Nina sat down with TV.com this week to talk about how she does what she does on such a regular basis. Read the little snippet below and head on over to TV.com to read the entire interview.

A lot of horrible stuff has happened to Elena in a very short amount of time. How do you keep track of what her emotional state is supposed to be on any given day? Like do you have a flowchart or something?

Kind of, yeah. I keep a separate script for each of my characters. So Elena has her own script and Katherine has her own script. And I go through every script— A lot of preparation and time goes into breaking it down and charting the emotional range and what’s going on with each character, and then not only what’s going on with them in this episode but over the last season. You know, one person could die in one episode and then another person could die in another episode and then you have to incorporate that and put it into effect.