Tips to Help Learning Your Lines

Learning your lines is a chore. Some people love it, but generally it’s a pain in the ass. For most of us, it’s just plain graft. No ifs or buts, you just have to graft. Or as one of my colleagues says “Stop complaining and learn the fucking lines.” But there are ways to improve the speed with which you learn lines and improve the security of them too.

After many years of teaching and directing, I have decided that there some reasons that people don’t know their lines:

1) Some people use inefficient line learning strategies and tools.

2) Some people underestimate the task.

3) Most people are just lazy.

I don’t think this blog is for the lazy people. If they can’t be bothered to learn their lines, then more efficient and effective strategies won’t help them.

This blog might help those that underestimate the task, as long as they realise how much work they have to do.

This blog will help those with inefficient line learning strategies and tools, but only if they follow them.

So, let’s take a look at some tips for learning a script.

TIP 1:  Line Learning Strategy

If you don’t learn lines quickly and securely, your line learning method doesn’t work. You need to break your learning process into three:

• Preparation

• Memorisation

• Test

Do you use that old chestnut, read a line, cover a line, see what you remember? Most people do, it’s highly inefficient. You are actually skipping preparation and memorisation and moving straight to testing. You must pass through the stages.

TIP 2:  Preparation: Highlighting and Chunking

The memory works in small chunks, so break what you have to learn down into chunks. Highlight your lines with a bright highlighter and then chunk up the script, like this:

Highlighted to focus attention on my lines, and broken into two chunks. Chunking is the way the memory works in smallish chunks. Go one line at a time, one chunk at a time. Otherwise, it will be daunting and you won’t want to start learning them. If the scene is broken down by the sense of each chunk of the scene, you will remember it easier, this bit is about Johnny, that bit is about getting the money, the next bit is about going to Brighton etc. 

TIP 3: Memorisation – Recording

Record yourself speaking the highlighted lines in Chunk 1 – all of them, your lines and the other actors, all spoken very flat and boring. Play them back to yourself while you do the chores, wash up or walk to work.  (obviously you can do this for bigger chunks, but one chunk at a time)

TIP 4: Memorisation – Reading Aloud

So far we’ve made no attempt to learn the lines. Just break them up and then record them. Next read them aloud a few times, no need to try to remember them, just read them aloud – the whole chunk to get familiar with them.

TIP 5: Images

The mind seems to love pictures over words, so the most important step is to turn the lines into pictures. Do you often remember where the lines are on the printed page from the script? That’s your mind loving images, but that doesn’t really help. A picture of the page makes you think of the script, we want the images to conjure the lines.

Cecily.  You are under some strange mistake.  I am not little.  In fact, I believe I am more than usually tall for my age.  [Algernon is rather taken aback.]  But I am your cousin Cecily.  You, I see from your card, are Uncle Jack’s brother, my cousin Ernest, my wicked cousin Ernest.

The first image will be of the actor playing Algernon sitting crossed legged underneath Old John, which is a folly castle near where I grew up.

You could have him sitting under any mistake you’ve made in your life. Now you have a picture of him under some strange mistake.

See yourself standing next to him as a giant. I am not little. 

See yourself as a rope with your head as a small knot I am not little.

So run those images together.

The other actor is sitting under a table filled with the money you wasted. You are twisted around the ankle of that actor as a rope, with your head as a small knot.

See the picture. Forget the words. See the picture. It’s silly and it sticks in the mind. 

For the next one, I am looking into the Guinness Book of Records (In fact), and I see myself on my knees praying/believing myself tall, and next to the picture on the page is a tv playing only adverts for the tv insurance firm ‘More Than’. (more than usually is a hard phrase to remember, so I gave myself a reason to learn it.)

Run those images together.

But aren’t you just wasting time remember images when you could be learning words.

The mind accepts images and stores them better. 

I have made no attempt to learn those first few lines. Here’s my recall from just the pictures alone.

You are under a strange mistake. I am not little. In fact, I believe I am more than usually tall for my age.

For the next part I imagine myself as a huge a giant ARSE, yet a HUGE backside – But I am (think Yoda saying Butt I am) and then I have my friend Cecile pointing me towards my cousin Karen.  But I am your cousin Cecily.

You see how it works?

There is a large pile of money with Tom under it = You are under some strange mistake.

Wrapped around his ankle is me – a piece of rope with my head as a tiny knot. I am not little. 

Looking into a Guinness Book of Records to see myself praying to be taller, while on the other page is a tv with a commercial for the insurance firm More Than, which is being repeated. – In fact, I believe I am more than usually tall for my age.

Myself as a big butt talking to my friend Cecile who is pointing as my cousin Karen -But I am your cousin Cecily.

The sillier and sexier you can make the images, the easier they will be learn the lines. The images will stick and the words will stick with it. 

TIP 6: Cue Line Trick

The cue line for this bit of text is ‘For Sure’. In my head I have the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, looking very confused at Tom under the table of money – That’s the strange mistake that Cecily talks about.  Now when you hear the words ‘For Sure’ you know you go into ‘strange mistake’. Simple!

TIP 7: Write Them Out

Writing is a psychoneuromotor activity, which means the learning is tripled. Write out your lines, you’ll subvocalise them too as you write them. Play over the images you’ve created at the same time.

Now try writing them out while you think through the images.

Listen, Read, Write, Imagine.

TIP 8: SHOCK HORROR

At this stage, you’ve made no attempt to learn the lines at all. Yet, for some reason, they are in, and they are secure. Sure this time, it was slowish, but because you have stored the information in several parts of your brain (writing, reading, speaking and listening) and you’ve got an image stored for every line, they will be more secure and easier to recall.

ONE LAST TIP: For information to move from short term memory to long term storage, you need SLEEP. Always start learning your lines BEFORE you need them, a sleep will help the data upload to long term and make it easier to recall it when needed.

Remember, no excuses now. Just do it. The trouble is that the lazy people won’t be helped by this way of working anyway. They’ll leave it to the last minute and still try to use highly inefficient ways to cram information in their brains. They’ll think this all sounds too much like hard work and go back to their tried-and-tested way of procrastination and cramming the words in your head. It won’t work, but you’ll be able to say you know them while everyone around will see that you don’t!

So for those of you that will use this progressive techniques, the liberating feeling of being off book long before everyone else and secure with your lines is right in front of your eyes. TAKE IT!