“Write what you know.” “Show, don’t tell.” “Kill your darlings.” 

We writers have been gifted many a writing lesson from our literary predecessors. Never mind that these cliches are rarely clear, much less constructive—if the craft books, MFAs, and beloved, best-selling authors repeat these “timeless” wisdoms, they must be true. But literature is nothing if not dynamic. So shouldn’t our craft lessons evolve, reform, and dare I say, revolutionize too? 

Now more than ever, the publishing industry champions intersectional storytelling, inviting readers into alternative worlds crafted from diverse imaginations. They’ve finally begun to question who gets to tell stories, but perhaps they have yet to confront how to tell them. In the business of storytelling (emphasis on business), writers are tangled in a spider web of impositions: market demands, editing conventions, and reader expectations, to name a few. So how might we compose honest, inclusive narratives to help resist these constraints? What could be a new contemporary craft cliche?

Drawing from drama, I humbly propose:

“The character decides.”

This article recenters the character in storytelling by wielding one of the most formidable blades in an actor’s armory: Stanislavski’s System. Think of it as the not-so-proud grandmother of contemporary theatre traditions like the infamous Method Acting by providing, in Stanislavski’s own words, “the conscious means to the subconscious.” Writers, like actors, must sculpt complex, authentic characters within nuanced, and often foreign, settings. By applying the System to the three phases of the writing process—outlining, writing, and revising—we can challenge our imaginations and writing habits. We can build stories that are convincing, compelling, and above all, character-driven. 

Who is Stanislavski?

As a retired theatre kid, let me assure you that Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski (1863-1938) is quite the celebrity in the world of open-call auditions and Broadway debuts. At the same time as revolutionaries challenged Tsarist rule, he critiqued the shallow, exaggerated melodrama characteristic of 19th-century Russian theatre. To Stanislavski, acting could be—and should be—much more than mere imitation. And so, he developed what was initially called “The Elementary Grammar of Dramatic Art,” a framework of principles for authentic performance, much like grammar frames language. The System, as we call it today, employs psychological and physical techniques to help actors access their subconscious instincts and craft truthful acting. 

But what does Stanislavski mean by truthful? It certainly isn’t “truth” in the objective sense. After all, actors often portray characters in circumstances very distinct from their own, such as fantastical worlds or different historical epochs. Lived experience often cannot be the sole casting criteria in the audition room, just as writers often do not limit themselves to writing about their own lives. Instead, Stanislavski believed that actors could use their own memories to create authentic scenes full of texture, nuance, and genuine emotion. As writers, we face a similar task: how can we translate our own realities into fiction? Is it possible to make those worlds feel so real that even we are convinced by them? 

Stanislavski would say yes—he would argue that it is an artistic necessity. So where do we begin? Let’s start with an outline. 

Outlining 

In order to write a story, writers must play god. We must create a world—otherwise known as worldbuilding—and sketch out the language, terrain, culture, and politics that define our story. For those of us writing speculative, historical, or fantasy fiction, this task is even more daunting, as we can’t rely on a familiar, accessible setting. Regardless of your genre, Stanislvaski’s Given Circumstances can assist in this creative genesis. Essentially, it means what are the pre-existing conditions of your story. Ask yourself: 

• Who is this story about? 
• When and where does this character find themself? 
• What do they want?
• Why do they want it?
• And lastly, how will they achieve it?

Notice that for Stanislavski, the setting is only as important as it relates to character. Instead of drowning yourself in endless world-building mad libs, consider the world through your protagonist’s eyes. At every twist and turn—from the food on their plate to the language(s) they speak—think about how that would relate to the character and their desires. For instance, if there’s a social hierarchy in this world, how does it affect your character’s personality and sense of belonging? If they dress themself, how do they obtain their clothes, and why do they wear those specific garments? Perhaps these details become an obstacle for the character, or maybe it’s a simple quirk of their identity. Either way: the character decides.

