Empathy for the characters....

[SEVERUSMAX]

While writing a story with my slave yesterday, we got into a discussion of writing styles and she told me that she tends to empathize with the characters- all of them. She places herself inside each of them. How many of you do this? I don't make it a consistent practice myself, but I DO sometimes empathize with particular characters, if I like them or have something in common with them.

 

[logophile]

I do this to a large degree. When I was NaNo'ing this year, I loved my MC and was writing from inside her head to a large degree. And I convincingly wrote the male antagonist as smarmy and not real bright - but I still really felt for him. He was in a pickle, and he knew that no one liked him. When I would talk to the woman who was reading for me everyday and try to get her to empathize with him, she couldn't do it because she didn't like him personally. But I couldn't stop empathizing with him...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

If I can't get inside my characters, I can't write them... the work just stops, turns flat, and then I'm bored and won't finish...

and conversely, if I can't get inside a character when I'm reading, the same thing happens...

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

For me it depends on the characters. I don't empathize with despicable characters on PURPOSE, though I might without realizing it (especially when I add some psychobabble BS about their motivations).

 

[Liar]

First of all, do you really mean empathize? To understand what needs and feelings that drives a character is to empathize. So share and experience them is to sympathize. No?

Since I as the autjor construct the characters, I don't need to empathize with them to figure them out, therre is notyhingf about them to discover that I didn't put there. I try to empathize with the average reader, though. So that I can make the reader sympathize with the characters.

 

[Guest]

I don't so much empathize/sympathize with my characters as become them; they absorb me more completely than any lover ever has (isn't that just a shame, as Mortality keeps telling me?) and I become so involved in them it's damn near an obsession.

This really sucks when the character who you've been writing about for two years is a sadomasochistic drug addicted male demonic avatar with a serious penchant for those of his own sex. You tend to say things that make your husband roll his eyes and tell you that he wants to talk to the OTHER personality now.

But nonetheless... I don't understand writers who can write without getting intensely involved with their characters. I -admire- them immensely, I just don't understand them. Despite the fact that it gets crowded in my head sometimes, I rather like being able to drift in and out of their little quirks and look at life from their viewpoints.

 

[Boota]

When I'm writing a character I definitely empathize with them. With the POV character I try to feel everything they would feel. Sometimes it is easier than others. I have sympathy for the bad guy. At least my bad guys. They've got to be bad for a reason. Even if I don't share that reason specifically with the reader I've got to know what that reason is.

It is more rare for me to empathize with someone else's character, but it does happen.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

How can you possibly write a character you don't understand? And how can you understand a character unless you can empathize with them? To do anything else is to be dishonest, to write them as you think they should be. It makes puppets out of them.

In fact, I would say that losing emotiona connection with a character is a sure sign that your story's veered off into cliche.

I empathize with all my characters: my men, my women, my monsters from outer space. I might not be able to describe it, but I know what all of them feel and why they feel that way.

 

[Liar]

How can you possibly write a character you don't understand? And how can you understand a character unless you can empathize with them? To do anything else is to be dishonest, to write them as you think they should be. It makes puppets out of them.

Why do you say that? Empathy is a tool to figuring out the motivations, needs and mental map of a character. Or of another real life person for that matter. If I know those things, what does empathy tell me?

Do you empathize with yourself? And if you know your characters so little that you havew to bend over backwards to figure them out, what story are you telling?

Different approaches, I guess. Or just different sematics to empathy. Whichever, it works.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Why do you say that? Empathy is a tool to figuring out the motivations, needs and mental map of a character. Or of another real life person for that matter. If I know those things, what does empathy tell me?

Do you empathize with yourself?

I'm not sure what you're saying. Empathy to me means being able to feel what a character feels and understand why they act the way they do. I don't believe you can write a believable and consitent character without empathizing and sharing their emotions. Just using a map, I'd be able to make my characters do whatever I want without regard for believability or plausibility.

 

[Liar]

I'm not sure what you're saying. Empathy to me means being able to feel what a character feels and understand why they act the way they do. I don't believe you can write a believable and consitent character without empathizing and sharing their emotions. Just using a map, I'd be able to make my characters do whatever I want without regard for believability or plausibility.

Only with an unbeliveable an implausible map. Seems that map metaphor of mine mudded the water. And it seems we mean different things with the word empathy anyway.

