Of Watching People

I feel that there is no creative writing exercise better than observing your fellow specimens of humankind. If you are at all interested in creating very naturalistic characters, then I highly recommend participating in peoplewatching. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. Should I find myself sitting in a public space with neither need nor desire to work on some other task, I sit back with a delicious beverage and carefully contemplate the people around me.

You have likely done at least a little bit of peoplewatching in your life, even if it wasn’t intentional. Since you weren’t doing it intentionally, though, you were likely doing it wrong. So, how do you peoplewatch correctly? Well, first of all, let’s address the question of what peoplewatching actually is.

The first thing you need to understand is that peoplewatching is an art. It is not just an activity you passively partake in. Rather, it is a skill that you develop as you practice it. Peoplewatching, despite the simplicity of the name, is not merely the act of looking at people as they pass by. Peoplewatching, like I mentioned before, is a creative exercise. Here is where we draw the line. If you simply watch people as they walk past and then continue about your day, then you are watching people. Only once you observe those people to try and interpret their narrative are you participating in peoplewatching. 

Before you peoplewatch, however, you need to know the rules. Think of peoplewatching like a more complicated birdwatching or animal photography.

1. Respect your subject.

   • This is the most important part of peoplewatching. You need to remember that your subject is a human, so treat them like it. Don’t stare at them and freak them out, don’t ogle them like a TV show, just casually observe and take mental notes of what they do.

2. Do not intervene with your subject.

   • The point of this exercise is to glimpse into another person’s life. By interacting with the subject you can unknowingly goad them into behaviors they might have otherwise not done. At that point, you might as well create a fictional character of your own imagination.

3. Respect the bounds of the glimpse.

   • Your glimpse into other people’s lives should be just that: a glimpse. It should be driven by coincidence. If you are observing someone at a coffee shop and they start to walk away, do not follow them. This overlaps with the ‘respect your subject’ rule as well. At that point you are a stalker, not a peoplewatcher. 

   • To respect the bounds of your glimpse, you must stick to your schedule and allow your subject to stick to theirs. If it’s time for you to leave the coffee shop and go home, then go home. Don’t stay because you think you might get some more material. If your subject begins to walk away, let them leave and do not follow. If you peoplewatch while walking down the street, and the subject that up til now was walking just ahead of you makes a turn you weren’t planning on going down, then keep going along where you were originally going to go.

4. Keep interaction to a minimum.

   • Obviously you should not seek out interaction with your subject, but what if they approach you? What if they ask you for directions, or change for a ten? Well, you should prioritize following the social contract more than creative writing exercises, so answer them. Interact with them to the extent you would normally, but no further. 

   • If they strike up a conversation with you, then you should abandon the attempt to peoplewatch them. However, if it is as simple as asking directions, then you can give them an answer and continue doing your thing. Just ensure your interaction is as minimal as possible.

5. Have fun!

   • I know, it’s corny, but it’s true! Peoplewatching is fun, and you should enjoy it as a pastime and as a creative writing exercise.

Now, there are many considerations you must make when engaging in peoplewatching. The first skill you must develop is the ability to tell at a glance whether or not someone is worthy of watching. Every human is special, unique, and interesting, and every human has a compelling story to tell, but not every human displays that story. These are the average Joes, Jills, and everybody in between. A story requires content, and content requires material. You can make up a story about any human alive, but that’s the catch. You aren’t making up a story about some random person you see, you are writing a story based on a person you see. 

There is creative value in seeing a random woman pass by, and giving her a fake name and generating a complete story with her as the main character, but that is not what I am writing about. 

Consider this: You’re eating at a cafe on a slightly cool autumn night, sitting at a patio table, and on the street in front of you a man walks by wearing a red hoodie, a pair of jeans, and some gray sneakers. You must assume he likes red, at least enough to wear it. If you want to get a bit crazy, you can pretend it’s his favorite color. This man is slightly below average height, and has an unremarkable haircut: dirty blonde, swept to the right, trimmed quite short. The man’s gait is nothing worthy of note. His strides are not too long, but not too short. He walks calmly, clearly he is not in a rush for anything. In one ear he wears an earbud, but not in his other. You can assume he wants to listen to music, but also wants to ensure he can hear the world around him. Maybe he’s waiting for a friend. If you want to extrapolate really far, you could imagine he is deaf in that ear, and therefore does not bother wearing the earbud.

