Observing Humans in Their Natural Habitats

If you read my post on Monday, Multitasking Mambo, then you know I've got one or two projects on my plate. (And by one or two, I mean a zillion.) So while I'm getting those done, I'm re-running this post from last summer. Now that we're having some decent weather, I think it's a good reminder to get out and about and see what's out there in the world. Enjoy!

I've suggested before how it's necessary to leave your writer's haven in order to experience the outside world. We can't always just READ about the territory beyond our computer screen and keyboard. Sometimes we have to go out there and actually – gulp – interact with other human lifeforms.

Courage! You can do this.

All I'm suggesting is a field trip of an hour, two at the very most. You don't even have to take notes. Just absorb the atmosphere. Observe the gestures people use, and listen to the timbre of their voices. Can you tell the extent of their relationship by how they engage with each other? What emotions are they expressing? Or suppressing?

The point isn't to FIND anything in particular. It's to COLLECT, whether it's impressions, or ideas--basically any information worth hoarding. Indulge your brain's packrat tendencies, letting it pick up shiny bits it considers intriguing. You're like a pickpocket, lifting pieces of someone else's personality that might be useful to your writer self someday.

Later on, one of these little bits you've tucked away will crash into another one floating through your brain. You'll have an incendiary "Aha!" moment where you figure out a vital plot point for your story. Or all of a sudden you'll know exactly why your character does what he does in a particular scene.

I have had plenty of story ideas that fleshed themselves out after I've gone on one of these fact-gathering field trips. It's not a deliberate, "I need my story to have THIS element", or "My character WILL have this trait" kind of thing. It's a more organic process, almost a passive-aggressive one. I am essentially sitting in a room full of strangers, drinking coffee, while my brain is darting around, gorging itself on items it plans to re-gift me with later in the writing process.

Here are some things I witnessed on a recent sojourn to my favorite coffee locale:

1. Big burly guys, one right after another, purchased frilly frou-frou drinks. With whipped cream on top. Without a sheepish expression on their faces.
2. Several frilly frou-frou women, too many to count, got out of big-ass pickup trucks. They also had high heels on or they wouldn't have reached the ground when they stepped out.
3. A woman with a rockin' bod, short skirt, and sassy attitude, turned everyone's heads . . . and had a face that looked like it had been Photoshopped on from her grandma's driver's license.

Will any of these show up in a future story? Possibly. If they do, you'll be the first to recognize them. More likely they'll spark the idea fuse, and then when I least expect it, a riot of creativity will explode in my brain and I'll be racing to type everything into the laptop before the shower of fireworks completely disappears.

We encounter a lot of people on a daily basis, and they supply the raw material our imagination uses to create our stories. Every time we observe, and absorb, and investigate the world around us, we are adding to the other items we've deposited into our brains. It's a kind of mental compost, producing incredible stories from the leftover gestures, stray personality traits, and castoff emotions we've collected. 

So plan a visit to the outside world every once in a while, and watch the interactions and situations as they occur in real-time. Afterwards you can retreat to the safety of your writerly space, with plenty of examples of when you viewed humanoids in their natural habitat.

And lived to tell some amazing tales.

Comments

[Maureen O. Betita]

Well, my normal excursions consists of walking the dog and I do observe how people are with their dogs...and how the dogs are with what interests them...

Other than that, I am the most unobservant writers out there. Two weeks ago, the bank next to my Starbucks was robbed... They fired a shot into the back... They sped away in a car. First I knew of it was when the parking lot filled up with cop cars and the other coffee drinkers were all stading at the windows gaping out...

I was sitting at a window. The window closest to the bank.

[Maureen O. Betita]

Uh, make that standing at the windows gaping out...

Sheesh!

[Donna Cummings]

Maureen, I'm laughing AND I'm glad you're safe.

Once when I worked at the mall, I found out the next day it had been robbed, and I didn't know anything about it when it was happening. It's a big mall and I was on the first floor, and it happened on the second floor. Apparently the robber had on a multicolored clown wig, so I'm hoping I would have noticed that if he'd been in MY area. LOL

[JennWalkup]

This is a great post and so true. It's really important to notice and catalog these things for future use, or at the very least, just to soften my old standbys that I tend to use for descriptors in first drafts. Love the observations you made at the coffee house - LOL!

[Maureen O. Betita]

Donna - I'd obviously be a very bad witness... When I'm writing that is it, the universe ends at the end of my fingertips and I just don't notice much else!

And I often daydream plotpoints when I'm not actually writing them, so I'd probably be useless no matter what the situation.

[Donna Cummings]

Jenn, I love to see what people do when I'm sitting at Starbucks. And I'm usually just staring out the window, brainstorming, but that's when they walk in (and I try to act like I wasn't staring at THEM, cuz I'm not! LOL) It's amazing the stuff that shows up in my brain later, as a result.

[Donna Cummings]

Maureen, you could testify what you were writing when the crime occurred. LOL "The kraken had just reached his tentacle toward the ship. . ."

[Maureen O. Betita]

Yeah, I've always wanted to visit the mental hospital!

[Kari Marie]

I love going to the Mall of America or the State Fair and sitting on a bench and watch the drama unfold. So entertaining!

[Donna Cummings]

Kari Marie, I've never been to the Mall of America -- I think my head might explode! LOL But it is fun to see how people interact, especially when they don't think you're paying attention. :)

[Clarissa Southwick]

Great advice. Hilarious descriptions. I love visiting this blog :)

[Donna Cummings]

Clarissa, I love when you visit! I'm glad you enjoy my descriptions. :)