Cameron Chapman

I’m going to share a dirty little secret here: I love gossip. There. I said it. Do I feel better? Probably not. I feel like I need to explain my love of gossip.

First of all, I’m not talking about celebrity gossip. Of that I couldn’t care less. What I’m talking about is gossip about real people, sometimes even people I know. But here’s where my motivations for loving gossip differs from that of 99% of gossip-lovers.

I love gossip because of the insight it gives into the human condition (I hate that term, but it’s the closest I could come to what I mean). As a writer, I study people. I study how they act, how they think, how the react, and how they interact with one another. I study how things make them feel. I study the things they do, rational or not. And because of that, gossip is a wealth of anthropological information.

I’m kind of a weirdo, in case you hadn’t figured this out already. I’ve found that my brain does not work the way that most people’s brains work. I’m highly emotional, but I’m also a highly rational and logical person. I can approach virtually any situation, no matter how distressing, rationally. Sure, I have an emotional reaction, but then I think about whatever it is in logical terms and can usually then put it into perspective. That makes me strange. And I’m often afraid that because of my own personality and the way my own brain works, my characters will come across as strange, when I don’t intend them to.

And so I like gossip. I like any insight into the way that people who aren’t like me think and act. I eat this stuff up when I hear it, while at the same time it kind of repulses me, because I realize that the value I find in gossip is not the value that most people who gossip find in it. Every time I find myself listening intently to gossip, I’m reminded of this quote (emphasis mine):

Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people.

This has caused me problems in the past. I’ll sometimes find myself asking questions of other people that make me sound like I’m just looking to gossip, to glean potentially-damaging information about another person. And I am, but not with the intention of ever sharing the information I find out. It’s simply research. It’s insight into how people who are different than me think and act and react and interact. And that insight is invaluable for me as a writer. I file it all away, for use later in creating characters or situations.

But among many groups of people, gossip is frowned upon. I’ve been treated to rather distasteful looks after asking certain questions among certain company. And I realize how it comes across, but generally only after I’ve made an ass of myself.

Sometimes I feel a bit like Bones. I look at the things people do and say and feel from a logical and unemotional perspective. It’s science, pure and simple. I think of it as a way to understand people better. Writers who hope to create realistic, three-dimensional characters need to have a good understanding of people and what makes them tick. Without that, our characters will either be purely representative of ourselves, or will be flat and boring.

I guess for the moment I’ll just keep eavesdropping on other people’s conversations, filing away what I learn for later use, and try not to ask potentially-inappropriate questions of friends and acquaintances. And maybe the next time I do so, I’ll make a point to explain why. Of course then comes the risk that people will censor themselves even more around me in order to not become potential characters in the future…