by Tim Schildberger - November 23, 2024
I recently went on a quick road trip to the middle of the USA. It was fascinating on many levels, and a helpful writing refresher.
I visited…are you ready…Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan…in only 3 nights. I drove a lot.
I’m trying to get to all 50 states in my lifetime, and I’d never been to Wisconsin and Michigan. I have now.
You may be wondering, if you are not in those states, how they responded to the recent election. Wisconsin and Michigan are ‘swing’ states, and there’s been a lot of talk about anger and division and even some suggestion we might be on the verge of ‘civil war’. Well…from my observations…things are well. Everyone I spoke too, from waiters, to a small-town cinema general manager, to the guy I held the door open for at a truck stop – could not have been nicer. I even wore an LA labeled sweatshirt to a local ice hockey game in Kalamazoo, Michigan – this was a game where the crowd kept singing a colorful song telling the opposing goalie he ‘sucked’ – and no-one hurled abuse at me for being from the liberal coast. People were curious, kind, friendly and easy going. It became apparent very quickly the people in the Midwest, much like the people in your neighborhood I suspect, are far too focused on the daily task of living to put much energy into hatred.
The real reason I go on these little trips, is to see different things, meet different people, and spend a moment outside of my daily ‘bubble’. Writing wise, I find this super useful because it exposes me to different characters, speech patterns, accents, outlooks, backgrounds and all that good stuff. I’ve learned over decades of writing it’s WAY easier creating characters built from people who actually exist, rather than trying to invent someone from scratch.
And judging from reading thousands of scripts from unsigned writers learning the craft, it’s clear creating interesting, unique characters is a challenge to us all.
One of the most common, and dreaded script feedback notes is ‘all the characters sound the same.’ I see it a lot, and I’ve battled it in my own writing. I like writing snappy dialogue, and it’s super fun when everyone is speaking snappily. But if you’re not careful, everyone develops the same rhythm, uses the same vocabulary, and become difficult to separate and therefore, less interesting.
Finding ways to differentiate characters is tough. Especially when you don’t know a diverse range of people – and let’s face it, most of us don’t. Which often means a writer generates characters based on characters they’ve seen in movies/TV. And there’s every chance those characters were based on another TV/movie character. You can see the spiral of mediocrity forming, right? Road trips and new experiences help break that spiral.
Here's one example. I met a woman named Peg in Platteville, Wisconsin. Population 11,000. It was a delightful town, with a beautiful historic main street. Peg owns the ‘Owl Café’ – a breakfast spot that is almost a cliché of a small-town breakfast diner. Peg is a slight, elderly woman, yet still pretty intimidating when you first walk in. As if she’s seen everything before.
She became friendly and warm very quickly. Turns out Peg has been working at that café since 1958. Her parents ran it, and all of their seven kids worked in the joint from a very young age. Peg was the only sibling to stay in the family business, and now she runs the tables while her son cooks the food. Peg doesn’t have a smart phone. She has a flip phone, and I got the feeling that was forced on her. She’s never heard of ‘Apple Pay’. It’s a cash only establishment, as it has always been.
Peg asked me why I was in Platteville. When I told her about my 50 state plan, and how Wisconsin was #45 Peg replied simply ‘I’ve never been anywhere’. Not wistfully, merely as information.
It can sometimes be a quirk of human nature for us traveling folk to be a bit judgy about people who chose a different path. Peg made a choice to live her entire life in the same small town, working/owning the same business. It’s not a better or worse choice than mine, it’s just different. It would be too easy to assume that Peg lacks curiosity, yet she knew every customer by name, and their recent health and family history. This was not a woman closed off from her world.
I don’t have any clue what Peg’s headspace must be like. Rather than judge, I now get to spend time thinking about that. How she would respond to change. How she views the world.
Let’s be honest here. If I tried to conjure a character out of my head who has never left their small town, that person would probably be a stupid cliché. Someone afraid of change, rather than someone who made a life choice. My invention would probably shun curiosity, or be suspicious of ‘big city’ folk. Because If I didn’t have a freaking clue what I was talking about, I’d lean on cliches.
Peg didn’t strike me as a woman afraid of anything. She didn’t strike me as a woman suspicious of strangers, sad she’s never been up the Empire State Building, petted a kangaroo or owned an iPhone. She was comfortable in her own skin. And in her small Wisconsin town.
There’s value for me as a writer in seeing new things, and having new experiences. Honestly, there’s value in these road trips for me as a human being. I’m grateful to Peg, her son and his delicious food, and everyone and everything I saw on my trip. I learned a lot, including how religion can be integrated into a person and town’s life. But that’s a story for another post.
Five more states to go!
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