This requires, of course, a robust imagination. Stanislakvi tells us that this skill must be developed through observation: “The more an actor has observed and known, the greater his experience, his accumulation of live impressions and memories, the more subtly will he think and feel, and the broader, more varied, and substantial will be the life of his imagination, the deeper his comprehension of facts and events, the clearer his perception of inner and outer circumstances of the life in the play and in his part.”¹ Allow yourself to hone a writer’s eye in sight of character-driven storytelling—using your own experiences as well as those of the people around you. It’s a bit like the people-watching game, making up outlandish backstories for each stranger that crosses your vision, only this time with your own characters in mind. 

Once you have the bare bones of a world, it’s time to turn to the story. As Stanislavski advises actors faced with new scripts, break it down into “bits” of action—what we writers might call beats or scenes. Drawing from the Given Circumstances, start to consider how your character’s desires drive the story forward, and what prevents them from achieving it. What precisely happens in these scenes, however, you’ll discover through writing the characters themselves, allowing the objectives and counter-objectives of your cast to move the narrative along. 

Writing 

It’s one thing to construct a world, it’s another to live in one. Actors and writers alike confront a similar challenge—we must immerse ourselves in immaterial, imagined spaces. In other words, we must, at least while we are on stage or putting pen to paper, become our characters. Here’s where Stanislavski’s Magic If becomes key. 

This comes down to a simple question: what would you do if you were in this character’s shoes? Note that it’s not: what would you do as this character? The phrasing here is critical because it provides us with the immersive perspective required of our art form, while also maintaining a necessary distance as we must consider non-character-based craft techniques (word count, audience age/demographics, plot tension, etc) simultaneously. That’s to say: we’re not Method Actors. We’re storytellers. 

Using your character’s Given Circumstances—their backstory, relationships, and surroundings—imagine how they would act in a particular scene. How does their background shape their behavior in each “bit” you’ve outlined? This question will help you access your Inner Creative State, as Stanislavski called it. It’s the mindset that makes us most inspired, focused, and authentic as artists, circumventing stage fright for actors, and writer’s block for us. Psycho-physicality, or the connection between the mind and the body, is the trick to this Inner Creative State. Consider creating a writer’s “warm-up” for each of your protagonists—a few minutes of breathing, movement, and manifestations to “get into character,” if you will. Here’s a glimpse at one of mine, which all takes place in front of my desk. 

1. Look over my outline, and start to piece together the structural element of this “bit”: in other words, the architecture of the scene, or the most significant moments of tension. 
2. Move away from what I’m writing on (computer, notebook, phone, etc) and get to my feet. Go through all my characters in this “bit” and think about their social positionalities: their class, gender, race, or whatever social categories there are in my project. Stand the way that my protagonist would stand in a room full of these characters (if they don’t stand, then whatever resting position makes the most sense for them). 
3. Close my eyes and consider my protagonist’s psychological stage: what happened emotionally in the previous scene for this character? What is their objective in this scene? Their fear? Wear whatever expression on my face that most mimics this internal struggle—the very expression my protagonist would have at the start of the scene. 
4. Direct attention to my body, limb by limb. Start to visualize the protagonist’s physical body in place of my own—what is their physicality like in this “bit”? Are they injured? Insecure and hunched over? Threatened with their chin raised? How does their psychological state impact their physicality? Begin to breathe at the rhythm of the protagonist—slow for calm, quick for combat, etc…
5. Keeping my eyes shut, imagine the aesthetics of this “bit,” or the scenery. Imagine all the senses: how does the material’s texture feel on this character’s fingers? What does it smell like for them? How might their descriptions/opinions on the setting differ from the other characters’ present? 
6. Lastly, using the structural, social, psychological, physical, and aesthetic nature of this “bit,” open my eyes and return to the page, focusing on what literary style—tone, syntax, voice, etc—best suits these conditions. 

These six steps allow my POV character’s emotional interiority and physical exteriority to dictate the way in which I write the scene—once again, the character decides. Writing is a muscle, after all, and this warm-up will help establish a consistent mindset that is not only productive but authentic to your character(s). 

