What Writers and Actors Have in Common

Writers and actors share a strange trait. We go to a funeral, start crying into our hankies, and then think, "Oh, this will be great emotional material for my big moment in Act 3," or "Perfect story for chapter 8." We can be kissing the man/woman of our dreams for the very first time and think, "I'm going to write an article about that." We're always, on some level, observing.

I remember almost 30 years ago watching the movie The Big Chill and laughing my ass off when Jeff Goldblum's character says he's going to write a novel about the weekend he has just spent with his friends. Someone (I think Glenn Close) asks him, "What were you writing about before?" He says, "Last weekend." Even though I was a young woman when I saw that film, I recognized it as the truth. (See how I just used it as an anecdote!)

If you're a writer, it's incredibly fruitful to carry a small notebook or an MP3 recording device around with you so you can capture these moments of emotional insight. You simply don't know when you'll want them or be able to inject them into your material. The specific details of how things looked and smelled and sounded, and perhaps more importantly, what you thought when you saw, smelled, or heard them--the internal dimension--is the secret of great storytelling.

The truth can be entertaining. This past weekend at a housewarming party I heard a great anecdote. Someone--an ophthalmologist I met--was describing to me how detailed his instructions to his patients have to be since people so often get them wrong. He'd given a woman a bottle of drops for an eye problem, explaining to her that she had to lean her head back and then put three drops in. After a week, his patient came back complaining that the drops weren't working. He asked her to show him what she was doing. She tilted her head back and then squirted three drops into her mouth.

Equally funny to me was the time I got into an argument with someone who obviously had both a rather inadequate education and very little common sense. (Why did I bother arguing?) Because of the story of Adam and Eve, he earnestly believed men have one less rib than women do. If anything could be argued, it's that men have an extra "rib," right? It's just not found in their rib cage.

Whenever I hear stuff like this or experience it, I begin inventing stories around it. I try to tease out the meaning for myself. The "moral," if you will. I do this because I am a lover of human nature and because the unexpectedness of the beliefs or the behavior of others initially seems so unlike my own. That is, until I balance it against something in my own experience . . . which is an associative process I always do and so does everyone else. And this is the key reason why anecdotes are so powerful. We bridge to them.

I heard the eye dropper story and laughed at the woman's "stupidity," and then a minute later felt forced to admit to my new pal, "When I was on my way here . . ." and tell of my own mishaps and misadventures. On my way to that party, for instance (which was the third time I'd been to my friends' new house), I decided I would recognize the building. I got out of the subway, walked two blocks in the right direction, and congratulated myself for being able to identify the route. I thought, "The building is taller than the others on the same block." And then, "Oh, there's the bakery on the corner . . . I recall that." Looking across the street, I saw a tall building. I went up to the door. There were no names by the buzzer panel. I reasoned that since my friends live on the top floor I should hit the top buzzer. So I did. Someone answered and I said, "It's Stephanie. I'm here for the party." She buzzed me in. I climbed four flights of stairs, and arrived . . . only to discover I was in the wrong building at the wrong party. My friends' house was a block further away.

At least I got some exercise climbing stairs.

Moral of the story? Don't buzz strangers in? Bring a map? Write about your weekend? Live with a sense of humor because being human means we're at the mercy of our minds? Publish an ezine so you have somewhere to put your notes and reflections to good use?

Being an artist is about being a great observer of humanity. The truth is as interesting as fiction. Watch. Record. Share. It's all there for the taking as long as we are paying attention.