You must lead such an interesting life. Right.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that our characters live more engaging and interesting lives than we writers do. As if this weren't enough, many other persons live more engaging and interesting lives than we do. To be sure, there have been stories in which the protagonist is a writer, but in most of these cases the writer protagonist invariably sets down the notebook, replaces the pen in the pen holder, arises from the typewriter, pushes away from the computer screen to do something confrontational, investigative, physical.

If we do not live entirely in our heads, we spend a good deal of time there. By day's end, we have burned off sufficient calories to balance out the two-thousand-calorie diet. We may even experience the delicious funk of emotional fatigue, so used and shuffled have our emotions been employed during the working day. We may indeed be as righteously tired as our auto mechanic or landscape gardener neighbor, but we were inside, nominally alone, our most severe external obstacles the ambient noises of society, perhaps a cat wanting in or our and somehow terrified of the cat door, perhaps even a bored dog, standing or sitting guard at the cat door, and speaking of doors, the occasional evangelical going from door to door. Again, truth prevailing, our interior obstacles may be every bit as taxing as the automobile mechanic, the produce manager at the neighborhood supermarket, the landscape gardener with a severely allergic client. We may have come face to face with an unpardonable cliche, sprung from our very center of creativity; we may have hit the wall in terms of not knowing what a particular character needs to do next; we may have discovered the presence of two untasted cups of coffee adjacent the one currently in use (for some of us a substitute for the discovery of more than one cigarette burning away on some inappropriate surface).

When we discuss among writer friends the published works of writers we do not know personally, we may find ourselves using such phrases as "Characters bigger than life" or "cleverly implausible behavior," failing to note that characters who are smaller than life are not going to get any one's passport stamped, nor that plausible behavior may easily devolve into the sorts of things we do about the house between writing bursts, things such as excuse trips to the supermarket, by which is meant the sudden "discovery" that we are out of applesauce or paper towels or perhaps even smoked salmon slices, three elements vital to any story or essay. Perhaps there is the notion that in a scant two thousand miles, our vehicle will be due for servicing, thus we must calculate the average number of city miles driven in order to calculate the next time for maintenance. There is also the unbearable noise of the neighbor's lawn blower, the chatter of a dysfunctional family of crows, and the arrival of a perplexed pizza delivery person who has the house number correct but the street wrong, and who insists on telling you, when you tell him the street name, what the principal ingredients of the pizza are.

There is the explosive angst of being driven out of the house to the more hospitable ambiance of your favorite coffee shop, where Writer's Law Number One obtains. In any public gathering place, one particular voice, male or female, will resonate over the others, inspiring you to new, unparalleled dimensions of irritation. That person will speak often and at great length, impinging on your ability to make the most of this change of venue.

It is by no means that you long for the life of a plumber or an accountant or a lawyer; you know just about as much about pipes, balancing check books, and the law as you want to know. Rather it is that you have become used to attributing more functional problems and their solutions to such individuals and have begun in the process to romanticize them. You are too familiar with the problems writers face. It makes perfect sense for you to flee from a perfectly compatible computer with a large external monitor, then rush forth to the coffee shop with a note pad and handful of pens, where you settle in behind a frothy latte and begin to work until you are interrupted by a young woman, ringing cell phone in hand, who asks if you'll be kind enough to keep an eye on her computer until she returns.

Been There, Done That, Got Rained on

weather report--descriptions, often found at beginnings of novels and short stories, but also in chapter beginnings, where writers describe weather conditions with such profundity and eclat as to undercut the presence of characters and story; an attempt to convince readers that they are in the presence of an author who truly knows how to write; an authorial attempt to infuse thematic content into a narrative.

Weather can and often does have demonstrable effect on story and the characters within it, but--to use a pathetic fallacy--appreciates a moderate, unhyperbolic hand in the rendering. Storm clouds may indeed gather ominously if they are harbingers of meteorological events; they are not needed to symbolize difficulties in the lives of the characters.

landscape--descriptions of locales, settings, and geographical phenomena which are included in dramatic narrative as evidence that the reader is in the presence of a writer who is familiar with travel writing and/or metaphor. With the advent of Google, Wikipedia, and other Internet search engine-type sources, as well as a flourishing industry in hard copy travel guides, readers are often familiar with most geographical settings, have had numerous occasions to read of the experiences and insights characters have when looking down from an airplane at metropolitan, polar, desert, and ocean vistas.

In similar fashion, many readers have experienced visits to hospitals, motels, hotels, lawyer's offices, super markets, criminal courts, shopping malls, and similar institutions, precluding detailed descriptions. One good reason for detailed description of such places is when the opposite to the expectation of them obtains: "it was a remarkably low-key setting for such a high-price attorney," "for a cheap motel, there was a radiant cleanliness and not a trace of a cockroach."

Writing description about such places, the author is well advised to select one memorable detail that convinces him of the authenticity of the landscape. Even in description of landscape, significant individual detail evokes a sense of the narrator's actual presence in the locale, yet another reminder that evocation trumps description in fiction.

occupation--conveying with plausibility the profession, occupation, artistry, and state of career development in a character. In many novels of mystery or suspense, private investigators or security persons have had some career as sworn police officers, sheriffs, or as federal agents, others still have come to their work with a history in military police. Lawyers have attended various types of law schools and have been admitted to practice in specific locales through the gatekeeper of the bar exam. Hairdressers, barbers, manicurists, and stylists are required to obtain licenses before they can perform in many states. A head chef, interviewing a subordinate, will probably want to see the subordinate's knives and how they are cared for. Before assigning a profession, occupation, artistry, and experience to a character, the writer is well advised to check plausible standards the character must possess before setting the character to work. This understanding may provide the writer with an entire dimension of behavior for the character, having a direct effect on how that character thinks, feels, and behaves. As an exaggerated extreme, imagine a butcher, having gone through apprenticeship and risen through the ranks in a high-profile market chain, developing an aversion to the meat and organs he or she must deal with, to the point of becoming a vegan. For further exaggerated extremes, imagine all minor characters who are service oriented (wait persons, delivery persons, janitorial persons) with walk-on roles in stories as wannabe actors, photographers, painters. Imagine possible conflicts between psychologists (with PhD.D. degree) and psychiatrists (with M.D. degree). Imagine potential rivalry between a psychiatrist with Freudian orientation and a psychiatrist with Jungian orientation. If you needed cosmetic surgery, would you consult a "mere" surgeon or one who was board certified in cosmetic surgery? If your character is a classically trained musician, for whom did she audition and fail to please? If your character is a jazz musician whose instrument is a reed, how did he keep his reeds moist before appearing?

Actors carefully research the working habits of characters they are to portray, often learning such arcane things as how to throw a curve ball in baseball, how to get a tone out of a bag pipe, how to do things as a doctor or nurse would do them; their researches bringing a quality of reality and plausibility to their performance. Writers need to do no less than study the job for the details that will bring the job to the page.