My latest Random Moment story affected me, as did a previous one. I found that I was empathising with my characters, which was pretty cool, but also a bit strange.
I was wondering, though, if any of you have feelings, not just of empathy, but any other feeling for your characters? Do you think it is essential to be able to create something believable?
Since I usually write in first person, the main character is usually “me” in some form, so yes. Even if it’s not the main character I do.
However, I’ve never gone as far as you have in your random moments, but knowing how I feel about your story since I’m a fan, I can relate.
I grew attached to them, as much as you have. I think a real writer here on this site, a proper author, or even someone who makes films, should and would feel this way. I’d think anyways. I know I would, and do.
My characters usually have some bit of me in them even if their personal stories aren't at all similar to mine, so I definitely empathize with them.
Other feelings...
I feel hatred towards the ones that hurt my main characters
I want to just hug and love Philena, Adam, Mistyria/Nymia, and Meghan
In order to write from the point of view of my character or know how they'll react to whatever I throw at them, I must dive in and... almost be them, completely. At least while I am writing them. That can get extremely difficult, and, especially with Philena, I end up pulling back and leaving to do something else quite often- or, I did. I've learned how to feel what they feel deeply, but not do so at the same time (confusing, eh? It's okay, I'm a confusing person).
Getting into the character so well (or I think I do it well, what do you think?) definitely has you feeling something for them, I'd call any writer sane if they didn't feel anything.
There's not much that i've written but, there are many moments I empathise with characters (usually the only one)....
I can only imagine that it would be an added skill to any and all who aspires to write more than just poetry or musings.
Just my two my two cents
When You Don't Feel Like Smiling, Smile Anyway
From what most of you have read from me, I am cruel to my characters, not sure why. So far there is only one that I empathise, and that is Katlyn because she is based more around my sister.
I can be quite cruel to my lead, and I do feel sorry for her at times. (I even got her drunk) if I feel an emotional connection I hope the readers will 2.
I made up my mind to kill off 1 character... but struggled to do it... I liked him, and felt the loss to the others.
I also wanted people not to like the "bad guys" using a senseless killing and thoughts of death and to try and make them heated.
The 'trick' (for want of a better word) is to differentiate between empathy and sympathy. The two emotions are very different.
It's all to easy to sympathise with someone who is suffering physical pain of some description because all of us, at one time or another, have been in pain and we all know what it feels like.
Empathy, on the other hand, is a completely different animal. There was a time I could never write convincingly about the death of a loved one because I had never lost anybody close to me. That all changed when both of my parents and my eldest brother died within a three and a half year timespan. Now I am fully empathic with someone suffering grief and/or loss.
To make your characters empathic they need to be real and they need to be believable. Readers will not empathise with characters they cannot relate to. Hell, you'd find it hard to raise any sympathy for them! It's a delicate balancing act. My advice to anybody designing a character is to put as much realism into him or her. He or she should be like everybody else: flawed, make mistakes and be capable of heroism should it be required. More readers will respond and relate than a character who bears little or no resemblance to anybody the reader knows.
I think the way I deal with characters is crazy, but it is the only way I have ever been able to create believable and unique characters. It also makes the writing process slow for me.
I think of my characters as real people. I will figure out a complete personality profile for any character. The more important the character is the more extensive the profile.
I work up their history, family, childhood, their physical characteristics and abilities, their mental processes including their general ideas of life, and their emotional make-up. I try to make a character that I can give 15-25 labels to.
After I make this character as much of a person as I feel I need, then I write the story. As the story move along, the characters are placed in various situations. How would this person react to this situation? What would they do? That is how the story will progress.
I think my characters are realistic and easy to empathize with is because I make them as real as possible then make the story fit them and not make the characters fit the story.
I know it sounds strange , but I talk with my characters (mentally, not out loud) and let them tell me what they will do. I think it is because I grew up playing role playing games. (Yes D&D was a big part of that. I actually played with the creators of the game. The Gygaxs. Name dropping can be fun.)
Does anyone else do characters this way?
You can't get there from here, because when you get there you're still here and here is now there. Being empathetic is one of the best qualities a writer can have. I mention it in something I wrote for here in the Musings Genre (L Is For Lazy). You can hate the character but to fully develop them and the how/why he acts the way he does, you have to empathize with them--understand them from within. Understanding does not always mean agreeing. Really good actors do this and are able to truly transform themselves in a part. Also, to create new character and not just mirrors of yourself and your feelings, you have to step out of yourself and clearly see something from someone else's view point. My characters live and breathe with backgrounds that shape the way they think, whether I choose to share all of that with the reader or not.
I've had people assume that they know me or how I think from a particular writing. I have to smile, because a fairly reasonable portion of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with me personally at all. But, I like that the reader thinks it does because then I did my job.
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Empathizing does not only enhance a story when writing it, it does it even more, when reading. The best books I read, are the ones, were in my imagination, I could place myself inside (one of) the main character(s). When that happens, a story comes alive for me, I see it happen in my head. Those stories are the ones, I can't abandon, until I'm finished, the ones, that make waiting for the next chapter torture.
If life seems jolly rotten
there's something you've forgotten
and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"
