Over eight years, I attended more than 300 renaissance festivals. It started after my wife passed away. I decided I’m only going to live a certain amount of time, so I may as well travel, and I flew all over the place to faires. Then one day I thought, I’ve seen everything in a Renaissance faire. I don’t need to do this anymore. I was done.
I took roughly 980,000 photos of faire performers, belly dancers, jousters, pirates, and everyone in between. Dancers and performers hired me to shoot them. I wasn’t there as a casual visitor. I was there with a camera, observing everything, and what I learned about framing, senses, and characterization changed the way I write.
Eight years, more than 300 faires and roughly 980,000 photos taught me how to look at people the way a writer must.
My photograph on the cover of the 2009 Renaissance Pleasure Faire brochure, Irwindale. Photo copyright © Richard Lowe.
I took roughly 980,000 photos of faire performers, belly dancers, jousters, pirates, and everyone in between.Share on X
Most advice about finding story inspiration tells you to “go somewhere interesting and take notes.” I think that advice is lazy, because it skips learning how to look. Years of photographing performers taught me things about writing that no craft book ever did.
What does photography teach about characterization?
When you photograph someone, you’re making decisions about who they are in a fraction of a second.
Which angle shows their personality? What’s the detail that tells the story: the scar on their knuckle, the way they hold a sword, the tilt of their head when they’re listening? You learn to see people the way a writer needs to see characters, as a collection of specific, telling details. A list of physical traits never gets you there.
A character described as “a tall woman with dark hair” is nobody.
At a ren faire, every performer is already in character. The pirate leaning against a post is doing more than wearing a costume. He’s chosen how he stands, how he talks, what he does with his hands. The belly dancer is doing more than moving. She’s controlling exactly what the audience sees and when they see it. Faire people are an eclectic group, and they’re fine. It’s a circus, and once I realized they’re circus performers, they got much easier to deal with.
After photographing hundreds of performers across 300 faires, I stopped seeing costumes and started seeing characters. I started noticing the details that make a person specific instead of generic. I got this close to going to Sturgis once to shoot the bikers, until I realized a lot of them don’t want to be photographed, so I dropped the idea.
That translates directly to writing. A character described as “a tall woman with dark hair” is nobody. A character described by the way she adjusts her bracelet before she speaks, or the way she scans a room starting from the left, is someone the reader remembers. Photography trained me to find those details instinctively.
What Faires Teach About Senses
A camera only captures one sense. Standing in the middle of a ren faire, you’re hit with all of them at the same time.
The smoke from a turkey leg vendor mixing with incense from a jewelry booth. The sound of a hammered dulcimer layered over crowd noise and the crack of a jousting lance. The weight and texture of a hand-forged pendant. The taste of mead that’s too sweet and the taste of mead that’s exactly right.
Writers are told constantly to “use all five senses.”
The problem is that most writers work from memory or imagination, and both tend to default to sight. Spending years in sensory-rich environments rewired my defaults. When I write a scene, I don’t have to remind myself to include sound and smell and texture. Those details show up because I spent eight years in places where they were impossible to ignore.
The faire environment is especially useful because it layers historical and modern sensory details in ways that create interesting friction. A woman in full Elizabethan dress checking her phone. The smell of a blacksmith’s forge drifting into a performance space where someone is singing a medieval ballad into a wireless microphone. These collisions between eras are the kind of details that make fictional worlds feel lived-in instead of designed.
What Performers Teach About Scene Construction
Belly dancers and stage performers understand something most writers have to learn the hard way: every moment is framed.
A dancer decides what to reveal and when. She controls the audience’s eye. She builds tension, releases it, builds it again. She knows that the pause before a movement can be more powerful than the movement itself.
Dancers and musicians on stage at the Irwindale Renaissance Faire, 2010. Copyright © Richard Lowe.