This man almost certainly has an interesting tale. I firmly believe that every human has some intrigue in their lives in one way or another. Even if you might call someone boring, someone else might call that person exhilarating. However, no matter how interesting a tale this man may have in his heart, he isn’t wearing a bit of it on his sleeve, which makes him useless for this exercise. You can certainly use this man in other creative processes. You could use the appearance of a random person you see to form the image in your head of what a character looks like. I’ve certainly done that before. You could even go so far as to see a random person on the street and write a story about that person just for the fun of it. However, the story isn’t going to be based on them, at least not in the sense that the story is written around how they appear. One should not judge a book by its cover, this exercise is about interpreting the summary on the back.

Now, imagine the same scenario. The first man walks by, you take a glance at him, and because of your skills in peoplewatching you immediately recognize that he, sadly, does not have any material to work with. You’ve finished your beverage, and you decide to leave. Maybe you’ll find more interesting people on your walk home. As you walk down the road, however, someone sprints out from around the corner ahead of you and slams directly into another pedestrian.

The pedestrian, unhurt, but confused, groans out an irritated “what the hell?” You get a brief look at the person who ran around the corner. They wear a very bulky black jacket, black pants, black sneakers, black gloves, and a black face mask. Their eyes were covered by a pair of sunglasses, but in the scuffle they seem to have flown off. Immediately there is something interesting here, and if you have even a modicum of skill at peoplewatching you have sniffed it out immediately. Their outfit does not match the environment. It’s autumn, and it’s a bit chilly, but it is not even close to being cold enough to warrant a jacket that big or even gloves. On top of that, it’s nighttime. The sun went down about an hour ago. They do not need sunglasses. Voila! We have encountered the first sign of a good peoplewatching subject: they make you ask questions. Why are they wearing such bulky clothes? Why are they wearing sunglasses at night? Why were they running? Why is every single article of clothing on their body black?

Here is where things get interesting! But wait, our story isn’t over yet. The story of a peoplewatching subject is never over until they have left your sight, either because they have left, or because you had to. Let’s unpause this stranger’s tale.

They jump up. Not stand up, jump up. As they are fully standing, we see they aren’t short, per se, but they are noticeably shorter than you would expect. They blurt out a quick “sorry!” and begin to run away. Within seconds, they disappear. Ooo, you’ve really lucked out here! You got to hear their voice! When peoplewatching, hearing your subject’s voice is rarer than you might expect. If you’re seeking out groups of people, then you will likely hear them speak, but if you, like me, prefer the intimacy of watching one lone person go about their day, undistracted by their peers, then it is very rare that you will hear the subject’s voice. 

You can identify a lot about a person based on voice. You can identify tone, attitude, and more just from a few words. All we heard from this person was one word: sorry. What can we learn from this word? Well, we learn that, despite their reckless sprinting around and bumping into people, they do have consideration for those around them. They apologized for potentially hurting this stranger, and didn’t just silently get up and run away or tell them to watch where they’re going. This also further drives home the fact that they are in a rush, because they blurted out just one word. Instead of sticking around for a fuller apology, they shout out the word and run. You also recognize two things, one more obvious than the other. Firstly, and less importantly, you notice this person’s voice is a bit feminine. This does not tell you much, but it is something you will take into consideration, whether intentionally or not. Your interpretations will always be influenced by your internal biases. What is much more important, however, is our second observation. Their voice was a bit nasally and squeaky. This, combined with their shorter, though not quite childlike, stature tells us an important fact. This person is almost certainly a teenager.

With the story reaching its conclusion, let us review the givens of this scenario, starting with the knowns.

