ON ACTING: 'Hard-Boiled' Plot Meets Character

From an article (quoting biographer Tom Nolan) in the LA Times concerning Ross MacDonald, who created the hard-boiled detective, Lew Archer, and the series of books featuring him:

"MacDonald had tight control of storytelling, and the ability to spring a surprise ending that's also logical and consistent.

"In a lot of his books, as he's investigating the current crime, he becomes involved in investigating something from the past...So that plot is going forward but also backward. There's a point about two-thirds of the way through where they start to circle around each other, and they come together right at the end. It's almost a physical sensation where you're reading it."

In the emotional terms of acting, this idea would translate: 'in any scene, the present forward movement of the character toward his textual objective causes in the character an increasing activation of relevant character sub-text, or the emotional repository of the character's past, until both present plot and past character (formation) comes together in the explosion of the scene's climax and the resultant character's self-discovery.'