Gretchen Rubin talks in The Happiness Project about buying niche magazines in subjects that don't interest her as a way to broaden her horizons. I like to do that with cafes sometimes.
Sometimes it's fun to drive to a new neighborhood and see what its local café has to offer. You can sort of expect that the menu won't be too drastically different, unless you're exploring a Chinese tea shop or a Jerusalem-style coffeehouse or ordering boba in your Thai iced tea, but the clientele of a new cafe can be radically different.
Sometimes I like to write at a café where the construction workers meet to smoke cigarettes and argue in Cantonese. Sometimes I go to a café where everyone stops by with their dogs. There are cafes full of au pairs pushing strollers and cafes where gay couples have breakfast before heading off to their tech jobs -- and sometimes these are the same cafe. Some cafes feature women discussing the discomfort of their $1200 Swarkowski-studded stiletto heels. Others host discussions of last weekend's parties. Some have politicians talking shop or artists talking smack. I'd like to find the cafe where the police come for their lattes.
Changing up the where you write can inspire you to broaden the range of characters that you write about.
When I get stuck working on other things, I like to do an exercise where I write character studies of the people around me in the café. How can I describe them realistically enough that someone else could recognize them? What details would they recognize about themselves? What makes them individual?
I like to play Sherlock Holmes. What can I observe about them and what can I infer? What does that tell me about the roles they are struggling to fit into?
Beyond simple physical description, you can analyze their behavior. What are they eating and how? Where do people look at they talk? How do they look when they listen? What do they do with their hands?
Try a new café this weekend and see what you can learn.
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Writing in Cafes: A How-To Guide for Authors
Non-FictionJumpstart your writing by taking it to the cafe! How do you pick a cafe in which to write, which tools should you use, should you bring a friend along: I'll answer these questions and give you more to think about.
