Writing in role means writing as a character rather than about one: the diary entry they would keep, the letter they would send — or never send — the message thread sitting on their phone. It is role play with the speed turned down. No audience, no partner waiting on your next line, no pressure to be interesting in real time. Just you, the character, and the page.
That privacy is the point. Some discoveries about a character will not happen in front of thirty people, and this convention gives them somewhere to happen.
How to run it
- Fix the moment. Not “write as Goldilocks” but “write as Goldilocks the night after she ran — she cannot sleep, so she writes.”
- Choose a form the character would really use: diary, letter, apology never sent, voicemail transcript, note left on a kitchen table.
- Write in first person, in the character’s own vocabulary, for a set time — eight or ten minutes, no stopping to fix things.
- Keep the world’s details in it: names, objects, weather, what was said. Specifics are what make it feel found rather than invented.
Starters that work with almost any story (click to expand)
- “I keep thinking about what I should have said when…”
- “Nobody knows this yet, but…”
- “Dear ___, by the time you read this…”
- “The third time it happened, I stopped pretending it was an accident.”
Steal one, write the first sentence, and the character usually takes over.
What it feeds
Everything. A diary entry written in role hands you the inner life you need for Role and Character work; it gives Hot Seating an actor with real answers instead of improvised guesses; and it is the fastest way to find the missing scene in Scene Study from a Story — if your character wrote a letter between chapter two and chapter three, what does it say?
It also feeds your Drama Journal, where writing in role sits beside its opposite number: reflection in your own voice. Keep the two straight — one is the character’s truth, the other is yours, and Writing About Drama shows what the second kind looks like when it is done well.
The pitfall: the book report in disguise
“Then I went to the ball and met the prince and it was magical” is a plot summary wearing a costume. A character writing at night does not recap their day — they circle the one thing they cannot put down. If every event gets equal space, you are writing about the character again.
Curriculum connection
A1.3
use role play to explore, develop, and represent themes, ideas, characters, feelings, and beliefs in producing drama works (e.g., use improvisation exercises to explore how they might think, feel, and act in specific real-life situations; write in role as a character who is reflecting on the people, events, and relationships affected by a personal, social, or environmental issue)
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B1.1
use the critical analysis process before and during drama projects to identify and assess individual roles and responsibilities in producing drama works (e.g., use journal writing, teacher-guided reflection, cooperative problem solving, writing in role, and discussion to identify team members’ skills and knowledge and assess their use in project tasks)
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