People-Watching and Finding the Voice

I just read an awesome blog by my buddy, Sarah Boucher, in which her friend, Terry Tyler, a fellow writer discusses how her character-driven fiction is inspired by people.  It got me thinking about how people watching helps me.  It also got me thinking about how people-watching can help me more.  In the past, I've jotted down snips of dialogue and taken notes over strange or inspiring things people have done or said.  I will have to go back to that.  It's a great idea.  J.K. Rowling has many times referred to how so many of her characters from Professor Umbridge to Harry Potter, himself, found inspiration from a real person.

How I've generally found inspiration in people for my novels is not necessarily specific observations about what they do or say but their emotional mindset.  It's how I capture voices.  In another of my blog posts, I discussed how I use the character theory of the Enneagram to classify people.  But I do something further in thinking through the people I know well and figuring out which person is EMOTIONALLY closest to my character.

I don't necessarily use the events of his or her life or their particular struggles.  Connor, the male protagonist from Pigs Fly, the book I'm working on, is a thrill seeker, someone who is driven to stay busy and look for the fun side of life.  So I looked through the people I know for a thrill seeker.  The person I chose is nothing like Connor, not even the same gender.  But that person gives me a voice to use when I write Connor.  Robin, my female protagonist, is a perfectionist, someone who lives her life by an internal code.  I chose another person I know to imagine when I write the voice of this character.  I had very different people inspiring voices in After the Dream, voices I knew very well because I heard them regularly.  These people would not recognize their lives on the pages of my books, but I'm hoping they'd relate to the characters.  Because if they do, other people like them will as well.

This method of selecting emotional and vocal muses from those I know helps me stay real to that character type.  This is how I find inspiration for the voice in my books.  It also helps with my sense of realism in general.  Sometimes, I'll even tell people whose voice I borrowed and ask them to read it to make sure the voice stays true.  I hope this helps someone.