Episode 21: You Can't Act Genre...Can you? (Re: the Convo on Character Choices)

There is an idea in acting that you can't act genre because the characters don't know what kind of book they're in.

And I get it.

I really do.

Your character doesn't like wake up in the morning and think, I'm in a cozy mystery, so I should be quirky today.

They don't know they're in a thriller.

They don't know they're in like a fantasy or a rom-com or a dark romance.

They're just, you know, living their life.

And we happen to fall on the best or worst day of it and off we go.

They're just trying to get what they want, the objective.

They're trying not to get hurt or trying to hide something or find something or solve something or save someone.

All of that doesn't change.

And that has to come first.

You can't look at a comedy and decide, OK, that scene is funny, so I'm going to make it funny.

You can't look at a middle grade book and decide every kid needs to sound like a cartoon.

or a thriller and decide that speaking low and slow is automatically suspenseful, those are crutches.

And we don't like them.

We don't want to walk on them, especially not full time.

So you got to know what is happening to these people.

What do they want? What are they afraid of? What's at stake? You got to have a solid acting point to leap off of.

That's the work.

But then Steve's point comes in because genre does matter.

People who pick up a cozy mystery aren't looking for the same feeling as people who pick up horror.

And someone who loves, let's say, lit RPG isn't looking for the same thing as someone who wants a police procedural.

The worlds are different.

completely different.