To Write, You Must Observe

Being a good observer contributes to being a good writer. Taking the time to observe the world around you help to stimulate a good sense of what to write about and what could be put to paper. I find that observing people, animals, or just nature without distractions can stimulate your ability to process possible ideas whether for poetry, stories, or for articles. You can draw both hypotheses and conclusions from you observe the world around you. It allows you to come up with scenarios or storylines just from seeing what’s going on around you.

You can really let your imagination run wild with coming up with fictional events, stories, or essays when you can draw on what you observe. Being observant allows you to think about good ideas for what you would like to write further about or to come up with ways to flesh out a person’s story or history. A good writer can flesh out the details based on what they are observing and create a good story or plot from what they may see out in the world. Being an observer doesn’t have to be a majestic place like from a mountain top or overlooking a lake.

You can make insightful and creative observations just by sitting at your neighborhood café for a few hours or from walking through your local nature park. A simple change of scenery stimulates your mind just from putting yourself in an unfamiliar location. A writer should immerse yourself in different settings and bring a pen and paper or their laptop with them. Having a quiet place to observe is also much better than a noisy place, similar with how a pond or a backyard porch is better for observations to be written down than going to Times Square or Las Vegas to come up with good writing ideas.

I do believe certain places are better for writing down your observations especially if they are quiet and allow you to concentrate more. You’re able to not only come up with story or novel ideas in those places but can write more in-depth about what you’re seeing without being distracted in those crowded, noisier, or places with sensory overload. It is a key part of being a writer to hone your observations as much as possible without overwhelming your senses by trying to observe everything all at once.

It is more productive to focus your observational writing on a particular part of a place or scene rather than trying to make sense of everything going on around you all at once. To develop your creative writing abilities, when making observations, do your best to hone your story idea or your poetry to a specific animal, nature scene, person, or theme. Observational writing can really let you hone your descriptive abilities by letting you expand your vocabulary, develop your chance to set the scene, and use your imagination to create a story out of nothing.

I would also say that being a good observer does not end at fictional scenarios but can help you with your non-fiction writing as you can attend live events like concerts, protests, or speeches, where you can observe the speaker or the attendees and writing about the setting along with the sequence of events that happened from first to last. Observational writing comes in handy when you are a news reporter, journalist, or in forming opinions. Without being able to be at the scene or where something is happening as it happens; you rob your writing from being able to recall in as much detail as what happened and how it happened when you’re not actually there.

Experiencing something virtually or secondhand does not lend the same kind of credibility or have the same kind of feeling as when you’re there in real life when something is happening live. Your observations when writing should be experienced firsthand as much as possible. I’ve found that my own writing about things, places, or events I’ve been to is not as sharp when I wait a few days or a week after to recap what happened and the accuracy is not the same as when you are writing about it as it happens.

If you are looking to improve your writing skills, I recommend sitting yourself somewhere quiet and peaceful where you can make your live observations and develop them if you would like to into poems, stories, or essays to use your imagination. You can really develop your vocabulary, your prose, and your own form of storytelling through making live observations. Good writing tends to come from being a good observer. The more time you can spend in different places observing the world and its inhabitants, your writing is going to improve and will also help you develop your own narratives, settings, and plotlines. Be sure to use your observations to further your writing skills and to take your compilation observational notes to make yourself a better and more complete writer.