How Much Do You Empathize With Your Characters?

[EmilyMiller]

When you're writing, how close do you feel to your characters? Do you feel what they feel, experience their joys and heartbreaks? Or are you more of a neutral observer?

Some of my characters are directly inspired by friends. But all of them inherit attributes from both me and people I know. As such, the empathy is kinda built in.

 

[AchtungNight]

Depends on the character and the story. I try to get into protagonists’ minds by necessity but can’t say I’ve ever brought myself to empathize with a villain.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Depends on the character and the story. I try to get into protagonists’ minds by necessity but can’t say I’ve ever brought myself to empathize with a villain.

I find villains to be as interesting, if not more so than the "good guys." The motivations and belief systems tend to be much more complex (unless it's a "me bad guy, me like kill"). Very few people truly think of themselves as villains in the real world, it's always "those people are evil" because people assume their morality is the only valid one, instead of the wacky and fluid target that it actually is.

But in fiction there tends to be a higher level of self-awareness that one's actions are "bad" due to the author's moral compass used as an "objective" set of moralities, but the villain tends to not care about doing something that's bad for X, Y, Z reasons. Crafting stories around the "bad guy" who believes they're doing the right thing has been a fascinating exercise into getting into the thought patterns of people whose beliefs are wildly different than mine. But I also enjoy dissecting that sort of thing.

I find myself thinking a lot more about villain motivations than protagonist motivations (unless it's an anti-hero). Theirs tend to have a higher level of complexity because their actions tend to be something that might be considered abhorant (hence why they're considered the story's villains), but the reasoning behind it might be noble/self-justified. "I'm killing these people because if their mission succeeds it will undo my world and destroy those I love most." Pit one tribe, protags, vs. the other tribe, the ones they consider villains, and what you really have is a story about tribalism: I care more about my people than yours, and I'm willing to do the hard thing in order to keep them safe. Us vs. them. It's one of the more common reasonings behind villains, but for good reason, because it drives a lot of how people think and operate in the real world. Life's messy, villains ought to be, too.

Unless you just want big scary monster kill people. That's also fun.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Unless you just want big scary monster kill people. That's also fun.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I'm way too boring to write about, so for me a big part of the fun is trying to imagine how interesting people's minds work.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I'm way too boring to write about, so for me a big part of the fun is trying to imagine how interesting people's minds work.

Yeah, that's how I feel about myself too. And yet, a little bit of me keeps creeping into my characters.

 

[SkyBubble]

I write better when I feel what they're feeling.

 

[SmilingLez]

I 100% empathize with all of the characters and content in my work. My non erotic free verses Seventeen and Click affect me every time I read them. I think that is important, art should always strike an emotional cord

 

[RetroFan]

My lesbian story 'April Leads Julie Astray' is about two 18-year-old girls who had traumatic childhoods who fall in love with each other. Julie was crippled by polio she contracted at summer camp in the early 1950s and struggles to walk, while April in her early years along with her twin brother Brad was the victim of extremely serious physical, verbal and psychological child abuse at the hands of her estranged, war-affected mother, such as being locked in dark cupboards for many hours. And even though the two girls acknowledge the way they feel about each other and are secretly intimate, their relationship can never be given the story takes place in North Carolina in 1963 and Julie's father is the Reverend of a local church, with April from a Catholic family (albeit not very religious).

Whenever I look at the story I feel so sad for the two girls because of their bad childhood experiences and that they can never truly be together, and have to remind myself that they never existed, and are fictional characters I created and brought to life.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

I'm certainly capable of empathy, but I can't say I've written any characters one could empathize with? Most of my writings are just explorations of different fantasies, where one is more likely to delight in the difficult situations the characters are in rather than empathize in any way.

But now I'm having to think about what writing something more emotional would look like.

 

[AG31]

I hadn't thought about my writing in this regard, but, on reflection, I'm totally dependent on empathy. I literally need to feel a substratum of arousal when my characters are aroused, or anticipating, or exhausted. I can't rest in the wording until that happens.

 

[ChuckWolf]

Very little.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Loads, possibly too much. I've always found it very hard to write bad stuff happening to them, but managed by keeping such scenes minimalistic. It took me years to manage to write Last Christmas, until I'd done a first draft and then I could edit it fine.

 

[stickygirl]

I think it's difficult for (some) people to be objective about their level of empathy - it's for others to judge.

However, I had to write a scene recently where one character was being a total shit to my MC and I hated writing it! I was almost shouting obscenities at the monitor as I typed the words!! Then I had to go back and make him even more of a bastard.
What a shit!
Good fun though but only because she won out ( of course! )

 

[RetroFan]

Another character from my stories who I also felt sorry for was poor little Charlotte from my Titanic story 'Bad Things Happen on April 15'.

Charlotte at age 18 is the middle daughter from a very wealthy, blue-blood New York family. Her older sister Emma is the favourite of the father and the parents evidently hoped for a boy when Charlotte was born, this happening when son William Junior (who does not appear in the story) was born a few years after and rendering her largely superfluous. Shy, sheltered and insecure and completely under the command of her mother and father (as per the times), pretty little redhead Charlotte becomes the unwitting instigator of doom when the main reason for the family visiting England in April of 1912 is to to collect her from the British finishing school she has been attending and return her to America - on the Titanic.

Fortunately Charlotte never does know that Emma's husband John - the narrator of the story - saw her undressing when he is hiding in a wardrobe hoping to find proof of his wife's infidelity, with the Titanic sinking later that night. Charlotte survives the sinking in a lifeboat with her mother, sister and the family maid but is left traumatized by the event. Then 42 years after the Titanic sank, Charlotte now at age 60 travels with her recently retired husband to England where they board a Comet airliner for Europe - which crashes into the sea off Elba with no survivors - a real-life aviation incident that took place in April 1954.

 

[Zootonius]

I empathize with most of my characters; their desires, their lusts, their doubts. The only one don't empathize with is my favorite, a Roman mistress and her literal slaves and lesbian lovers. And she keeps them attached not by force, but by manipulation, she wants to be loved by them, not feared. She stands out from all my other characters, and I view her as rather ambiguous.