All I'm saying here is that discovering unknown aspects to a character mid-writing, by perspective shift, doesn't work for me. If I don't know all I need to know about the character and it's place in the story before I start, I haven't made enough of an effort. But that's me, and might be one of the resons it takes me half way to forever to wite a story. But still, I do mean that closing your eyes and sharing it's feelings, isn't the only way to make a multifaceted, plausible and believable character come to life.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Noooo...And they're not real people either. Nope, don't think like that. And shame be on the head that states I fall in love with a character and give them more development than I planned or that I have favorites or that I even sometimes love my villains. Shame. I'm not that kind of weird person at all, and I never spend most of the time writing hoping and worrying that I can do them justice. Nope, that would be silly.


You believe me, right?

 

[elsol]

Characters do not feel.

The writer feels... the reader feels.

These 'feelings' you're talking about is like the dehumanizing tactic used in robotics stories. It allows the writer to really delve deeply into themselves but from a distance that allows them to protect their psyche.

I am not trying to make the reader empathize with what the characters 'feels'... I'm trying to get the reader to empathize with what I feel.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[SeaCat]

When I write, the characters are me just as I am them. To me they are real while I am writing. Sometimes more real than I am. I am just putting their story, (not mine) down for other people to read. Most of my work is trying to convey their feelings, their drives and ambitions, their needs to the person who is going to be reading the story. Once in a while I am able to do this.

Cat

 

[Vampiric_Mirage]

I don't so much empathize/sympathize with my characters as become them; they absorb me more completely than any lover ever has (isn't that just a shame, as Mortality keeps telling me?) and I become so involved in them it's damn near an obsession.

I agree completely. There have been times when friends have told me I've been acting differently and I realise it's because I've been in the mindset of whatever character is my "favourite" at the time (both for better or worse). It's one of the reasons I never write erotica just before going out anymore...

Noooo...And they're not real people either. Nope, don't think like that. And shame be on the head that states I fall in love with a character and give them more development than I planned or that I have favorites or that I even sometimes love my villains. Shame. I'm not that kind of weird person at all, and I never spend most of the time writing hoping and worrying that I can do them justice. Nope, that would be silly.


You believe me, right?

Lol, this is so true. There have been times when a character I intended to kill off becomes the main character simply because they inspire me more than my original main character does. I've never finished some stories because I feel I can't write it well enough to do justice to the characters. In my opinion, when I'm lucky, some of the characters I write about become more real to me than the people I associate with in "reality" (scary, but true)...

To me writing is passion put to the paper (or the computer). I admit my overactive imagination has often been a problem for me, but there have been some characters that I almost forget don't exist. Also, sometimes I create and intentionally try to submerse myself in the character/persona from one of my stories because there is a trait in them that I wish I possessed more of (strength, courage, etc.).

 

[Boxlicker101]

For the most part, my characters are not developed enough for me to empathize with them. I tend to write mostly detailed descriptions of their sexual activity. Even then, I try to explain just what has led them to be in the specific place doing what they are doing. However, sometimes I try to develop the characters a little more and I do find myself getting inside their heads. I have certainly developed some affection for Melissa, a beautiful red-haired bi and for Jill, a lovely blonde TS.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a novella, "Karen's Birthday" for one of my readers. It was about a long weekend at a B&B on Karen's birthday, and I wrote it for the birthday of the real Karen. It was written in the first person and, as I wrote about the various sexual activities of Karen and George Boxlicker, I actually felt a bonding with her. It was just like the feeling I have always gotten with a real woman when I have sex with her, even though I have never met the real Karen. I actually felt guilty about being unfaithful to my wife, although I never got within 100 miles of my subject.

 

[Aurora Black]

All of my characters have originated from some part of me, therefore I am deeply connected to them. Without that essential feeling, my writing just doesn't cut it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Only with an unbeliveable an implausible map. Seems that map metaphor of mine mudded the water. And it seems we mean different things with the word empathy anyway.

All I'm saying here is that discovering unknown aspects to a character mid-writing, by perspective shift, doesn't work for me. If I don't know all I need to know about the character and it's place in the story before I start, I haven't made enough of an effort. But that's me, and might be one of the resons it takes me half way to forever to wite a story. But still, I do mean that closing your eyes and sharing it's feelings, isn't the only way to make a multifaceted, plausible and believable character come to life.

That's really interesting. I think we must write in totally different ways. It sounds like you start with the story and then develop your characters to meet the needs of the story. I do that somewhat, but mostly I start with characters and a situation and use my empathy and imagination to try and figure out how they'd act. The story develops as I write, and I'musually not sure of what's going to happen when I start. It's like I write from the inside out, and you write from the outside in.

I had a scene in a story where a woman's blackmailed into sex by a mysterious gentleman with some incriminating photographs. I spent a lot of time and effort putting myself into her head and trying to figure out what she'd feel.

