Assumptions about Assumptions
My husband was chatting with a work colleague he hadn’t seen in a while. “How was your trip?” he asked, assuming she’d been on vacation, her normal routine at that time of year.
“I wasn’t away,” she explained. “My whole house burned down. I had nothing left except, literally, the clothes on my back.” She paused. “Well, and my car keys because I went back inside to get my purse.”
Wow. How dramatic and tragic. What we’d assumed—she’d been enjoying herself on a beach—had been the exact opposite of how she’d actually been living—homeless, until she could make temporary arrangements.
It reminded me how easily we do that—make assumptions. It’s not that we have to walk around thinking darkness lurks around every corner, but it made me appreciate how we could ask differently. Though I would have done the same as my husband, now I’m wondering if a better question might have been “How was your time off?”
Being aware of assumptions is crucial to our job as writers. It’s how our own characters act and react. It’s how they get into—and out of—situations. It’s how they communicate with the other characters in your story. It’s how they think. But we are not our characters. We are the authors. We need to know more, see more, understand more. Maybe one place to start is to consider our own assumptions in our own world.