How you go about doing the actual writing is deeply personal. Perhaps you start with writing all the dialogue first; if so, Stanislavski might advise you to think of the subtext which “flows uninterruptedly beneath the words of the text, giving them life and a basis for existing…”² Or perhaps you use your character(s)’ interiority—what Stanislavski would call the Inner Monologue—to inspire the dialogue. In that case, Stanislavski would emphasize complexity: “Every passion is a complex of things experienced emotionally, it is the sum total of a variety of different feelings, experiences, states. All these component parts are not only numerous and varied but they are also often contradictory.”³

No matter your writing method, be sure to wear “thin skin” as you write: “as if there’s a bubble of emotion inside [your] chest, which responds to whatever the character’s going through.”⁴ Ideally, this should guide the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings, and choices, rather than the impositions of editors and readers. If we write for an audience, rather than through our character(s), Stanislavski warns that we will become “helpless, lost, stiff, tense, frightened, unnerved, absent-minded,” so dependent on external expectations that we lose creative freedom entirely.⁵ Just as the actors construct a ‘fourth wall’ to separate themselves, physically and emotionally, from the audience—allow yourself the same metaphorical barrier so that it is the character that guides the scene, not literary trends, bestselling books, or tropes. 

Revising

This is the opportunity to really consider your literary texture. Like an actor would a script, you might approach your draft with an eye for its language, structure, and tempo-rhythm. For us writers, tempo-rhythm can be translated to pacing by way of the relationship between character emotions and character actions, two things that are not always aligned. Specificity with punctuation is one way of achieving this; a colon might incite a reader’s curiosity, while a question mark urges the reader to answer themself. An exclamation mark is a dramatic rupture of the reader’s experience, whether positive or negative, and a comma, in Stanislavski’s view, is the best way to make someone listen—a bit like a hand raised in warning.⁶

Stanisvalski advises actors to locate the Action-Reaction-Decision in every “bit” of a script. In other words, what a character does to challenge something, how another character(s) reacts to that, and what choices (and thus following actions) are made because of it. Similarly, we writers may use this as a revising technique in each of our scenes in order to make sure our plot is moving along, and the tension is tightening action by action, led by character choices. However, it is critical not to formally use this strategy in the writing process itself, instead allowing character objectives, as understood through your Inner Creative State, to guide the scene. 

Writing as a Practice 

What’s most interesting about all the tools mentioned above, is that Stanislavksi honed them over six decades of work as a director, actor, and theatre practitioner. His notebooks were full of contradictions, amendments, and extensions, so much so that even his published work, condensed toolkits of the System, is prodigious. As writers, we can learn from this life-long challenge, the sort of discipline that encourages us to change our minds, change our processes, and change our style. We must write in copious amounts, however, to achieve such a non-linear progression—thankfully, unlike actors, we have the chance to revise. In the end, our goal as writers is not merely to entertain readers but to educate them through the empathy they feel for our character(s). As Stanislvaski said: “You should love your art because it makes it possible to talk to the spectator about the things he cares most for in life, and to make him a more useful member of society by embodying certain definite ideas on the stage in artistically creative character(s). If the spectator obtains an answer to what is engaging his thoughts, he will grow fond of the theatre and will learn to look on it as a necessity. But if all we do in the theatre is to entertain him, he will come and have a look at us and then go away.”⁷

References

¹ Stanislavsky, Konstantin. Creating a Role. Edited by Hermine I. Popper, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds, Routledge, 1989, pg 40.
² Stanislavsky, Konstantin. Building A Character. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds, 1 ed., Routledge, 1989, pg 113
³ Stanislavsky, Konstantin. An Actor’s Handbook. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, Routledge, 2004, pg 54.
⁴ Merlin, Bella. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books, 2014, pg 194. 
⁵ Stanislavsky, Konstantin. Konstantin Stanislavsky: Selected Works. Edited by Oksana, Raduga Publishers, 1984, pg 119. 
⁶ Merlin, pg 130. 
⁷ Magarshack, David. Stanislavsky: A Life. Faber & Faber, 1986, pg 372.