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.

TinyURL is great for making big-ass emails shorter, no question. I’ve used it regularly for a couple of years now, and it’s reliable and great.

But while it takes care of overly long URLs, it doesn’t do it very gracefully. Those of us who don’t understand the numerous hideous things that can happen upon clicking a blind link don’t do much to assuage the fears of those who do.

Then again, there are geniuses like my new best friend, the adorable, kind and wildly talented Doug Stern, who totally get it. Since Doug is a master self-promoter (i.e., he does it well and for the right reasons) I don’t think he’ll mind if I share his email sig (it’s a screenshot, kids, so don’t make yourself batty trying to click on things):

When I saw that list of clean, orderly URLs at the bottom of his sig, I almost shat myself. While I love my newsletter service provider, I hate being their free ad everywhere I go; even more, I loathe the stupid URL I got. (I think they offer some way of creating permalinks for your newsletter archives on your own site, but if there’s a way to put it on a subpage of one’s own site, I’ve yet to find it.)

Anyway, I immediately did some quick Googling and interwebbery, and found the magic site that will cure all of your wonky permalink woes, Metamark. Not only does it take a big-ass URL and shorten it into a nice, clean redirect–it will add the short, vanity extension of your choice. Behold, my original big-ass, gibberish newsletter signup link from Emma:

https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:19736

Meh. And bleh.

Now feast your eyes on its brief and elegant cousin:

http://xrl.us/eNewsSignup

Note to the extremely nervous: nothing is infallible. Metamark was upfront about their failing, which 86′d a number of URL redirects in early June.

But since my main use for these will be visible URLs–i.e., the kind that grace my email sig rather than the kind that hide, invisible, embedded in HTML on a website (hover over both of the above to see what I mean)–I don’t much care. Email’s shelf life is such that I don’t think a lot of people will be digging through theirs to find that one link I included to my newsletter signup.

And in the short term, it sure is pretty…

xxx
c

TOPICS: Tools of Goodness.

While I love this beautiful template (headspace, by fernando_graphicos, if you’re reading this in shouting distance of 2/20/07), its super-minimalist search feature has long been the gimpy-legged straggler of the site, something that became more and more obvious as the information grew broader and deeper.

With my new Lijit widjit, however, I have leapfrogged over my 2.0 templated cousins, and probably the next several releases of WordPress, as well. Just enter your search term in the box to your immediate right (if you’re reading this in shouting distance of 2/20/2007), hit “go” and your search will be conducted to the farthest reaches of the communicatrix literary landscape—or at least, every one of the 20+ sources I’ve entered so far.

It uses Google’s search engine and some, um, other stuff to pull sources from my all blogs, my aggregators (StumbleUpon, delicious, etc) and any other site you list (places I comment a lot, like 2Blowhards.com, or other, random pages I’ve entered). There is some duplication of results and it’s definitely better on very specific searches than general ones, but overall, I’m pretty happy to have the means to find those precious words I’ve misplaced somewhere.

If you despise it, you can still use the old-school search box at the bottom of the sidebar. But I’d be interested to know what you guys think of this here Lijit, and how it’s working for you.

xxx
c

Flickr was down for the count, so here’s a little pic from my place circa last December. Nice light!

TOPICS: Tools of Goodness.

I’ve alluded before to Best Year Yet on this here bloggy, but for those of you who missed class and/or are too f**king lazy to click the links or Google it, Best Year Yet is a values-based goal-setting system which I discovered via Heidi Miller’s podcast long ago, and which could just as rightly be called “The Nerdiest Goal-Setting System Yet” except that it’d be redundant.

My friend, Kathy (zen-shiatsu mistress supreme) and I spent four—count ‘em, four—hours today going over our plans. We’d both done all of our (nerd) homework and I’ve been implementing mine since the second week of January, but Kathy’s a single mom and, as I understand it, time bends in funny ways when you’re situated thusly.

Anyway, I buffed out the scratches in my Best Year Yet plan and, because one of the things that tripped me up the first time I tried doing it was a lack of concrete examples of workable plans, I decided to make mine public.

Via Backpack. Because that’s how I roll, baby.

Feel free to check it out (link here), and contact me with any questions or comments. You can do it via email or the comments section of this post. I’d like to keep the process as transparent as possible, to help the most people; so if you email me, I may use your question to work up an FAQ somewhere here on the site, but if I do, I promise to keep your identity a total, double-secret-probation-level secret, should you so desire.

Bottom line: if you’re already doing BYY, I encourage you to post somewhere and share a link. If you’re not, consider doing something similar with your goals and post a link.

Accountability ain’t everything, but it helps.

Later, nerds…

xxx
c

SEE THE COMMUNICATRIX’S BEST YEAR YET 2007 PLAN HERE

UPDATE: I got an email from my pal, Neil, asking why the monthly and weekly goals were missing. They’re not: they just get a little too personal, so they’re not displayed for public consumption. But rest assured, I have them and am doing them. And it’s working!!!

Image by occipital lobe via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, communicatrix, goals, Nerd Love™, productivity, resolutions, Tools of Goodness.

Step One: Make desk out of file cabinets and door.

Step Two: Apply magnets to back of everything.

Step Three: Party on, nerd!

xxx
c

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, hacks, lifehacks, Nerd Love™, organization, productivity, Tools of Goodness.