I could have written it by character type, without paying too much attention to what she really might feel, just having her character do what I wanted her to to move the story. In that case she would have been "How dare you!" and then, when the sex began, totally won over, because that's what I wanted to have happen. But that just seemed way too contrived and implausible. People aren't that one-dimensional. So instead I put myself into her head to try and figure out what she might really think and feel.

First I had to know who she was--that she was a very ambitious and capable career woman and not used to being manipulated or ordered around, but at the same time she was bored with her life and, while not being crazy about blackmail, the adventure of the situation had some appeal. She was even a little bit flattered. I had to use these emotions to work out the sequence of events and feelings that would get her from point A to point B in a believable manner, and I used the conflicting emotions to build the erotic tension. I don't know how I would have done this if I hadn't been able to empathize with her.

Anyhow, that's how I work, and nothing turns me off a story faster than seeing a character act in some way that makes no empathetic sense to me. Even my villains have t pas thrugh the empathy filter--now just why is he doing this and what does he get out of it?

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

For me, it's partly a left brain-right brain conflict, I think. Part of me is viewing the characters with rational detachment, seeking to evaluate them clinically, without any mercy for their flaws. The other part of me, sometimes at least, tries to understand who they are and why they do what they do. Of course, how important a character is and how close their personality is to my own affects this.

To give some examples:

Guy Gilbertson, from my "Hank & The Neighbors" series. He is a minister who betrays his own religious beliefs, the expectations made of him by his parishioners, his own wedding vows (to another Karen, believe it or not), and his neighbor Hank (by sleeping with Hank's wife Penny and telling her NOT to sleep with her husband). Furthermore, he betrays the admiration that Penny has for him by using it to make her ruin her marriage. This pastor was hard to identify with, but he was a necessary (though not the main) character, and I had to briefly get inside his head. I didn't stay there for long, because I didn't care for the experience. He was a cowardly, treacherous, narrow-minded person, and I didn't like him myself. Even so, I returned to his head later, after he had received his just punishment. By this point, things had changed a little for the better, but the submissive nature that had been revealed was still hard to identify with there.

Another difficult character to identify was a sociopathic, abusive wife named Adrienne Navarocci. She constantly beat up her husband, only to find out that it was a trap, and she fell into it. I couldn't picture myself doing that kind of shit, but I had to visit her diseased mind a bit. It wasn't pretty.

A different case was Judge Brian Smith, in my non-erotic story "International Incident". Yes, he turned vigilante and betrayed the law by kidnapping the daughter of his late wife's rapist, but it was a clear case of an inexcusable, but totally understandable outrage on his part. Simply put, he briefly lost faith in his own profession of the law, due to the fact that his wife's rapist was protected by diplomatic immunity (he was Canadian Ambassador to the UN Geoffrey Maxwell). Maxwell himself was MUCH harder to understand, though I managed with the psychopathic asshole. His daughter, Jessica, was much easier to understand, due to the mixture of guilt, anger, and compassion that she felt when she found out the truth, not to mention her own desire for revenge on her cruel father (for his callous treatment of her in childhood, which didn't include rape for obvious reasons).

 

[Liar]

That's really interesting. I think we must write in totally different ways. It sounds like you start with the story and then develop your characters to meet the needs of the story. I do that somewhat, but mostly I start with characters and a situation and use my empathy and imagination to try and figure out how they'd act. The story develops as I write, and I'musually not sure of what's going to happen when I start. It's like I write from the inside out, and you write from the outside in.

Yeah, I have come to find out that I construct stories in a different way than most people. In a sense, I start with the plot, even if the plot is often centrered around character development, at least on some level. Having the plot as the base is not a cop-out for making crappy characters, though. Most of the time the characters and the story are so dependant of each other that if I don't have the right kind of character for the situation and the right kind of situation for the character, the actual story will simply not be interresting enough to tell. If the characters are two dimensional, their reactions (which is what drives the plot onwards) will be implausible and will ruin the plausibility of the plot.

I started a thread about writing strategies a while ago, where I realized that I subscribed to the one that was presumed to be the most rare.

Whenever I try to let the characters guide me and dictate the story without a clear goal, the story starts to meander and lose tempo. I just can't do it that way. And many times when I construct my complete stories - plot, characters, narration style and all - in my head, it ends in crap too, and I have to start from scratch.

But on the rare occations when I do manage to fit solid, believable characters with an interresting situation and plot development, I think the result is (modesty is for wimps) not too shabby.