1. The subject is in a rush.

2. They are wearing all black.

3. Their clothing does not match the environment.

4. They sound young, and genuinely apologetic.

These are the things we believe are factually true, and undeniable. Based on these facts, we must ask ourselves some questions, i.e. ‘why is this person dressed entirely in black?’ From these questions, we create our interpretations. These are what we believe about the situation by, you guessed it, interpreting the knowns. Interpretations must be reasonable conclusions based upon the knowns. Do not make any massive leaps in judgment. Make sure any of these interpretations link directly back, in one way or another, to a known. Listed below are the conclusions I would come to if I were to interpret this scenario.

1. They wish to obscure their identity, which is why they are so thoroughly covered.

2. They are dressed in black because it is nighttime, and they are less likely to be spotted at night if they are in all black clothing.

3. They care about obscuring their identity, therefore they either have a schizophrenic fixation on maintaining their privacy, or they have done/are about to do something wrong.

4. They are in a rush, so much of a rush that they did not even reclaim their sunglasses(I bet you didn’t even pick up on that detail! Don’t worry, you’ll get better with practice.), which implies egress. Entry to wrongdoing is typically quiet and careful, egress is where someone would likely get hasty and anxious to escape as soon as possible. Therefore, they have already done whatever bad thing they did.

5. This person is young, but not exactly childlike. Mixed with the fact that they have the means to leave their home and sneak about doing whatever implies enough maturity and independence to behave as a rogue actor. This person is most likely between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, as that would be their high school years and likely the peak of teenage rebellion.

6. This person is almost certainly doing wrong, and wrongdoing by motivation of teenage rebellion implies a rather low maximum of severity for their crime. The amount of teenagers sneaking out of the house to go commit murder or armed robbery is pretty low, one would assume. What is much more common are teenagers sneaking out to smoke dope or vandalize a building.

7. This teenager feels apologetic for the individual person they hurt, so they care about the people around them. This increases the odds that their crime is, like doing drugs, a victimless one. If there is a victim to the adolescent’s crime, then it is likely their interpretation of a non-person, something vague like “the system” or “the government.”

Boom. Now we’ve got a good list of interpretations. Now we reach the most fun part of peoplewatching. Extrapolations. The extrapolations are where we get creative, really stretching the boundaries. From this point forward, you can spit out whatever you like, so long as it links to one of our interpretations. Go crazy, be wild. The only limit is your ability to stretch the bounds of the story. Here is what I extrapolate from this story:

1. Teenagers who are very rebellious tend to have shaky relationships with their parents, which is probably playing a part in why this teen is sneaking out.

2. Every rebellious teen smokes, but this teen seems especially rebellious. Smoking is too tame for them, so they must be doing something more showy. They must be vandalizing buildings.

3. What kind of vandalism does a rebellious teenager do? Molotov cocktails are for revolutionaries, but teens do love a nice flaming paper bag full of dog shit. Flaming bags of dog shit, though, are used by groups of teenagers on their cranky neighbors, not lone wolves on “the system.” We have already established that this teen is anti-establishment, and a much more fitting style of vandalism for such a teen is graffiti. 

4. This teenager clearly takes this seriously, wielding great care to fully obscure their identity. They must be a master of their art. They are the modern day Picasso, and with train carts and factory walls as their canvas and spray cans as their palate they make grand works of art.

5. A teen rebellious enough to fully sneak out of the house and run away to do graffiti is about as stereotypically rebellious as a teen can get, and likely defines their self image around rebellion.

6. People, especially teens, who define their images around rebellion will consume media related to rebellion. This teenager almost certainly listens to punk and/or rock music. Their favorite band is either an incredibly popular one that they delude themselves into thinking isn’t, like Nirvana, Joy Division, or Tame Impala, or some indie band so obscure that it has eight followers on Spotify, half of whom are almost certainly the band members' mothers. Considering this teen is a master of graffiti, I think they’re alternative enough to call you a poser if your favorite band is Van Der Graaf Generator.

7. They’re in a serious rush, such a rush that they can’t even help up the proletariat they knocked down in the midst of their escape. They must have been caught in the act.

8. There’s nobody running after them, and there’s no police sirens, so they were likely caught by the owner of whatever establishment they were vandalizing. Most likely, they have made good their escape and are simply trying to cross the finish line, that being, their bedroom window.

