Bad Habit
13. What I Like About Myself
14. Who I Look Up To
15. What Makes Me Laugh
16. What Makes Me Sad
17. How Do I Relax
18. What Word/Phrase Do I Use Most Often
19. Favorite Room In Home
20. Goals
21. Embarrassing Moment
22. Favorite Article Of Clothing
23. Pet Peeve
24. People Close To Me
25. One Word To Describe Me
26. Favorite Holiday
27. What Is Important To Me
28. What I Can’t Do Without

The trick to making lists like these useful to your writing (and there’s always a trick) is using them thoughtfully and strategically, not just indulging in them as diversions (although that can be fun sometimes, too). Figure out the task you’re wanting to accomplish and then pick up your tool. Not all of the items will be useful for every piece of writing you’re sitting down to work on, but a surprising number will be, if you let mind wander to new and interesting places.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a blog edumacating people about widgets and you are plumb out of widget stuff to write about. You could…

• Talk about how people shorten the life of their widgets with bad widget habits. (#12)
• Describe your favorite widget use, and why. (#28)
• Relate a horror story about a customer being widget-less in a widget-necessary situation. (#21)
• Interview a few people in the widget chain of supply. (#24)
• Link to your favorite widget scene in a movie on YouTube. (#9)

There’s no set way to put yourself in a frame of mind to see questions differently so that you can answer them differently, but one great trick is to imagine yourself sitting down with someone who knows nothing about widgets, or who thinks they know everything about widgets, and then look at those questions as though you’re being interviewed for a show or podcast or magazine that goes out to that target.

In other words—playact…like an actor!

xxx
c

P.S. If you give this a whirl, I’d love to hear how it works for you: communicatrix [at] gmail [dot] com.

Image by welcome_to_nunavik via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

This post gets a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon. Go figure. Anyway, if you clicked looking to find posts about acting, there are a ton of them here—two years’ worth of columns written for a major casting service’s newsletter here in L.A. And if you’re looking for more tips on writing and how to make it more awesome and less awful, check out the back issues of my non-sucky (I swear!) newsletter. Back to you, Chet!

TOPICS: communicating, creativity, List-o-rama!, Tools of Goodness.

I’ve been working on a super-secret web project for an interesting, celebrity client who is using her high profile in the real world for, as I like to say, the powers of Good and not Evil—something I always try to support here at communicatrix-dot-com.

Hell, that’s kind of my modus operandi for life in general.

Anyway, eventually, everyone and his brother will be able to participate just by going to a good, old-fashioned URL. But for launch, we want to have some coolio stuff ready to go. I told my client that I have the most interesting, fearless readers in the world—and hey, counting the readers of readers, that’s probably close to true—so I’d put the word out here.

We’re still working out the copyright issue, because ultimately, there may be enough cool stories to warrant a compilation in book form, which she’d like to be able to do. But for now, let’s say that there will be a rider there where you can opt-in if you’d like to be included in the book, and opt-out if, for some reason, you wouldn’t. Either way, everyone retains copyright of his or her material, meaning you’re free to do whatever the hell else you want with it.

In other words, she ain’t looking to get rich off us chumps; she’s doing fine in that department. She’s just really, really into stories.

And that’s what the site is about: everyone’s stories. Because as someone who’s walked longtime amongst the rich and famous (and the starving artists and regular people before then), she knows that “famous” does not necessarily mean “has better story.”

So here are the topics she’s looking for essays on now:

1. “Most inexplicable fling or crush” (you know—that one you’re, like, WHAT THE HELL?!?! after it passes)
2. “New passions or obsessions, however fleeting” (she mentioned a new and strange love of watching Sunday golf on TV, even though she hates golf and has no desire to learn to play)
3. “Regrets” (big, little, whatever)
4. “Most memorable high school dance” (could be prom…although not for me…)
5. “In what ways are you a weenie” (uh…yeah. 500 words probably isn’t enough for me)
6. UPDATE: “Favorite space you’ve ever lived in, and why”

Each story should be on ONE of the topics (i.e., don’t combine your crush with your prom story, or at least not as though people will get that there is more than one topic; each story should stand alone).

