I have a pair of friends whom I sometimes like to accuse of being voyeurs, or if I’m feeling particularly unkind, stalkers. We’ll call them Maureen and Bo. M & B are actually super nice, but they have this habit of seating themselves in some busy area of a park or airport or town in order to people-watch.
Which at its worst sounds creepy, or perhaps merely impolite, or at the very least, a nonproductive time-suck, and evidence that M & B may indeed be faineants—a term meaning idle and ineffective people.
But despite my teasing none of the above assumptions are accurate. I left out vital clues in my intro of Bo and Maureen, mainly because it made for a better opening. One is a novel-writer and columnist, and the other produces everything from educational games to cartoon books. In short, they are fellow creatives, and in fact they’re part of my personal writer support group. All of which gives important context on the why of their people-watching.
Gotta admit, I do it too, and for the same reasons. If you’re creating worlds, people-watching is not nasty. It’s homework. It’s fodder for fiction. My ears are perked and my eyes peeled when I’m out and about. Inspiration for your writing is everywhere, if you simply observe.
Everyone behind every door in your town has a story. Many of these stories are worth telling. The trick is finding these tales (or parts of tales) and converting them to fiction. For me, it works like this.
My Process
I people-watch, then write down interesting unconnected observed facts in an Idea File on my computer.
Over time, I mix these facts with fiction and stir.
Often, these observations go nowhere at all.
Occasionally, they work their way into my fiction as bits of stories: lines of dialogue, character description, etc.
Rarely, an observation will lead to a potential narrative with a beginning, middle and end which interests me enough to pen a few sentences or pages on possible directions I might go.
I sit on these longer ideas for a while. If I still find one of them intriguing after letting it ferment, I’ll work it up and see what happens.
This brings the whole people-watching exercise from the general (overall storylines) to the specific (characters). The mixing fact-with-fiction bit works wondrously well for creating personalities, too. It’s how great characters are made: through observation, identify real people’s traits, note how these traits affect others, then apply fiction so that it means something to a storyline and overall plot.
I’ll lead up to a specific example in this every-other-issue section:
Q: Can’t you get sued if you use a real person in your novel?
A: This one was posed to me during a writing class I taught for the Capistrano Unified School District. I replied, well, if I used someone’s actual name, and then described them to a T, including looks and personality, and then implied something negative about them, like say I made them a murderer...well, yeah. Maybe then I’d get sued.
But I’d never do all that. Instead, I’d fictionalize that person, never use their real name or description, and subtly alter any traits which might identify them.
Here’s my true-life example. We have a moody friend I’ll call Marge. She’s usually playful with a great sense of humor and fun, the whole package when it comes to good company. But occasionally and always unexpectedly she gets negative and down, and suddenly she’s not fun, often transitioning from the life of the party to the death of it. In fact, one of her mood-shifts basically ruined a certain social event. Marge does not own this, never mind take any advice on how she might keep it from happening in the future. She couldn’t and can’t seem to stop herself. As a result, we no longer invite her.
I took this sad observation and applied it to the main character of my upcoming Touch series. My protagonist, a detective named Michael Calrissi, is the whole package, too: good-looking, a nice personality, a fun guy—until he’s not. Calrissi isn’t moody. But he has the psychic skill of psychometry and so can read the mind of anyone he touches. It’s great for solving serial killings. But because he can’t stop himself from using it in his personal life, he alienates both friends and lovers.
So I took the basic concept modeled after Marge of an otherwise likeable person with a possibly fatal flaw. Then I changed the flaw and sex and name and most other personality aspects and created a fictional character who has a ready-made demon with which he must wrestle. And because I’ve covered my tracks, Marge will never in a million years know that she was the basis for that character.
Or to answer that lawsuit question more succinctly:
Time again to focus on a semi-obscure vocabulary word, slipped in earlier, complete with definition. Remember it? If not, you might have to…get off your rear and work a little to absorb these definitions (that was a hint, not an insult). This French-based offering is both a noun and an adjective. Learning old words keeps ’em alive. Plus, the more words you know, the more precisely you can write. If you knew it already or recall it from this issue, kudos! If not, click and learn.
What is a faineant?
One more tip. To really make a word your own, you should be able to say it as well as define it. Always click on the pronunciation example in the definition so you can understand it and use it in speech.
Action Plan
On Twitter (or X, as it is now known) I post a new daily writing tip like the ones above, and on which these issues are based. Follow—you know you want to.
Next Up:
#4) The Care and Feeding of an Idea File. See you in two weeks!
Craig
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