No one really talks about how you can know someone for years without really understanding them.
When I first met my fertility specialist as a twenty-five-year-old woman with no health issues aside from PCOS and endometriosis, I’d already heard his reputation for having awful bedside manners. He was polite when I met him. He was very dry.
One day, I was talking with a resident friend who was rotating through his office when she told me a story I’ve never forgotten.
Every time a bad storm rolled through, he would sleep in his office. And it had nothing to do with him being on call or that downtown Savannah floods every time it sprinkles (at least, back then, anyway).
No. He was terrified of what would happen if the power went out. He was there to make sure the backup generator kicked on for the frozen embryos, eggs and samples stored in the lab.
In an instant, I saw him differently.
He wasn’t suddenly warmer. He was still was dry and didn’t talk much aside from giving me instructions for dosing my injections (shout out to my Follistim folks). He didn’t magically develop incredible bedside manners.
He was the exact same person I’d met before. The only thing that changed was my understanding of him.
Writing has made me think about moments like that a lot.
Before I started writing novels, I think I assumed people were mostly who they appeared to be. If someone was quiet, they were just quiet. If someone was driven, they were just ambitious. If someone kept everyone at arm’s length, well, that was simply their personality.
Now I catch myself wondering what’s underneath. Because I’ve learned that people rarely become who they are by accident.
Somewhere along the way, life taught them something.
Someone disappointed them. Someone believed in them. Someone left. Someone stayed. And someone changed the trajectory of their life in a way no one else can see.
As writers, we spend months—sometimes years—with our characters. We know their histories. Their fears. The memories they revisit when they can’t sleep. The conversations they replay in the shower. The versions of themselves they show the world versus the versions they keep tucked away.
The funny thing is, spending that much time with fictional people has made me more curious about the real ones.
I find myself wondering what happened before the moment I’m seeing.
Why the cashier seems distracted today. Why the professor everyone describes as intimidating chose to teach in the first place. Why the coworker who never misses a deadline also never takes a vacation.
Maybe there’s an explanation. Maybe there isn’t.
But writing has taught me to be slower to assume I know the whole story.
I think that’s one of the unexpected gifts of becoming a novelist.
Yeah, I’ve learned how to structure a scene.
Yep, I’ve learned how to revise a chapter.
But more than anything, I’ve learned that understanding another person takes time.
And maybe that’s true whether they’re fictional or standing right in front of us.