Kwik Brain Episode 23: Memorize Scripts & Lines Quickly (Hollywood Secrets Part 1)

Welcome to Kwik Brain, bite-sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. I'm your coach, Jim Kwik.

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Show me. In this session, you're going to learn 12 memory tips actors use to memorize their lines Word for word. Now, I got this question. How do you memorize lines? How do you remember things verbatim? Whether it's poetry or a sales script, how do you remember things word for word? Now, I'm going to give you my 12 tips for memorizing things word for word. You're going to want to either write these down or if you've gone through our memory program before, link it, okay? So, either make a chain link through it Use your body list, use your home list, use your sun list, your peg list. Memorize these 12 things. It'd be really important for you to remember. Now, why would you want to be able to remember things word for word? Well, because it shows someone that you're an expert. Maybe you're a little bit nervous about public speaking. You have to give a toast, you know, at the next wedding, and you're really scared you're going to forget what you need to say, and all your family or friends are there watching. You know, maybe you want to be more romantic. You want to be able to memorize poetry, or you want to just be to be able to show people that you're advancing your career, that you're an expert at your field. Either way, I'm gonna show you 12 different things that you could use right now to be able to be better at remembering things verbatim. And again, so write these down or put these into your mind, if you will, using the location method or some of the methods that you've learned through these series. For each of these 12 tips, these dozen tips to be able to memorize things verbatim, I've made them, each of them start with the letter R to help them more memorable, right? They start with an R. So let's start right now with number 1. The first R is read. You want to make sure that you read it because it's hard to remember something that you didn't read in the first place. Now, if you've went through our Kwik Reading Program, I want to apply all the speed reading and smart reading tactics to be able to memorize this. All right, so a couple of them you could apply right now. Number 1, when you read it, read it with your finger. All right, using your finger, or what they call a visual pacer, will help you to absorb that information much more quickly. Not only will help your speed, but it'll help your focus and it'll also help your comprehension. All right, now here's why. Certain senses work very closely together. If you've ever tasted a great piece of fruit, like a great tasting peach before, in actuality you're not tasting the peach, you're actually smelling the peach. But your sense of smell and your sense of taste are so closely linked that your mind doesn't know the difference. Just like your sense of smell and your sense of taste are so closely linked, so is your sense of sight and your sense of touch. That when you're underlining the words that you want to be able to read and remember, you're gonna recall it better because you're using more of your senses, right? This is your tactile or your kinesthetic sense, if you will. Your eyes are also attracted to motion so that when you're underlining the words, you're not doing any fancy finger motions, you're not going down the page, you're not doing S-forms or Z-forms or anything like that. What you're doing is you're underlining everything. You're not missing anything, you're not skipping anything, if you will. You're just absorbing it. Imagine like your finger, it's like the words are coming through your finger and scanning right up to your mind. Right, metaphorically. The other reason why is your eyes are attracted to motion. So as you're underlining the words, your eyes follow your fingers across the page and you get better focus, right? Just by using your fingers while you read, your reading speed will improve 25 to 50%. Let me say it again: using a visual pacer— your finger, a pen, a highlighter, a mouse on a computer, you know, like a pencil if you will— will improve your reading speed 25 to 50%. Now the second R which is reflecting. Reflecting. The second R in helping you to remember things that you want to learn word for word, verbatim, like scripts or poetry, if you will, is reflecting on the dialogue. Now, reflection is kind of like you're sitting there and you're reading it, and then you're reflecting, thinking, what is the meaning? All right, because you're not just memorizing it for the sake of memorizing it, I hope. What is the meaning behind the words? Because if you could associate meaning and emotion behind it. You're thinking, what does it mean, you know, in this context? You know, what's my outcome here? What's my motivation? You know, they say that, you know, with actors, right? Actors will study and they want to know what their motivation is for the role that they're playing. So what's your motivating force? What's your motive, as they say, for action? So the reflection part is— this is step number 2. Actors call this process active experiencing. Active experiencing. You know, when you're going into the role and you're kind of, you're trying on this role, like if you're stepping into the person and you're wearing their head or their hat, if you will, you're walking a mile in their shoes. Active experiencing. A big part of it is your motivation, right? I always tell people that there's a success formula and I call it H cubed. It goes from your head to your heart to your hands, your head to your heart, your hands. You know, on a personal development level, you know, you could affirm things or think things all day or visualize things, but if you're not acting with your hands, Usually what's missing is the heart, is the emotion. And the reason why the emotion is so important to memory is emotion tied to information becomes a long-term memory. The 3rd R for remembering the things that you want verbatim is rite. Rite. And I'm spelling with an R instead of W-R-I-T-E, it's R-I-T-E. And this is basically taking notes because now that you've read what you want to be able to memorize and you've reflected on the meaning and the motivation behind the words, I want you to write those down. Write those down. I don't mean type, I mean actually write, because there's some magic that happens when information goes inside your mind and you start to write it down. You put it out and you start to own those words because they feel like they're yours. We're talking about accelerated learning and the 3 ways that you process and learn information: visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically. This is kinesthetic, kinesthetic learning. We talk about this. When you need to be able to remember names and faces. I teach you to practice pretending that you're writing the person's name, for example, on their forehead, and the actual, actual writing is your kinesthetic memory. So you're writing it down, and studies suggest, research suggests that upwards of, just by writing information down, what you need to remember word for word, that you're gonna retain it upwards of 40% or more. 40% or more. That's huge. The 4th R for remembering is repetition. Repetition. Just remember this: repetition is power. There is no substitute for doing the work. There's no substitute for doing the work. So once you read something and you reflect on it and it has meaning and motivation to you, then what you're doing is you're writing it. And then after you're writing it, you're going to repeat it. You're going to repeat it. Now, you're not just going to repeat it just randomly over time. What I want you to do is— latest studies talking about repetition talk about spaced repetition or interval review is spreading the information out and rehearsing at a separate time. So for example, they say the optimal way to memorize something is go through the information, you rehearse it, and then you review it 1 hour later, 1 day later, 1 week later, and then finally 1 month later. The 5th R in remembering your lines is you run the lines with someone. You run the The lines with someone. Find a partner. Here's the magic. If you've ever gone through our Kwik Reading program, we talk about comprehension, all right? And you don't just read something and you guess you could write and take notes, but there's a stage in building your comprehension that I call relating. Relating. And that's where you're talking to someone about it. And here's what you're doing when you're going through your lines. You're not just rehearsing it and repeating it in a vacuum. You're practicing and you're running it by a partner, right? So you're role-playing the lines and and you're repeating it to a partner because there's something about having a live audience. Something about it gets you active and it gets you present, you know, and it gets you in the moment. The 6th R for remembering lines are resources. Resources. And I'm going to give you one of those things right now. Resources are tools or technologies that could be able to support you along the way. So we talked about how important it is to be able to run your lines with somebody, but let's say you don't have a person to be able to go and give and take with, then a resource you could use is an app called Rehearsal. Rehearsal. And when we talk about technology, it's always a double-edged sword, right? We feel like we're outsourcing our brains to our phones so our mind gets weak and we don't have to remember things like, you know, our to-dos, our names, or even a script. But here's the thing, technology also is very convenient, right? It helps us to be able to remember the things that we need to and have it at our fingertips, if you will.

Okay, that is it for now. I want you to tune in to the next episode. It's gonna be the second half of How Actors Memorize Lines Quickly, Part 2. Until then, if you enjoyed this, please share the show and tag me on social media @JimKwik, K-W-I-K. I wanna know what you're doing right now to light up your quick brain, and I'll share and repost some of the best answers.

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