Just a thought...

I've read in one of the many creative writing textbooks that I own that you should never forget that fictional characters are not real people and they don't respond as real people would. It suggests that you should think of what a normal person would do (Oh how I love the sweeping generalisation of "normal"), and then write the opposite.

This is fine, but most of the people I know don't react in a normal way. What kind of benchmark is that?! I'm going to wind up writing 90k words on commonplace behaviour if I apply this tip! I'm going to chew this over now, at the gym. Again, another place where it's hard to find "normal' people. Trotting along for hours at a time on a machine in front of unforgiving mirrors is not a normal behaviour by any stretch of the imagination.