Beautiful. We now have all we need to write a full plotline. Now, as interesting as a short story about this gold-hearted rebellious teenager getting caught while working on their masterpiece would be, I cannot write it as an extension of this peoplewatching instructional because it is made up, and the entire purpose of peoplewatching as a creative exercise is that you learn how to create characters who feel human to their core by taking direct inspiration from the real like humans you see on a daily basis. Alas, this causeless rebel who tugs on my heartstrings cannot come to be, not by my penmanship at least. Instead, I shall demonstrate the power of peoplewatching with an example of a real person I spotted and took great note of whilst I was writing this instructional you are reading at this very moment. For the sake of keeping this demonstration brief, I’m not going to write out my knowns, interpretations, and extrapolations here. Instead, I will simply tell you about how I spotted this person, and jump straight into the story I wrote for them.

I spotted this woman while peoplewatching in my university learning center between classes. I had about fifteen minutes, which I rationalized wasn’t enough time to warrant pulling out any of my coursework and starting it, so I decided to peoplewatch. At the time, I was observing an older woman, likely a professor, who was drinking coffee and anxiously typing away at something on her laptop. 

Then, before I could construct a narrative about a stressed out department head, trying to maintain her life at home while keeping her department afloat, I got distracted by a passerby. Passersby are my favorite kinds of subjects. Your glimpse into their lives is brief, but if you have a keen eye you can learn so much from that short look. Because of that, I always look at the passersby, even if I already have a subject I’m investigating. Some days you find a gem. This was one of those days.

I took immediate note of this person’s speed. She wasn’t sprinting, but she was certainly walking as fast as she could manage. Next, I noted her face, which was scrunched up into a frown and had a trail of mascara tears running down it. Her frown was not a sad frown, though, it was an angered one. Whatever she was crying about made her angry in turn. Her attire was pretty normal, considering the relatively cold weather: a black winter jacket with a white cotton interior and collar, gray sweatpants, and blue sneakers. An outfit that didn’t seem thoroughly put together, but wasn’t thrown on in a rush either. Her hair being pulled back was a final clue that helped me conclude her being on campus was relatively unplanned. There’s only so many details to pull from here, but there’s more than enough to work with. Let us begin!

Julianna sat patiently in the booth, her fingers tapping rhythmically on the side of her cup of coffee. It was pretty typical for Sam to be late, so she was used to it by this point. What wasn’t typical was wanting to meet her in the learning center, especially as impromptu as this. They’d been dating for over a year, so when Sam wanted to meet her, he just went to her apartment. He wasn’t very spontaneous, either, so meeting in public on such short notice was a bit out of the ordinary. As odd as it was, she didn’t think too much of it. It wasn’t anything she figured heeded much thought.

She simply sat in that booth, and occasionally took sips from her coffee while she anxiously awaited Sam’s arrival. She glanced around the room, watching the people around her study, talking with their friends and classmates, sipping from their coffees, sodas, and sticker-bombed water bottles. She wondered if Sam had just forgotten about an assignment and needed her help with it last minute. 

In time, though, Sam finally arrived, lacking any backpack or school materials. He didn’t even have his laptop bag. His arrival was marked by a simple “hey” that shuddered from his lips with anxiety. He didn’t kiss her before he sat down, nor did he lean over to do so after. Something was wrong, and Julianna knew it immediately. 

“Hey, babe, are you alright? You look a bit pale.”

He nodded his head as he breathed a quiet sigh. “I’m fine. I just… we need to talk.”

“Yeah, you didn’t say much when you called me. What’s going on?”

She reached across the table, an attempt to place her hands on top of his, but he pulled his hands under the table, as if she had forced him backwards.

A surge of worry flowed through her body. Had she done something wrong? 

Sam took a deep breath, and spoke. “I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks, and I’ve finally made a decision. Julianna, the time I’ve spent with you has been great, but I just don’t have it in me anymore. I don’t feel that spark I used to. I don’t think we should be together anymore. I don’t love you the way you love me, and you deserve someone as loyal as yourself.”

