1. Feel the fear.

'Liquid terror endured in public' sums up acting. Shaking in the wings, you pray that an earthquake will flatten the theatre, or that men in forensic overalls will rush in, shouting, 'Evacuate!' Bottling out of a performance is unthinkable, so, you pin on the 90-watt smile and walk on. Magically, the terror melts and you remember why you love the job. As a writer, one of the legacies from my time in theatre is my ability to get through fear. Blocks? What blocks? I've done every raw emotion so you won't find me writing, 'He came at her with a knife. She felt chills.' No, no. I know that true fear is freshwater eels somersaulting in the gut. It's a throat full of drawing pins. It's the negotiation between fight or flight hampered by a body that can't do either.

The Milliner's Secret

The Milliner's Secret

2. Acting makes the walls of your mind elastic because actors have carte blanche to be physically somebody else every night. In my time, I've been a Southern belle, Constance of Brittany, poor, mad Agnes, a nuclear war survivor and a girl-dressed-as-a-boy-in-love-with-a-girl. Building a new character is to enter a stranger's consciousness, and for me, drama opened the door. I now never say, 'I can't make that character any more extreme' because I know that any extreme is valid, if it's founded in truth. Tackling a new role, I'd ask, 'What is this character's truth?' I do the same when I'm fleshing out a character in a novel. By truth, I mean the uninhibited reactions a person shows when they know nobody's looking. In art, as in life, people will often surprise you.

3. Acting is a springboard for living the life less ordinary. For spending half your waking hours making stuff up.

4. Great dramatic dialogue says just enough. The actor does the rest. Acting trains the ear.

5. A good actor reads the subtext and a good play has plenty. 'May I top up your glass, Mrs Arbuthnot?' may sound like a basic piece of linking dialogue, but inflection can change the meaning. 'May I top up your glass? (you drunken old tart)' 'May I top up your glass? (as you clearly aren't going to pour me one)' 'May I top up your glass? (so I have an excuse to lean very, very close, you gorgeous sex-bomb you.' You get the picture.

6. Ever tried to learn a Shakespearian monologue? To be or not to be ... Actually, Will is kind to actors as his ideas flow logically; set-up, exposition, conclusion, expansion, new idea - until they abruptly change course. If they didn't, we'd get bored. It's tough on actors if a playwright provides no hooks or stepping stones. Novelists have an easier time as nobody needs to learn our work by heart. Even so, characters talking in distracted bursts, space-hopping from one idea to the next, will annoy the reader eventually. Secondary characters grinding on about the weather or naming every A-road in England will also drive readers mad, as they do in real life. The trick is to rein such characters in while letting them be themselves, using their spiels to move the story forward. Just as a playwright does.

7. People on stage interact. Even when not speaking, actors are acting. It's an art, non-speaking acting. How to be alive and energetic in your space without upstaging others? Put two actors and a cat on stage, the audience will watch the cat. What does that teach the novelist? That if you have several characters on the page, make sure they are present, even if they're silent. Ever read a scene where somebody pipes up long after you'd forgotten he was in the room? You wonder, was he there all along, or did he nip out to the loo?

8. By the same token, people arguing or conversing on stage are bouncing off each other. Actors plan their character's reactions and they alter depending who they're with. We've all seen how a young man's stance and vocal inflections settle down when he's with his mates. Bring on a woman, his voice and body language change. Let's say he then meets his old chemistry teacher, there's another set of reactions. The scene-by-scene deconstruction of plays I've done rubs off when I write. I see my characters moving through the novel, changing their plumage with each encounter.

9. Ice cream in the interval. I have learned to give myself a sucrose-based snack halfway through a long writing session. My dentist disagrees but I say I've earned it.

10. Give characters clear goals, then pull out the rug. Unsettling things happen during a play, as they do in life. I've had the PA system blowing up, a pigeon wandering on stage, an emergency curtain toppling down and smothering a dance routine. As an actor, you smile and keep on. A key lesson acting has taught me is that the play must go on! And if you forget your lines, stay in character. Plot matters, but character will take you through anything.

That's a wrap. Darlings, darlings, I've been Natalie Meg Evans and you've all been unutterably lovely.