What’s the difference between a writer and a stalker? The stalker has focus.

Ba-dum-tish.

That is hyperbole. Obviously, writers aren’t sitting outside your window touching themselves or eyeing up the right pot to boil a bunny in (not on the whole, there could be one). They are, however, watching you in coffee shops and taking discreet mental notes (or actual notes) about the rhythms of the argument with your friend or the stiff truce that falls every time the waiter drifts by.

Or…well…I do. Hopefully I’m not alone!

I am an inveterate people watcher, and eavesdropper. I once spent five minutes longer than I needed to in a toilet stall at a fancy hotel because I wanted to hear the end of the gossip two middle-aged Irish aunties were sharing about the couple whose wedding reception they were at.

It sounds creepy now I write it down, but I just went in to pee and then they started gabbing by the Dyson hand-drier and…it was good stuff.

‘Well, she did have to good sense to sleep wi’ his brother. So at least the child will look like his side of the family. She’s a tart, but she’s not stupid – God love her.’

Oh c’mon, I am not the only one who’d draw out a widdle to hear the end of that conversation right? Right? Someone agree with me here! Or not. In my defence, that is one of only two toilet related notes in my little book of ‘stuff people do that I wanna use one day’ (the other is the time I was in a loo and I farted, and someone angrily demanded ‘who did that!?’ Which is gold, and I am totally using it if the opportunity ever arises in a book. Seriously, the toilet is where farts live!).

It’s coffee shops that are my inspiration mine, you see. If you aren’t there on a time limit – a meeting, the time it takes to drink a coffee and move on – the things you see and/or overhear are amazing. I once heard a woman talking about how when her husband gets drunk, he comes home and – everytime – goes to the wardrobe and pees on her shoes. Then there was the man dressed like a dapper Fagin – waistcoat, pocket watch, finger gloves and all – who would buy a double shot espresso and eat a handful of sugar tubes.

It’s not just weird stuff either, it’s just people going about their daily business. The woman reading a novel as she queues in the shops, the student doing some last minute cramming with a lapful of books and a highlighter on their way to University, the little kid who draws you a picture of Jesus with a human head and the body of a banana…

OK, that last one was a little weird. My nephew is a sweet kid, but odd and apparently slightly confused about religion in some fruit-related way.

My point, before I got distracted, is that people are the grist for a writer’s creative mill. A writer can have the most beautiful prose style and compelling plots, but if the characters fall flat then it will be a struggle to get a readership. Especially if you write romances – a crime novel can power through on plot and cleverness, romances need people to get behind.

Those people need to be convincing. It’s not just the sex scenes where you have to make sure you get things right (although you do, because you add one extra leg and some people will never let you live it down), you need to make the interactions realistic. Readers need to be convinced that the people they’re reading about are, for the duration of the book, as real as anyone else.

The bête noire of many a new writer is the axiom, ‘write what you know’. I take issue with it, actually, since you can write what you don’t know if you research it and work hard on the edit. However, you do need to know people. So, take that as an excuse to be just a little nosy. No peeping through windows, but pay attention next time you’re stuck in a queue at a shop or sitting in a Starbucks!