Can a trip to the hairdresser's really improve our story telling?

I got a fabulous haircut this week, it is short and funky, low maintenance, a brilliant colour and took close to three hours at the hairdressers! luckily I own a smart phone, I played a couple of games, read a couple of chapters of Ari Harper's awesome book, Witchling. And spent a huge chunk of time people watching.

Nothing is better for the development of characters then seeing how everyday folk interact with the world and people around them. I believe you can not write what you do not know. But not all knowledge comes from personal experience, for instance, I am not an angry person but through dealing with, and observing those of the aggravated persuasion I am familiar enough with the concept to develop a character that is motivated by choler.

It is the little nuances of personality types that help build a believable character and if we pay attention while out in the big bad real world we can easily bring those lilliputian details into the worlds we create.

We can discover the driving force behind some common personality traits and layer a more complex rational into our stories just by being attentive. Take for instance a dishevelled woman in a hair salon making demands and repeatedly changing her mind. Reiterating to the stylist the exact colour her hair must be and accusing staff of forgetting her eyebrow wax more than once.

At first glance she appears rude and prickly, but the reality is more likely to be she has not been pampered before, a trip to the hairdresser is a huge event, not just something she does once every six weeks.

For me a haircut is a minor inconvenience, a huge chunk of my day once every month and a half to ensure my grey roots aren't seen. If it wasn't for watching other people in the salon I would never stop to think about the other reasons for spending time at the hairdresser's. A day spent getting your hair done could be a cure to the boredom of being a trophy wife, treating yourself for long over due pampering, getting ready for a special night or (as it is in my case) vanity to hide the little tell tale signs of age.

The list could of course go on, these are just the things I saw this week while getting my own hair done. To bring this back to how it can affect character building, the motive for being there changes the way a person interacts with the world around them, but if known it also changes the way others treat that person. A dishevelled yet demanding woman can go from having eyes rolled behind her back to being treated like a queen, just because her stylist pays attention realises how special the next few hours are for her client.

The challenge a writer faces is not only developing characters that are driven by their various motives but introducing the reader to a complex and realistic personality, one that keeps them engaged in the story and on the edge of their seat waiting to see how each character's tale will end. Conscientiously paying attention to the world around us should be a skill we strive to develop every time we leave our house, our story telling will thank us, our characters will thank us and most importantly our readers will thank us.