The Artist’s Way & CROW?

Written By Figen Gungor

One result of doing the popular 12-week course by Julia Cameron from her book titled The Artist’s Way was the desire to partake in acting classes. The urge was there, niggling at the back of my mind, each time I completed one of the assigned tasks and looked inwards at my desires. Excuse after excuse, I finally gave in to the urge and signed up to an acting class for adults run at a local theatre. I enjoyed it so much that I completed a whole term and as a result my writing has become better for it.

During one class, I was given a script and paired up with another actress, we were to play siblings with a tense relationship due to my character going away to prison (we suspected) and leaving the other to deal with the family drama. Never having acted before, my performance was rather flat, the actor that was leading the class gave me some advice that really stuck with me. They said to follow a series of questions that are fundamental to improv and good acting, found in the four letter acronym C.R.O.W. This is what I want to share with you, my dear readers, as it has helped me immensely, both on the page and off.

If you are similar to me and like to write scene by scene I’ve compiled my notes on CROW into a handy planner.

What does C.R.O.W stand for? And what questions should I ask myself?

Characters — Which characters will be appearing in this scene? Who are they? What are they doing?

Relationships — What is their relationship to each other? Are they friends, family, lovers or enemies?

Objectives — What are their objectives? What do they want from the other person?

Whereabouts — Where are they? How does this impact the way they might act or talk?

How to use the CROW planner? With an example.

When you sit down to write a scene and feel stuck, I’d like you to work your way through the questions one by one until you create a clear image of what you think should happen.

I will now share with you an example scene I am working on.

Characters

  1. Which characters will be appearing in this scene? Barış and Faith.

  2. Who are they? The two main characters of my book. Barış is quite hot-headed and Faith is quite persistent.

  3. What are they doing? They are looking at a box that they found in Barış’s father’s cupboard that was hidden.

Relationships

  1. What is their relationship to each other? They are neighbours who have known each other for a couple of months now.

  2. Are they friends, family, lovers or enemies? They are friends. But Barış is crushing on Faith but Faith is currently in a relationship so she’s trying to block off her feelings towards him.

Objectives

  1. What are their objectives? Barış really doesn’t want to open the box. Faith really wants to open the box.

  2. What do they want from the other person? Barış is trying to convince Faith to not open the box. Faith is trying to convince Barış to open the box.

Whereabouts

  1. Where are they? They are in Barış’s father’s house after the funeral so Barış might be feeling sad. Faith is also in the house but has never been to this house before.

  2. How does this impact the way they might act or talk? Barış might be talking in a low voice, he might be uncomfortable being in the house after the loss of his father. Faith might be acting cautious and speaking with hesitation as it’s her first time being in this house.

Now that you’ve gone through and answered all of these questions I want you to write one simple sentence to summarize what you’ve written.

CROW outline: They’re in Barış’s father’s house after he’s passed away, they’re deciding on whether or not to open this box that they have found hidden in a cupboard and are trying to convince each other to do the opposite thing.

Sometimes stepping away from the page and getting physical with words can help to picture what it would look like off the page. This is why I would recommend for every writer to attend at least one acting class!

I hope this has been helpful and has gotten those creative juices flowing. This usually takes me about five minutes to complete and gives me the kick I’ve been needing to go ahead and start writing.

If you’d like a video to reference on the go, here’s a TikTok video I made about the CROW planner.

If you’d like to download either a PDF or a Word doc version of the CROW planner you can do so in the Resources section of my website.

PDF or Word doc versions of the CROW planner.

Figen Gungor