Learning Something New and Stepping Out From Your Comfort Zone

Photo Courtesy of Jared Bonaminio

As a journalist, I'm constantly speaking with people to gather more information about the events or subjects I'm covering. At first, it was definitely scary to walk up to someone I didn't know and ask them about their opinions, but I've gotten more information from people I've interviewed than I ever had from documents.

If you're a student on a college campus like I am, there are infinite opportunities to join clubs and try new experiences. On my own student newspaper, my willingness to reach out to intriguing people and organizations helped make not only my own section, but also my newspaper stronger and more dynamic.

This week, I interviewed the Urban Gaming Club, a club that is synonymous with playing the game, "Humans vs. Zombies," on my own campus and others. I learned a lot about the motivation behind why they play the game, and it gave me a lot of ideas for a post-apocalyptic story that I could work on.

An interesting thing to do this week would be to look at this picture, and set these people in a post apocalyptic, zombie-infested environment, and pick out who would be most likely to survive.

You can look at the article here.

Interviewing in Character Development

As a creative writer, I often struggle to make character dialogue read authentically. That's often because the best parts of human speech are rarely pre-planned, and some of the folksier parts of speech aren't calculated, but spontaneous.

As a journalist, I've learned that folksier tidbits of speech make everything more digestible, and add character in an otherwise dry piece. I still remember a quote from a man I interviewed about a new safety lab, and he said that his goal was to make sure his students "wore a lot of different hats," and things like that often stick with you, as you hope words on a page will.

I challenge you to interview someone you don't know, and integrate their speech into a character you've been working on. It doesn't have to be someone you don't know if you are horribly shy, but the point of the exercise is to expand your pool of phrases and sentences as they relate to everyday speech. Good luck, and happy writing!


(Below is a video of an interview I did with 22 Jump Street's Jimmy Tatro, who was one of the most awkward people I interviewed in my whole life.)

 

Leave a comment about what you think Tatro's speech and word choice affects your perception of his character.