MORE DISCOVERIES WHILE THINKING

RETREAT TO THE CITY:


Sounds crazy to head for the city, but go there with your Critique group, notebooks in hand, to experience the sights, the sounds, and the hustle and bustle, of city life.   By experiencing people, places, and things, that make up city life, you will help yourself create better, more interesting characters.  You may think you know city life. However, you are bound to experience things forgotten; the smell of local food places; the city's smell; day-life versus night-life; and the constant change wrought by time, since your last visit.  Your Critique group's notebooks will offer a variety of views and perspectives, once the experience is over.  Some will catch details others miss, even as some take a different angle, on the same thing.

Imagine how much faster a city pace is, than the suburbs, or a country pace.  You need to take the time to immerse yourself in different environments from the one you live in.  You need to experience, with your 5 senses, other environments.  This may alert you to things in your own environment, you stopped noticing.  New things often enter your environment unnoticed.  Years ago I experienced this.  Construction led to the destruction of a wooded area near me.  Each morning, as I arrived home from my nightshift job, Whippoorwills called, from nearby trees. That's how I learned of habitat destruction in my larger neighborhood area.  Whippoorwills had not been present before their habitat was removed.  Nature is an active communicator, which used in a story, may remove the need to create an elaborate explanation, which may bore your readers.  Experience your world!  It's talking to you!



VIEW FROM ON HIGH:

Viewing the city from skyscrapers or tall buildings presents a very different view, than at ground level. Imagine how different a mugging appears from the 5th. floor of an office building, as opposed to  ground level; same mugging, different views! Different emotions!  Find ways to open your visual perspective.  Do you fly?  How does your city look compared to other cities from the sky or when landing? 

Harder, especially for a Critique group:  What does the city look like from below?  A worker looking up from inside a manhole, sees a different city, than we experience.  Consider this alternative;  have your Critique group invite people, for an interview session, to gather insights from workers, who see the world in ways we never experience.  Some who see it from above, some who see it from street level, some who see it from below; say electrical powerline workers, who work after storms or other events from above; policemen and city sanitation workers, two very different street level views; and underground utility or sewer workers, who go underground, serve as examples. 

What does all this have to do with Critiques?  AUTHENTICITY!  How many of us are experts on little issues that crop up when we write?  If you have notebooks describing a variety of occupations and their work-related events, you have ready-made research to use for critiques and to use in your writing.  You have a Critique group that's a treasure.  Isn't that what every Critique group should be?  A resource-treasure to draw upon?

DISCOVERIES INSIGHTS:

Please understand the point of the DISCOVERIES posts:  The creation of notebooks and additional notes through shared interactions.  Some people are natural sponges for absorbing details and remembering those details for years.  Most of us are not. 

I write these posts to help you and myself.  You may not be writing yet or just beginning.  I am constantly struggling, as almost all writers struggle.   I AM UNPUBLISHED.  I don't want to mislead anyone.   Check people I follow (on my profile) to find professionally published authors, who lead to other authors, who.... 

My goal is to help those who land here first or offer a published writer a new idea or insight.  I end this post with this wish:  "May we all be published, popularly read authors someday, who have produced quality works, worthy of our readers."  I will add this humorous note:  May we also earn enough money from our writings to feed, cloth, and maintain our humble lifestyles, while continuing to write.  I know, that's an ideal few achieve, but then, writers like to dream, don't we?