Image by Joseph Ken from Pixabay
Dazed by her phone
she flows past a rainbow stream
of winking poppies.
One useful technique for improving your powers of observation, and by association your writing, is people watching. This is a common practice of everyone, a part of daydreaming and drifting away into the subconscious, but when approached systematically it can become a powerful tool for building character... a way to mine information for the imagination.
When people watching with the writer's eye, it is the small details where we find narrative gold among grains of sand. Body language is a great example of this; the way a woman brushes back her hair from her eyes as she waits for the bus is very different to a way another woman plays with her hair as she talks to her partner on a dinner date. Both are subconscious tells, expressions of body language that show us some of what a person is thinking or feeling. One is a sign of frustration and the other of flirtation, but without actively observing these types of distinction, they get lost in the subconscious noise as the writer crafts their story.
This example shows how one of the crafts of a professional writer can be improved and developed. It is our job as writers to tell stories from a multitude of perspectives, as a man I have no direct knowledge about how it feels to be a woman, so how could I write an effective female character? The answer lies in a combination of vivid imagination and close observation as explained above. To create believable characters both are needed.
"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you."
― Carl Sagan
A brief word of caution. When practicing people watching with a writer's eye it is essential to follow some precautions to avoid making people feel uncomfortable, and blow your cover as the unnoticed observer. Unless you have an eidetic memory it is essential to keep a notepad handy to record descriptions, impressions and snatches of dialogue that inspire story elements. But if you follow someone around taking notes you'll soon be confronted by a justifiably angry passer by 😂
Go where large numbers of people move around: town center, railway stations, airports, supermarkets are all good places to observe as people are focused on their tasks and less likely to feel watched.
Don't observe for extended periods where people socialize and stay still such as cafes, waiting rooms, restaurants etc. Like all animals people have a sixth sense that tells them if they're being watched and this is more active when they are stationary and at leisure.
Utilize indirect forms of observation such as CCTV and reflections in windows. This may seem somewhat clandestine, but the whole point of this exercise is to observe people acting naturally while avoiding them feeling like their privacy is being invaded. Lol, think of yourself as the private eye in an old movie.
Despite the analogy of the private eye, never take it too far and follow one person to observe them for a protracted period. Short observations of many different people is the best way to go. After all you're not looking to build a character based upon a person, but rather notice and record characteristics that can be used later on. A list of characteristics for your protagonist can come from a variety of sources.
Finally don't sit somewhere with your notepad out taking notes while observing someone directly. My personal tactic is to wander around the city center, or the waterfront, of my home city observing and recording mentally. Once I have 3-4 snippets that I want to note down I find a bench, or stop at a coffee shop and make my notes. This is much less intrusive than staring at someone taking notes 🤣
Thanks for reading 🙂 🌿
To read more about the aesthetics of true haiku, and the difference between haiku and senryu, please check out my post: Haiku Vs Senryu - The Aesthetics of Form
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