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WriteOn! Empathy for Characters [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-08
“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” -Barbara Kingsolver, novelist, essayist, and poet (b. 8 Apr 1955)
[perhaps this is why conservatives fear fiction?]
This is partly a matter of POV. You get into the narrator’s head, or the protagonist first of all, and have the most chance of understanding them. But an author can fail at creating empathy, or even deliberately block it, if trying for a specific emotional effect. And we can feel empathy for minor characters if they are carefully drawn, even briefly.
Further, empathy is created by description, by signs of emotion in the characters, by situations that feel familiar to the reader. Including “all the feels” is a part of this too.
Even if your characters are not human, they need to be people. People with loves, fears, dreams, and lives.
Challenge: write either a descriptive passage or a vignette that showcases the humanity of one of your characters and gives the reader the opportunity to empathize.
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
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