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.