Her heart dropped so far it felt as if it had gone underground. She couldn’t believe the words that she was hearing. 

“I know it’s really sudden for me to just drop that on you, but I just don’t think it would be fair for me to keep this farce going. It just isn’t right.”

Julianna didn’t cry at first. She couldn’t. The shock was overwhelming. “I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, it just isn’t working out.”

“But why not? What did I do that made you not love me anymore? There has to be something.”

Sam shook his head, and looked away from her when he answered, “I don’t know. It just hasn’t felt right.”

He was lying. From a year of dating she could read him like an open book, and that refusal to look at her was his most obvious tell.

She choked back tears, and asked him, “What is it you aren’t telling me? I know that look, Sam.”

He gritted his teeth, shot her a glance, and shook his head. “I’m in love with someone else.”

She was quiet for a moment, feeling as if she had been punched in the gut. Her thoughts raced a mile a minute, scouring her memories for answers. Who was it? When did this happen? Was the love requited? If he was ending what the two of them had over whoever it was he had fallen in love with, then surely it had to be? Does that mean he cheated on her?

Then, her mind landed on someone. A particular person who Sam had spent so much more time with than usual. 

“It’s Jayden, isn’t it?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Ever since he came out, I just… couldn’t keep my eyes off him, you know?”

Tears started welling up as she worked up the strength to ask him the question. She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to know the answer. “Did you sleep with him?”

Sam didn’t answer. He just stared at her, his breaths heavy. That was the only answer Julianna needed. 

“You son of a bitch,” she muttered, her teeth gritted as she started to cry. Her voice was held back, but it was hard to resist the urge to scream at him. “All this time I spent with you, all the love and care I have for you, and you spit in my fucking face. I put all my trust in you, and you just stomp on it, throw it in the fucking garbage. And you have the fucking balls to tell me this in the middle of all these people.”

“I just wanted to meet on neutral ground,” he interjected calmly.

“You spineless piece of shit. ‘Neutral ground’ so that you can tell me that you violated my trust, threw me aside and showed me none of the respect I showed you, for what? Because you don’t love me anymore?”

“Julie, please-”

“Don’t you fucking interrupt me,” her voice quivered. The tears flew, but she didn’t know if it was more from sadness or rage. “What did I do to be hurt so bad? You’re not fascinated in me anymore, and that gives you the right to slap me in the face?”

“No, it doesn’t. What I did was wrong, I know, and that’s why I wanted to tell you about this.”

“Oh, fuck you. As if that makes it any better? ‘At least I told you I cheated on you and stabbed you in the back!’ Fuck off. Don’t talk to me, ever again.”

She shot out of her seat, her teeth clenched so hard they felt they might crack under the pressure, and stormed off. Her face was covered in tears, black streaks of mascara creating runny black rivers down her face, but she didn’t bother wiping any of it away. All she wanted was to go home and scream. The rest of the world could be damned, for all she cared.

And that’s all she wrote! I could have started the story earlier, or ended it later, but I think those three pages are all you need to understand the premise. It should go without saying that this particular person is quite unique, as it’s not very often you see someone crying in public, but if you start peoplewatching, you’ll find that unique people aren’t as rare as you might think. 

Obviously not every attempt at peoplewatching will net you a ten page short story, but that’s not what you’re shooting for anyway. You’re creating characters, writing brief little scenarios that display the nature of a character you envision when seeing somebody. Sometimes you get super lucky and find someone so interesting, so complicated, that you can easily spit out half a book chapter about them. More often than not, though, you’re just going to write a little scene. Two or three pages is all you need, just enough to get the creative juices flowing and practice character building.

I hope this little demonstration has shown the effectiveness of peoplewatching as a creative exercise. Like I said, it’s both fun and useful! Just make sure you follow the rules I set out at the start, especially the ones about respecting your subject. You’re watching people, real people, with lives, aspirations, and most importantly, boundaries.

That’s all I have for you regarding this exercise. Give it a try sometime. Even if it isn’t your thing, at least you’ll have had time to experiment with naturalistic characters! Have fun, and be creative!