Photographing performers for years taught me to think about scenes as controlled sequences of attention. Where’s the reader looking? What am I revealing and what am I withholding? When do I slow down and when do I accelerate? These are the same questions a performer answers instinctively through movement, and they’re the same questions a writer has to answer through pacing and detail selection.
A good performer also understands the difference between spectacle and engagement. The flashiest move isn’t always the most effective one. Sometimes a quiet moment hits harder than the dramatic gesture: a glance, a shift in posture, a held breath. I learned that from watching dancers, and I apply it every time I write a scene that could go loud but works better quiet.
How Do You Use a Renaissance Faire for Writing?
If you want to use renaissance festivals or historical reenactments as writing fuel, these methods have worked for me over years of doing it.
Bring a journal or your phone and write observations instead of ideas. Don’t try to invent a story on the spot. Write down what you see, hear, smell, and feel. “The juggler’s hands are scarred and his left pinky doesn’t bend” is more useful than “what if the juggler is secretly an assassin?” The specific observation is raw material you can use anywhere. The invented scenario is a dead end you’ll forget by Tuesday.
Watch the performers who aren’t performing. The best character details come from the moments between acts, when the pirate drops character and checks his phone, when the dancer stretches her ankles before going on, when the knight adjusts his armor and winces because something pinches. Those unguarded moments are where real human behavior lives, and real human behavior makes fictional characters believable.
Go more than once. The first visit to a faire is overwhelming. You see everything and remember nothing specific. By the third or fourth visit, you start noticing patterns, details, and the small things that make each performer distinct. The same principle applies to any environment you’re using for research. Familiarity is where the real material lives.
| Lesson | What the faire showed | What to do on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Characterization | Every performer chooses how he stands, talks and uses his hands. | Describe characters through specific, telling details, not a list of traits. |
| The senses | Smoke, dulcimer music, forged metal and mead hit you all at once. | Put sound, smell and texture into scenes, not just sight. |
| Friction between eras | Elizabethan dress next to a phone; a ballad sung into a wireless mic. | Use collisions like these to make worlds feel lived-in. |
| Scene construction | A dancer controls what the audience sees and when. | Decide what to reveal, what to withhold, when to slow down. |
| Quiet over spectacle | A glance or held breath can hit harder than the flashy move. | Let scenes that could go loud work quietly. |
| Write observations | A scarred juggler’s hand beats an invented assassin plot. | Record what you see, hear, smell and feel, not story ideas. |
| Watch between acts | The pirate checks his phone; the dancer stretches her ankles. | Use unguarded moments to make characters believable. |
| Go more than once | The first visit overwhelms; by the third you notice patterns. | Return to research places until the details come into focus. |
My take
Pick a real place, go there, and write down what you see. Ideas you invent on the spot are dead by Tuesday, and a juggler’s crooked pinky stays useful for years. Watch the performers between acts, when the pirate checks his phone and the dancer stretches her ankles, and write those moments down. Go back more than once. I spent years photographing dancers, and the pause before the move is where I’d point any writer’s attention.
Images from Renaissance Festivals
Here are some photos I took during faire visits. Each one represents the kind of observation that feeds writing.
What does her expression tell you? What’s she looking at that you can’t see? One photo, a dozen possible characters.
A dancer controls exactly what the audience sees. Watch what she chooses to reveal and what she holds back. That’s scene construction.
Objects tell stories. Who made these? Who buys them? What does someone’s choice of jewelry say about them?
He chose this character. How he stands, what he does with his hands, where he looks: that’s characterization in real time.
Modern details in a historical setting. The friction between eras is where interesting scenes live.
Sakuntala. Notice the bells on her ankles, her eye line, what’s happening behind her. Observe with all your senses and write down the questions. The answers can wait until you’re at the desk, and a writer who invents them on the spot throws away the best material the day had to offer.
Tera Langshaw at a Renaissance faire, October 10, 2010. Copyright © Richard Lowe.
Frequently Asked Questions
- The Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale, California, Los Angeles Almanac
