{"id":4873,"date":"2017-09-30T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:14:34","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:14:34","slug":"100-blocking-ideas-for-your-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/100-blocking-ideas-for-your-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"100+ Blocking Ideas for Your Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"


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<\/span> No, I’m not talking about blocking in a fight. I’m talking about the theater term. Last year, I went to New York City after attending Realm Makers in Pennsylvania to visit my cousin who is pursuing her career as an actress. The two of us went to see a Broadway of The Phantom of the Opera<\/i>. I loved the play as a whole (cause it’s Phantom of the Opera<\/i> on freaking Broadway), but we did have to admit there were some weird blocking issues (such as cleaning an apple on the inside of one’s thighs and crawling on one’s belly on the floor. I don’t know why. XD). Blocking is the movement that the actors are supposed to be doing either during dialogue or when they’re not doing anything so they’re not just standing there awkwardly. <\/span>
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<\/span> Some great examples for blocking are in the Lord of the Rings<\/i> and Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/i>. I can think of many scenes where Aragorn is sharpening his sword or cleaning a deer, Sam is cooking, Sokka is taking a sip of water or working building armor, and Aang is feeding Appa just to name a few things. The characters are always doing things that are realistic and relevant to the scene. <\/span>
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<\/span> Since I just went to the opposite side of the country for the same conference in July, I got to thinking about my NYC experience again. Blocking is completely applicable to writing. We don’t want our characters just standing or sitting awkwardly all the time during rest points in the story. They should be doing something and it’s logical for them to be doing something while resting and\/or during a long swath of dialogue. So I came up with a list of fifty different blocking ideas for your characters, so we don’t have them twiddling their thumbs or rubbing apples on the inside of their thighs. Now I organized this list by genre, just to give a sense of order but these things can go across genres easily.<\/span>
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