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For many years, athletes have tapped into the power of cross-training to improve their performances in their primary sport. Swimmers run, runners swim���you get the idea. Writers can also employ this cross-training concept. By using exercises that force us to tell our story in a new genre or format, we can create more colorful characters, crystallize complex plots and even swerve around writer's block before it has the power to slow us down.
FROM THE PAGE TO THE STAGE (AND BACK AGAIN)
Let's say you're writing a novel. Maybe you sense (or early readers have informed you-- ouch!) that your dialogue just isn't lively enough. Perhaps it's coming out stilted and unnatural, or the dialogue-heavy chapters lack momentum. Put aside the manuscript of your novel for an hour and try writing your next scene as a play. As you do so, keep these tips in mind:
 Don't worry about formatting or stage directions, just focus on the thing playwrights do best: dialogue.
Forget about taglines, setting and what your protagonist is or isn't doing with her hair; just allow your characters to talk to one another.
Listen for their voices. Really try to hear them.
Concentrate on building palpable tension in the scene through dialogue alone.
THE PLAY'S THE THING
Ok, now that you've dabbled in the playwright's craft, use what you've learned to revitalize the dialogue in your novel:
Make each voice distinct. Here's an old playwrights' trick: cross out the names in the mini-script you've written and see if you can still identify who's speaking (or have another reader try to identify them). One sign of good dialogue in any genre is when the characters all have very distinct, idiosyncratic voices. If yours sound too much alike, focus on trying to make them markedly different from one another. Perhaps one character employs Harvard-educated diction, while her hairdresser cousin uses more slang. Pinpoint and play up these differences, even for minor characters. Now study the dialogue in your novel and try to ensure that each character maintains his or her own quirky way of speaking.
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Consider the power of text vs. subtext: Actors, directors and playwrights are all trained to hone in on the difference between what people say and what they really mean. The discrepancy between a character's true desires and what they're willing to 'fess up to often gives the scene texture, humor and tension. The same thing holds true for fiction, except that playwrights are forced to express all of this only through the spoken word.
Study the script you've written. Do the characters always say exactly what they mean? If so, this can often lead to relatively flat, uninteresting dialogue. You can build tension by making your characters hide their true desires, give false impressions or even flat-out lie. Practice this in your script and then see if you can apply the same principle to your novel. While absolute honesty may be a laudable quality in real life, fiction benefits when characters have hidden agendas.
SHORT STORIES AND LOGLINES
As a playwright and novelist, I find page-to-stage exercises particularly useful, but that's not the only way to cross-train. Here are some other genre-bending techniques that have the power to revitalize your work.
Write your novel as a one-page poem. Concentrate on the images and sensory details that evoke the mood you're trying to create in your prose.
Write a logline for your novel. Screenwriters often say, "If you can't tell it in one or two sentences, you don't know your story." Most Hollywood professionals have perfected the art of pitching their projects in a tiny, one-to-three-sentence TV Guide-style blurb called a logline. It can be crazy-making trying to squeeze your novel into such a restrictive format, but it really helps you extract the essence of your tale. It also gives you the advantage of having prepackaged your underlying premise so you can easily pitch it to agents, publishers and (once it hits the shelves) the media.
Write a short story featuring a difficult minor character as the star. Every writer stumbles on a character that is especially challenging to flesh out. If you run into this snafu, try making the problematic character your protagonist���not forever, just for a three or four page short story. Focus exclusively on this character's world and see what emerges.
Check out Jordan���s recent article in Writer���s Digest Magazine:
www.writersdigest.com/articles/rosenfeld_survival.asp
More articles coming soon ...
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