Instant Line Learning

Instant (almost) Line Learning

Break each scene into French scenes or Natural breaks and break those into 3 equal parts: BEGINNING, MIDDLE and END. (A French scene is the entrance or exit of an energy or life force) This is done to help the brain absorb the information faster. The brain retrieves top down and bottom up. By making more tops and more bottoms, it is easier for the mind to retrieve the middles.

Never highlight only your dialogue; that very act forces the focus on only one set of lines at the expense of the story and takes you out of the moment. Highlight or underline only the IMPORTANT WORDS (TO YOU) in each line of dialogue (for ALL characters). These words are the IDEAS or EVENTS of the line, focus on them only. Sequence these events or ideas in order of occurrence by writing them on a separate page.This procedure ensures that the actor is focusing on and learning the sequence of events of the story.

Write only the underlined/highlighted words, all other words put "dashes" (the dashes should be the approximate length of the words they are replacing). Work only one section at a time. Then read aloud from the page you have just written, but, focus on the story, filling in the "dashes" orally without looking at the copy. You should be able to fill in 95 to 100% of the dashes. Continue rereading the page until you can fill in all dashes correctly and without hesitation. Then turn the page over, you will find that you probably will know all the dialogue for all the characters. You will work with each section (beginning, middle and end) separately until the sequence of events is clear. THEN JUST TELL THE STORY.

With practice, this entire process should take less than 10 minutes per page of dialogue!! Remember, you know the dialogue... Your character doesn't. Nor does he know what the other characters are going to say. You must get out of the way and let him create it as he listens.