Imagination vs. Experience

This discussion on Responsibility and Compassion in Fiction Writing produced an interesting comment:

It's like the story of Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman working on Marathon Man, when Hoffman spent two days not sleeping to look properly exhausted, and Olivier said to him, "just try acting, it's easier."

This is an argument against the Method, really, is what I'm saying, and in the end, what we are doing is writing, not feeling... [emphasis mine]

I think this is mainly a dispute between two different approaches to writing, which are probably equally useful, just as Method acting is only...well, a method.
( Read more... )