Also, if you want to play, they should be:

• around 500 words, max
• personal (i.e., about your experience)
• p0rn-free (or really, really hilarious)

Other than that, she’s wide open. Site should go live June 1, god willin’ and the creek don’t rise. If you’re totally freaked by sending your precious words to me like this, I can give you more details, but you’ll be sworn to secrecy and if you blab, you will be SO uninvited to my birthday party.

E-MAIL STORIES TO ME, PLEASE, AT communicatrix-at-gmail-dot-com

Let’s say by…May 18. (Don’t want to drive the developer batty, esp. since he’s The BF.)

Don’t worry if you’re a great writer, a medium writer, or not-a writer. Although I believe there’s no such thing: we’re all storytellers somehow, and if you don’t believe me, you don’t listen to StoryCorps enough.

Or read this blog enough, for that matter…

xxx
c

Image by grana (aka. crazypuccia) via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: communicating, creativity, Shameless plugs, work.

I’m all for blogs—clearly.

But there is, when all is said and done, something about a book. You can bring a book on a train! You can read it in bed or on the couch or in the tub. You can love it up and pass it along. And while I’m delighted when people find my online presence, and even more delighted when they pass it along, it’s just not the same. I can’t—you know—sign it with a Sharpie or anything.

Besides, this is not some short-time romance. As a girl, I’d always imagined the books I’d write someday as my offspring. I could see them in my mind’s eye far more clearly than I could some bucket of DNA with a pink or blue bib around its neck. So despite all the very smart things my pal, Michael Blowhard, has to say about the folly of book writing, I’m down with it. Or up for it. Or whatever it is the kids aren’t saying these days.

I have no delusions about the wild fame or fortune that will be mine when I corral the genius that is communicatrix into a 6″x9″ stack of dead tree guts. It’s a foregone conclusion that I’ll be self-publishing, via Lulu, perhaps, or, if I’m feeling particularly daring, ordering up a stack to keep in my garage. Which, since I don’t have a real garage, would be my living room.

I spent my weekend among a small sample of the millions who believe they have a book—or two, or seven—in them. Sitting amongst them, I’m even more certain: both of the pointlessness of my writing a book and the absolute necessity of it…

xxx
c

Image by Cade via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: communicating, reviews/books, writing.

When it comes to a Toastmasters meeting, the hands-down favorite event is usually our extemporaneous speech feature, “Table Topics.”

One person takes on the task of coming up with a slew of questions which she then springs on a series of unsuspecting (but, for the most part, secretly hopeful) victims, who are given a short window of time (1 minute minimum, 2 minutes maximum), to answer their particular question. It can be great fun, especially if the Table Topics Master (or “Mistress”, as I insist upon being called, “Madame Table Topics Master” being more ridiculousness than I can stomach) chooses a good theme.

It’s my favorite role at a meeting—so much so that I don’t let myself volunteer for it anymore. I figure that I should spend my time learning new skills and getting better at things I suck at, and letting other people discover how much fun it is to be Table Topics Mistress. On my first at-bat, I chose the theme “True or False…and WHY!?!?”, comprised of a series of classic quotations from my files with the framing question. Another time I ran with an international theme of sorts, giving each player a proverb from a different country and letting them speak on the topic (pro or con is a pretty typical Table Topics gambit).

But my favorite Table Topics session was the simplest, hearkening back to those old, fourth-grade discussions at sleepovers or on the playground. You know—the “would you rather be blind or deaf?” type of grammar-school-philosophy arguments.

In case you want to play along at home, I’d thought I’d include the batch of questions I wound up using that night. Yes, every one of these puppies has been road-tested by an Actual Toastmaster, who came up with a 1–2 minute speech on the spot.

If you had to choose, would you rather…

…be a little overweight and not be able to lose it or extremely underweight and not be able to gain it?

…go without dessert forever or go without fruit forever?

…be the President of the United States or the Vice President of the United States?

