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Paula thinks about how
readers empathise with characters.
Empathy is defined as ‘the ability to understand and share
the feelings of another’, and this is exactly how we want our readers to react
to the characters in our stories. We want them to engage with the characters,
experience their emotions, and as a result, care about what happens to them.
How do we achieve this? Unless we empathise with our characters, we can’t expect the reader to do
so. We need to know them, put ourselves in their shoes, and live the story with
them. If we let ourselves feel everything that a character feels, then our
readers will feel it too. It goes without saying that those feelings must be
shown, and not simply ‘told’ to the reader. If a character is angry, don’t
simply say ‘she was furious’. Think about a time when you were angry. How did
you feel? What did you do? Now show what your character does and feels, while
keeping them ‘in character’, of course.
What about the times your character is experiencing
something you’ve never encountered? Imagination is always good. In Irish Inheritance, my hero and heroine are
in a large Victorian house at night during a power cut. They hear a loud crash
from downstairs and make their way down the stairs with only a small
flashlight. Now that’s never happened to me, but in my imagination I lived the
whole scene with them. It was late at night when I was writing it, and my heart
was thumping like mad. I even found myself glancing nervously over my shoulder
a couple of times.
There are, of course, many ‘universal emotions’ which we’ve
all felt at some time in our lives – fear, sadness, anger, even jealousy or
loneliness, and hopefully happiness, excitement, anticipation etc. Therefore,
even if you have never experienced a specific event, you probably have another
experience you can relate it to. If, for example, the heroine is nervously
waiting to audition for a TV drama, think about a time when you were nervously
waiting for something e.g. an interview for a job. Harness the memory of your
own emotions, and project them to your character and their situation.
Showing the characters’ reactions in a realistic way helps
readers to empathise with them and relate the emotions to their own
experiences.
