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Apply the Spencer Tracy
secret for creating
memorable characters.
Sun Tzu wrote: “All warfare is based on deception.”
So is fi ction. As Lawrence Block put it, it’s telling lies
for fun and profi t.
Acting is based on deception, too, which brings me
to Spencer Tracy.
Tracy was considered the best among his peers. Bog-
art said you could never see the “gears turning” in Tracy.
He was completely natural, and it didn’t matter if he was
doing comedy or drama.
So what was his big secret? What was his technique?
As Tracy explained in an interview, “I’ve fi nally narrowed
it down to where, when I begin a part, I say to myself,
this is Spencer Tracy as a judge, or this is Spencer Tracy
as a priest or as a lawyer, and let it go at that. Look, the
only thing an actor has to offer a director and fi nally an
audience is his instinct. That’s all.”
This is the way to come up with living, breathing
characters in your writing, too.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to
fi ll out one of those long dossier forms for my characters.
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I like to have certain essential information, of course: voca-
tion, looks, general personality type, a bit of background.
But from there, I want to hear and see the character, which
is why I choose a visual (there are many sources of images
on the Web) and use the voice journal.
The Spencer Tracy secret is another way of getting
into your characters, viscerally. Think about being you
as the character.
This may remind you of the famous “method school”
of acting, popularized by Marlon Brando. The method is
just a way of getting at the same thing. How can actors be-
come the characters they play so as to achieve emotional
immediacy?
There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the method, but
I think it is best summed up by what the Russian di-
rector Constantin Stanislavski called the “Magic If.” It
simply means to act as if you were that character. In all
rehearsals, that’s what you go for, until you begin to feel
the part.
So if you are loathe to approach those long question-
naires about your characters, the Spencer Tracy secret
may be for you.
Robert Gregory Browne says:
If my lead character is a divorced father of three
who fi nds himself unwittingly involved in a conspir-
acy to overthrow the government, the fi rst thing I ask
myself when approaching a scene (even though I’m
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happily married and wouldn’t know a conspiracy if
it jumped up and bit me) is this: How would I react
in this situation.
Then I add the color (read: attitude/emotion).
How would I react if … I was a no-nonsense cop …
an offi cious political hack. And I apply this tech-
nique to every character I write.
In short, I’m like a method actor playing all
of the parts. By using myself and a healthy dose
of imagination, I can approach characterization
from the inside out. And once I’m able to get into
the skin of my characters, it’s much, much easier
to create someone whom I, and hopefully the au-
dience, can identify with.
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