…get an extra hour of sleep per night or an extra 20 hours’ pay per week?

…be an identical twin or a fraternal twin?

…go to the most exciting show in the world or stay home and read the greatest book in the world? (NOTE: You’re getting ONE chance to do either—i.e., you can’t say “I’ll go to the show tonight and read the book tomorrow,” as our beloved Miss Ida did.)

…wear really comfortable shoes that made you feel dumpy or really beautiful shoes that made you feel uncomfortable?

…own the house of your dreams or be able to buy someone really deserving theirs?

…have a perfect memory or be able to truly forget the worst things in your life?

…have your dream color in a color you hate or an ordinary car in a color you love?

…have mild colds the rest of your life, or one month when you had all your colds at once?

(HINT: for you non-Nerdmasters, these also make fantastic blog post ideas …)

xxx
c

Image by kittenry via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: communicating, public speaking, Table Topics, Toastmasters.

When normal people play hooky, they go to the movies or the beach or Vegas.

When nerds take the day off, they go to see this guy, and come home 8 hours later, drunk with possibility, clutching a set of books so beautiful in both thought and execution, you get a little dizzy just opening one up.

I took a ton of notes, which I’ll share with the class at a later date, but the topline is this:

Edward Tufte really is “the Leonardo da Vinci of information” (New York Times quote, not mine), and seeing him in person really is worth every penny of the not inconsiderable sum it costs to do so.

You get all of his books—he’s up to four—which are impossibly priced at the low, low figure of $40 apiece. I say “low, low” because from the little I know about book production, there’s no way you could print these conventionally for that price. (Tufte has his own publishing company, Graphics Press.) They are exquisitely produced works of art so full of wonderful information it will take me months—nay, years to absorb it all. And if you go to the lecture, he uses them as the support material! Makes those crappy PowerPoint leave-behinds looks pretty lame. Which is, of course, the entire point.

Edward Tufte is not as anti-PowerPoint as even he says he is.

The essay that put Tufte on the map with the hoi polloi (he’d been rockstar-popular with the geniuses for far longer) was, predictably enough, the one where he tells everyone’s favorite meeting crutch where to get off.

He hates PowerPoint, to be sure, but he was careful to qualify his hatred:

1. ET says that PowerPoint does not ensure sloppy thinking, it just makes it more likely
2. ET reserves the bulk of his wrath for those who misapply PowerPoint in “serious” presentations—people who are cutting off feet to fit bodies in beds, either unintentionally (well-meaning scientists who abandon their language of notation and explanation to fit PowerPoint’s low-resolution, limited character set world) or intentionally (evil people obfuscating or outright fudging data with visual double-speak, and he hates those people no matter what medium they’re using towards their nefarious ends)

If you wanna do a PowerPoint about kitties, I don’t think ET is gonna have a problem with it. PowerPoint as infotainment is relatively benign. So my work as a presentation designer is not moral compromise, provided NASA or the Federal Reserve don’t engage my services. As if.

Watching Edward Tufte is an exercise in head-exploding newness and, simultaneously, a joyous feeling of coming home.

My brain is still reeling from playing catch-up with some of the finer technical points, but the rest of my body is still vibrating with the shock of recognition. Over and over in my notes, I have little asides with stars and underscores where I realized his points were essentially the credos I’ve been living with for the past 10 years or so: “Tell the Truth” and “Form Follow Function” and, less pithily, “Figure Out How to Say It So People Will Get It, Asshole.”

It’s the content, stupid.

‘Nuff said.

Now, back to the business of delivering information in an elegant, useful fashion…

xxx
c

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the work of Edward Tufte, here are some good places to start:

• Edward Tufte’s website (link)
• Salon review of Tufte’s book, Visual Explanations (link)
• Jason Carr’s notes on a Tufte speech several years ago (link)
• A brief post by a software engineer on Tufte’s relevance in new media (link)
• Wikipedia entry (link)

Image by unertlkm via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, communicating, Design, Edward Tufte, information design, Nerd Love™.