A Writing Tip from Angelina Sciolla
GETTING INTO CHARACTER
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Often when you encounter a creative writer, you may be meeting a small business owner, a teacher, physician, or a parent doing any number of these things. As they orient themselves to shifting responsibilities and modes of written communication throughout the day, writers are essentially role-playing their way to creative expression.
It can be difficult to navigate these stratified scenarios because they require different skills from your writer’s toolbox and even different philosophical approaches. It’s not just about being mindful of styles, rules, or practices, because we know the boundaries around different forms of writing can be porous. It’s about understanding who you are and who you need to be in each of these situations. You might have the same name by the time you dispense with building pie charts and transition to writing poetry, but you don’t always feel like quite the same person.
So how do you play the different parts of your writer’s life? How do you get into character for the task at hand, be it a board meeting synopsis or flash fiction?
First, acknowledge that the shift must take place. Take the breath, make the space in your brain. Change coffee mugs, tee shirts, or do whatever you need to signify leaving one world for another. Don’t believe that your skills and versatility will automatically adjust to your changing scenario. Your flexible mind has muscle memory, which can pull you towards practices and patterns unfit for the world you are about to inhabit and, inevitably, worlds collide. It is typically others who will point out the damage. I’ve spent 20 years in advertising, a world of glib and slick writing, so when I endeavored to go to graduate school, I foolishly Peggy Olson’d my way through a passage about 2nd-century Christianity in my first research paper. My professor gently shamed me back to more academic, empirical prose. And when I dared to use more allusory poetic language in a brand strategy deck, my peers bullied me back into the lingua franca of marketing. (I didn’t agree with them, but copywriters never win arguments). Two different worlds require two different versions of me.
Second, don’t be afraid to differentiate and compartmentalize your worlds. See them for what they are and then see yourself as a kind of repertory actor who gets cast in all the good parts. You can take command in every scenario as long as you “prepare”, as actors say. Think about the world you are going to inhabit, what it wants from you, and what you want from it. I often resort to the palate cleansing properties of a walk, a podcast, or, interestingly, a turn at cleaning the house, before I shift to the role of creative writer. I find it necessary to transition to the “other” me – the one who isn’t writing for a client or a grade.
Finally, take pride in your ability to inhabit these different spaces. Consider it a superpower that informs the very reason you write. Because it does. It not only shows a flexible skill set but an emotional intelligence that helps you understand others and yourself. That’s how great characters are formed. There’s no question the role playing is challenging, but it can also help you appreciate and—most importantly—protect the unique world you build for yourself to strengthen your writing and nourish your creative exploration.
Angelina Sciolla is a writer who has been moonlighting as an advertising creative director for the last 20 years. She has contributed to a wide range of publications, including Publishers Weekly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, SOMA, Where Magazine, Philadelphia Style Magazine, American Heritage, and many others. Her creative nonfiction has been published in The Bucks County Writer and her one-act plays have been performed at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Angelina Sciolla is currently completing an MA in Religious Studies at Regis University and serves as a submissions editor for Cleaver.
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