I sat on the tarmac on my way to Florida for five hours last week (#IloveMinnesotaweather), and while we were waiting, I stirred up a conversation with my seatmate.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
“I break into building to check their security.”
#Cool!
Poor guy suddenly discovered the dangers of sitting next to a novelist. By the time the plane took off, we’d plotted a story about a man living two different lives – a spy living in suburbia, posing as a regular guy.
Then came the moment when we had to figure out the first scene. “We need to make him relatable,” I said to 24B. “Someone who the reader can relate to.”
“Why?” 24B asked. “He’s not a regular guy.”
“But the point of a great story is for the reader to feel as if they are on the journey with the character. Even a superhero has to be human enough for them to relate to them.”
In order to create a powerful story – and in order to hook our readers, we have to do more than understand the motivations of a character. A great story allows us to experience the journey of the character as if we were in the character’s body. It’s more than the cerebral, intellectual connection – it’s a physical empathy that causes us to cry when they cry, fall in love and experience the happily ever after.
At MBT we call this the CHARACTER ID – or creating Sympathy for your Characters.
But, how do you draw a reader into the skin of a Crusader, in 15th Century Europe? Or a Navy Seal? Or a pioneer woman on the Oregon trail? Or a Japanese Geisha? Or even a time traveling space alien?
More to the point, how do you draw your reader into the skin of your character to create a physical, as well as psychological empathy?
Step 1: Interview your character to pinpoint how they feel about the situation you are about to write about. Often, when I work with authors, they guess at how the character might feel, and thus how they might behave, from past prototypes, from other books, or even stereotypical behavior. But often that doesn’t resonant as real on the page.
In order to create an authentic character, start building your character by asking the following questions:
Ask the following questions:
- Who are you and what do you want?
- What do you fear, right now?
- What are you going to do? Why?
- How do you feel about this?
- What is the worst thing that could happen right now?
Understanding where your character is starting the story will help you understand him on a human level – beyond his amazing identity. It also helps you understand their motivations and intentions as you build their emotions.
Step 2: After pinpointing the emotions and motivations of your character it’s time to help your reader into their skin by putting them in a relatable, universal situation.
The first step is to create a relatable situation for your reader. What, about your character’s situation is universal in a way the reader might understand? For example, in my book Flee The Night, my heroine is a spy on the run who, in the first scene, is on a train when she sees an assassin hunting her. Because most of my readers haven’t been spies, with their life in danger, I needed to make my character’s situation relatable – so I put my character on a train, with her five year old daughter sitting next to her. Suddenly, she wasn’t just a spy, but a mother, needing to protect her child – a universal situation.
In my book, It Had to Be You, my hero is a NHL hockey player – an enforcer, famous and good-looking. To make him relatable, I gave him a terrible migraine in the first scene, something universal every reader could understand.
By creating a relatable situation, you take your reader one step closer to helping them understand – and empathize – with your character.
Step 3: Determine the right emotional response. In order to create characters who are not cardboard, your character must have realistic emotional responses.
The best way to determine a realistic response is to look at your own – or others – real responses. Mine your own experiences (or ask someone who has had a similar experience), by asking the following questions:
- When have I felt like my character feels?
Note: It doesn’t have to be the same situation – e.g., I’ve never been on a train, fearing for the life of my daughter, but I have been in situations when I feared for my children, and felt helpless.
- Describe the feeling – physically.
- What were you thinking?
- What did you do? Anything interesting or different?
- What do you wish you said, or did that you didn’t do?
Now, armed with these questions, take a look at the emotional response and put them through the grid of your characters motivations and intentions.
- What elements are true to your character?
- If you were this character, how would you have reacted?
Now you’re ready to start writing the scene, armed with the right POV motivations, a sympathetic situation and the right emotional responses.
Creating sympathy by helping your reader identify with the character is one more component to hooking your reader into the story.
Go, write something brilliant!
From Sunny Florida –
Susie May