By J.L. Salter

Let’s talk characters.

As writers, sometimes we’ll see a person or hear a conversation which triggers an entire scene in our manuscript. Join me in this [real life] grocery experience from a few years ago:

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Selected the slow line, as usual.  The transacting party bought 31 cans of baby formula … had to send someone ‘to the back’ to get a case.  In the meantime, the young clerk waved one can by the scanner 31 times.

The woman in front of me was very obviously irritated.  [I’d seen her in the cheese section earlier … and she was equally annoyed with dairy products.]  Her phone rang twice while we waited and she was rather terse with both callers.  The terse woman had a medium sized cucumber among many other items.  I noticed only because it had no sticker and ‘our’ clerk had to ask a…