“Creating Empathetic Characters”

In this post, I want to discuss some tricks of the trade regarding creating empathetic characters.  Empathy is defined as understanding, sympathy, compassion or identification with someone or something.  So an empathetic character is one you can relate to and one in whom you might see yourself doing or saying the same things.

Authors create empathy for their characters by building a connection between the reader and the character.  You can do that with conflict, personality and a dose of simple humanity.

In my novel The Farpool, I open with this:

Angie Gilliam squirmed a bit more but it was no use.  Something sharp was pinching her butt.  The weight of Chase Meyer on top of her made it hurt like crazy. 

“Ouch…that hurts like hell…what the hell are you doing?”

“Sorry…just trying to…it’s the Cove.  Water’s choppy today—“

Angie twisted and contorted herself to ease the pressure.  That was better.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, huh?”

They had packed a meal and grabbed a boat from Turtle Key Surf and Board—that was Mack Meyer’s shop, Chase’s Dad.  They had puttered along the coast off Shelley Beach until they came to Half Moon Cove—they always did it in Half Moon Cove—and found a secluded spot a few dozen meters off shore…right under some cypress trees.  Always smelled great there.

Then Chase and Angie wolfed down their sandwiches, dialed up the right music on Chase’s wristpad so they could slam some jam properly and settled down to business.

That’s when the wind fetched up and the Cove got way choppier than it usually did.  Most of the time, you could lay a place setting on top of the water and have dinner like home, it was so placid.  But not today.

“Ouch…look…let’s give it a rest, okay…something’s not quite right…”

Chase groaned and pulled out of her, cinching up his shorts as he did so.  He lay back against the side of the boat, and turned the volume down on his pad…whoever it was screeching on that go-tone needed a few more lessons.  He checked the growing waves beyond the Cove and that’s when he spied the waterspout.

“Jeez…look at that!” 

Angie pulled up her own shorts, ran fingers through her dark brown page-boy hair and sucked in a breath.

“Wow---that’s so wicked--“

In this opening scene, we have two people, Chase and Angie, making love in a boat.  It’s not working out too well physically, due to conditions, and they stop and then they see a waterspout.  There’s conflict, in that Chase is experiencing the lovemaking differently from Angie.  We have a glimpse into their personalities: Chase wants to do the act, but Angie’s not happy with the performance and, at the end, Chase is somewhat disappointed by what has happened, and even with a song on the radio that he figures he could do  better (he’s an amateur musician).  And certainly we see their humanity, if only in the very basic act of having sex.  Then there’s the mystery of a waterspout, interrupting their coitus.  A lot going on in the first few paragraphs.

By the way, as of today, there have been nearly 600 downloads of The Farpool. 

Readers like to read about characters (I like to call them ‘people’) they care about.  People they can identify with…as in, “Yeah, I’d like to be there and do that.” 

Sometimes, a little background is in order.  That’s why I did an extensive chronological history of Chase and Angie and even a little psych evaluation on motivations, etc.  In my Notes about Chase, I said this:

Chase Meyer gives one the impression of a happy-go-lucky fellow.  He seems to be unconcerned about anything and to live in the moment.  He seems to many people, even those who know him, to be almost like a child. This isn’t true but his outward demeanor is often mistaken for childlike innocence and wide-eyed wonder at the world.

Chase is motivated by curiosity, by learning and especially experiencing new things.  Some might call him an adrenaline junkie…he likes to experience things himself.  He does get a rush out of new experiences.  He is not one to spend a lot of time studying things.  Detailed learning is not something he does well.  He prefers to do things.  He learns by doing.

There are exceptions to this.  Chase likes sea sports and he likes music, especially a genre popular in the early 22^nd century called techjam.  He’s always been intrigued by being able to make sounds and make songs.  He likes to sing.  He can find within himself the discipline to do something he wants to do, like learn to play the go-tone, jam with the Croc-Boys, and learn how to scuba dive safely.  His Dad Mack sometimes has to restrain his impulsive, somewhat head strong son.  Scuba diving does require attention to detail and following safe practices.  Mack has hammered that into his son’s head for years.  But his nature is impulsive.

Once I had clearly in mind what kind of person Chase was, and Angie too, and a little of their history, I found it easier to write to that and include snippets of background at key places in the story. 

Building a bond between your characters and the reader is a process.  Know your characters well (especially the main ones).  Put them in situations where they have to react to unusual, memorable or interesting, even life-threatening conditions.

Ask yourself what you would do?  Ask yourself, with what you know about the character, what would he or she do?

Creating empathetic characters is all about hooking the reader early on, with a person who intrigues the reader in some way, caught up in a situation that tests the character and to which they have to respond or dire consequences will ensue.

Do that and you’re well on your way to success as a story-teller.

The next post to The Word Shed will come on January 30, 2017.  This will be an update on my final story in the Tales of the Quantum Corps and what it takes to edit your own work successfully…can that even be done?

See you January 30.

Phil B.