Fresh Ink Chronicles #2: Collecting Characters
How being observant will give you endless story ideas
Writer’s Note: This is the second of a three part series called Fresh Ink Chronicles: Crafting Your Creative Journey in 2024. This first one can be found here.
The first three newsletters of the year will be dedicated toward helping you plan and begin your next writing project.
Three elderly gentlemen carry on a conversation in a Walgreens one Sunday morning. They didn’t know each other but they carried on like old friends, like they had known each other’s families and broke bread at Easter dinners that rotated from house to house.
The one with the deepest voice was the tallest, a smile as broad as his shoulders. But his jokes were no match to the one with a cane. He knew laughter because he knew pain. He more than likely suffered it during active duty. The back of his cap read Semper Fi. But no gentleman laughed louder than the third and final, who caught punchlines like players catch baseballs in the outfield.
These three men, who didn’t knew each other, are recorded in my mind now. I wish I had written something about them in the notes app in my phone while I watched them.
This encounter, this people watching activity, is what I like to call collecting characters. Anyone can do it and all writers should do it despite their genre.
The activity of collecting characters is all about being observant and understanding people dynamics. It requires watching, no thinking and no judgement. People are fascinating. Seriously. They are weird and intricate and infuriating. But they are also thoughtful and kind and compassionate. People are surprising. We, as a species, can be unpredictable. In the animal kingdom, we know motivations — food, shelter, survival. We have similar motivations but add to that emotion — emotional feeding, emotional shelter, emotional survival. This is what adds to the complexity of who we are. That is what makes people watching or character collection fascinating.
Why collect characters?
Here’s one of the few things I know for certain — I don’t know everything. In fact, I don’t know anything, frankly. I don’t know why people act the way they do. All I can do is have compassion and to try to understand the motivation behind the action. I don’t have to agree with it but I do have to attempt to understand it.
And it’s in this understanding that I can write characters better. I am approaching it from a basis of grace and not of judgement. Because of this, I can give the reader the freedom to make their own judgement based on my nuanced take of a character.
For example, let’s say I write about a killer. On the surface, killing another human is pretty despicable. But if I approach it from the idea of killing for survival — an intruder who wants to do harm, an adult harming a child, a mentally ill person or a spouse wanting freedom from their abuser — then we have a different scenario. Then we have the conflict for the basis of a story or a poem.
We also want the grit and the reality of the situation. We want to know quirks and inflection of voice and tone. This adds a layer of authenticity and knowledge to the character and the story. It also adds reader confidence to your writing. While you may not add all the little details to a story or poem, you know enough to know what is important and what isn’t.
How do you collect characters?
Back in the heyday day of Twitter, I used to do this thing called Starbucks Observations. I would sit at my local Starbucks, working on whatever it is I was working on. As a break, I’d open my browser to Twitter and describe what I was seeing at the cafe to my followers. I wouldn’t describe the interior of the place but the people who were there. I would sit, listen, and watch — the couple meeting on their first date, the college students confused about an assignment, the woman in the corner reading.
Then came the collection — body movements. Was the date going well? How do you know? The leaning in, the smiles at each other, the blushing, the hair tuck, the open eyes, the quiet moments in between laughter where they just stared at each other, their breaths catching. All of these details were things I have used in stories before. I’ve never been on that date but I have physically seen chemistry between two strangers before. This is where I did.
How about the woman reading in the corner? She’s in sweats, dirty ones. A baseball cap over her unbrushed hair. She takes deep breaths before opening a romance novel, a bodice ripper. There is a coffee cup on the table next to her — hot coffee but not sure if it’s plain or one of the sugary drinks. She’s in well worn tennis shoes and she avoids eye contact. This moment looks like a vacation for her, a moment to herself to escape into the fantasy of the book. Mom? Caretaker? Regardless, the world is on her shoulders and she needs this break. Do not disturb.
See how the details here elevates these strangers?
Collection is about the artifacts
One of the activities I do in my writing classes is asking participants to open their wallets/purses. I ask them to go through their wallets and consider what their wallets (and keys) say about them.
Wallets tell you A LOT. For example, a wallet with a grocery discount card, store credit cards, a license, an insurance card, and a punch card to a local business is different than a person with a wallet filled with pictures of their kids, a picture of a deity they pray to, credit cards from major banks, and a couple of well-folded, crisp bills.
One was a wallet of a recent grad/college student. The other is a picture of an adult who works.
See the difference? What does the wallet thing work? Because in a wallet, you only put what is important to you while you are away from the bulk of your stuff (your house or car).
Artifacts, or the things people interact with, inform a character. Add to this the state of the artifact — a baseball with signatures behind a glass case, a laminated card, plastic curling at the ends, with directions, dirty work-boots with a repaired hole in the sole — that brings a layer of personality to your character. That is the difference between show and tell. Don’t tell me the character is a neat freak, show me how they alphabetize and dusty their pantry on Monday nights. Don’t tell me the character is a messy Betty, show me how many layers of filth are in their car as they drive to work, taco wraps from meals past flying out the window on their way to work.
Why I love collecting characters and what do I do with what I collect?
I love collecting characters because it informs me of how people are. I’m curious about why they do what they do and this is the closest I’ll get to getting an answer sometimes.
So, what do I do with all this? Save it. In your memory or write it down. I have allowed it to be the starting point of a story or an essay. I use the emotional part of it for poems. Going back to one of the examples, what IF one of those taco wraps from the messy car got stuck on the windshield of the car behind them? What if they were on the freeway or a neighborhood road? What if that was the piece of paper that the person wrote an important piece of information on and they spent the day retracing their steps to find it?
In essence, character collecting becomes its own writing prompt or starter. The prompts are endless. As I tell my students, there’s as many interpretations of a story as there are people in the world. That’s because everyone brings their own experiences. Keep this in mind when you are collecting or writing.
Character collecting also has made me realize that I am a character writer. That means that character work is center to my creative work. Some writers focus on plot, while others want to explore a theme or idea. This is all valid and great. Everyone is different which is what makes creative work amazing.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s Fresh Ink Chronicles! Please let me know how these are working out for you!
Write On!
—Icess