“Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”
Françoise Sagan
It’s funny to think that something as pedestrian as a character’s preferred
mode of transportation could offer any inspiration or insight. Does it really
matter if they ride their bike everywhere or drive a gigantic pick-up truck or
refuse to go anywhere they can’t walk to?
It may seem insignificant, but the kind of transportation your character uses
affects their independence (how much autonomy do they have to do what they
need or want to do, when they need or want to do it?), and if all of your
characters move about in the same way all the time, it’ll start feeling samey.
That’s not even taking into account places in the world and eras in history
when things like gender, race, and class dictate the modes of transportation
used.
Knowing the modes of transportation used by your characters (the main ones, at
the very least) helps bring order to the story world while also providing
ample opportunity for writerly mischief, and goodness knows that's where half
the fun is. ^_~