In method acting, the thespian tries to fully inhabit the character she or he is portraying — and in extreme cases, the person’s original personality completely vanishes as the role consumes reality for the duration of the job.
Writers, of course, have a different gig. And while some have been known to go to great lengths in pursuit of research, “method writing,” particularly in fiction, isn’t always practical.
Take Mystic author Lara Ehrlich, for example. Her first book, a short story collection called “Animal Wife,” is an extraordinary processional of imagination. Any attempts by Ehrlich to work the “method writing” approach could have required her to, depending on the story, invite a bear into her home for the hibernation months; craft a biologically correct and functional deer suit and then, wearing the contraption, head into the wild; grow swan feathers; convince scientists to develop a magic elixir so accurate in its ability to foretell outcomes that it becomes debilitating (and possibly disrupt the writing process!); or — most difficult of all — travel back to childhood to then renegotiate the path to adulthood.
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