How People Watching Makes Me a Better Writer
At the peak of the pandemic in Australia, when coffee shops closed their doors and going to restaurants was a redundant concept, I experienced a dry spell in my writing. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t have any ideas I wanted to explore, it was just the task of getting those ideas out of my head down onto paper seemed more challenging than normal.
There’s so much to accredit this with. The experience of the pandemic has been - and still very much is - an emotionally draining experience. I feel beyond lucky to be situated in a corner of the world that has born little fallout (in the grander scheme of things) and that ‘lockdown’ for us was simply a few weeks of not dining out.
When we were given the ‘O.K.’ to get back out there in Tasmania, it was like a fresh hit of the healthiest drug. I met a friend for coffee - Sitting down! Drinking out of mugs! - and my eyes darted around us, taking in the other coffee-frequenters, their shared joy at revisiting the novelty of coffee with loved ones. I realised how much I’d missed this, and just how much people watching had become a casual yet key component of my writing process.
People watching is a guilty pleasure for many, but for the writer, it’s closer to an occupational hazard.
Many of the characters we write and develop are crafted and carefully stitched together from real people in our lives. Whether friends, family, colleagues or lovers (past or present), I find I’m continually drawing small details from the fodder of my memory for characters, but it’s the details I gather from the strangers I observe that form the needle to weave the thread.
Sitting alone recently, sipping a cappuccino at one of my favourite local joints, I took my time, notebook laid out in front of me:
Two women, early to mid-twenties, are talking animatedly. This is the first time they have seen each other since the start of the pandemic. They air kiss and exclaim how amazing each looks. One talks more than the other, her hands weave imaginary constellations as she speaks, and every so often she firmly bangs her open palm on the tabletop, making everyone around her turn. She wears an oversized cardigan that looks cheaply made but I suspect is designer and a large wide-brimmed hat, even though we are sitting indoors. Her accent has a quintessentially nasal pitch that seems common amongst Australian women. She has just, 5 weeks previous, split up with her boyfriend. But she’s doing really well, she recants to her friend, over and over again. Her friend wants the lemon cake but only if it’s non-dairy. It isn’t. She makes faces at the waitress as she walks away.
A middle-aged man, balding but clinging to what tufts remain, sits at a table to my left. He seems anxious. His knee jerks up and down, as one hand drums the table and the other repeatedly taps his phone, checking for missed ... what exactly? I’m not sure. Two fingers of his right hand keep finding their way to his lips, circling them before flitting away again in a hurry, and I realise, without a doubt, that he is (or perhaps was) a smoker. The waitress asks him for his order and like a child who hasn’t figured out what they like best, he ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ between a large latte with a single espresso shot or a mocha with cream. This is not a man who enjoys coffee but has assumed the drink preferences of those who feel it’s something they should. A crux. For cigarettes?
Directly in front of me, a couple. Occupying a table set for four, they have chosen to sit next to each rather than opposite and they both face me. It is hard not to stare. He fondles her hair, her neck, he earlobe with one arm draped across her shoulders, the other pours tea from a ceramic teapot into clear glass teacups for them. I cannot hear a word of what he says, but his mouth never ceases, a monologue dripping forth, puffed with his confidence and conviction. Is she putting up with it or is she genuinely engrossed? Her eyes move around the surroundings until finally resting on mine and a scowl flickers across her brow as she emits her disapproval at my staring. She is not enjoying the one-sided conversation, I decide.
What might become of these strangers? I don’t know. In noting them, I’ve absorbed them into my creative unconscious. It never fails to surprise me how often I read back over a character I’ve written and find the girl I shared a booth with on a cross-country train one time or the couple who loudly declared their divorce, mid-argument, to a packed restaurant in San Francisco, or the receptionist who manned the desk at the large office complex I frequented irregularly for work.
Sometimes out of my observations, short stories might develop. I enjoy writing flash and micro fiction, and these small vignettes are perfect for people-watching fodder. At the heart of flash fiction is a snapshot of a person, caught in a moment. People-watching provides me with no end of catching people in the moment, be it the mundane or the extraordinary. And on saying that, even the mundane, in the hands of the right writer, can quickly be launched into the realm of extraordinary.
Observing strangers allows us to create any story we might like. They offer us all manner of details and descriptions, but ultimately they’re blank canvasses.
Ready and waiting for us the fill in the blanks.
