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Empathy and reader Connection...

I've always pictured myself as someone who's into fantasy and who really enjoys it.
Today, I realised that of the books I've enjoyed the most this year, only one is actually fantasy - the rest are all sci-fi.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying sci-fi. It just struck me as interesting that I didn't picture myself as a sci-fi fan, when I'm quite clearly am.

It's been the same with computer games. I still identify as a gamer, but I don't really play that much games anymore. The writing takes too much time, and it's more fun. Similarly, even after nine published books, I don't really think of myself as an author.

I've been having a similar conversation recently. Most of the fantasy I've ever read, and all fantasy novels I've read in the last few years, have had medievalish worlds. So when I start conceiving a fantasy setting for my own stories, I default to that. I love reading that! But I'm beginning to realize I don't love trying to write that. This is a weird realization. The audience member inside me loves being taken away to medieval worlds, but the writer in me desires something else for my own stories.

The concept of Save the Cat is relevant here. When we first introduce a character, we can make them likeable and relatable, and the reader will assume they're a good guy. We can also show the situation from their perspective, so that the reader gets to know them better. Then, when the character starts behaving badly, the reader will accept it because they still believe the character is essentially a good guy, and because they know their background - just like they do with themselves.

A potentially related issue has occurred to me since the beginning of this discussion.

Let's take knitting. I was thinking about how bored I'd be if a deep POV character constantly used knitting metaphors, spent lots of her or his time knitting on down time, spoke of knitting constantly when having conversations. I've known knitters, and as a child I was mildly fascinated by knitting. I still am. But that doesn't mean I'd want a deep dive through that lens for a whole book. Then I started wondering about ways to make knitting interesting. A magic system? Yes, maybe. Or maybe some deep philosophical train of thought tied to all the complicated, complex knitting processes. Maybe something else.

This train of thought led me to the realization—which I've had before, but had forgotten—that sometimes I'm not the same person after I've read a book as I was when I began reading it. Identification with a character isn't always and only about encountering a character who is like us. Sometimes, we grow to become more like them as we progress through the story. We gain a new way of seeing and thinking.
 
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Futhark

Inkling
Unlike Helio, I think it might be possible, depending upon the level of anthropomorphization. (My spell check hates that form of the word, heh.) If the world is given any sort of sentience, or even if sentience of some sort — however alien-seeming — is hinted, perhaps empathy can be created.
I did think of that after posting, but I no ideas as to how I would go about it.

There is something else that might be done. I have experienced the effect of being horrified, or sad, by changes to, or threats of changes to an imaginary world that I loved. I'm not sure this can be called empathy with the world. Then again, I'm not sure what level of identification with that world, or that setting, might be occurring in this circumstance.
This is more along the lines of what I was pondering. I also remember being moved by the imminent, irrevocable changes that were about to occur to an imaginary world. However, the world was already well established, thanks to the characters. Did I feel empathy for the world, or the characters that were about to lose it? In any event, I’m sure the novel didn’t open with ‘hey, here is this wonderful world you should all love; something evil is going to wreck it’. I think that would have fallen flat.
 
In any event, I’m sure the novel didn’t open with ‘hey, here is this wonderful world you should all love; something evil is going to wreck it’. I think that would have fallen flat.

To be fair, most novels also don't start out with "Hey, here is this wonderful character you should all love; something evil is going to wreck him."

At least, not in such a telling way. Even if that sentence were the opening line, we'd still need to be shown why we should love him, heh.

An awful lot of novels, chapters, what-not do have opening paragraphs showing the world.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. [1984]

I think an interesting question can be posed about this opening. Are those environmental factors ("the World") being used merely as a prop to get us to love or be interested in Winston, or is Winston present as a prop* to introduce these factors about the world we'll love or find interesting?

Is there anything in these two paragraphs that shouts, "Hey, you should love this character!"

I do think there's some empathy possible for the character. I mean, we've all had to escape vile winds, and have slipped inside a building as if to escape the winds. We can also be troubled by the idea of being watched at every turn. But not by prose if we aren't given that environment in combination with such a character.

*Edit: or, as a lens. For viewing the world. Does empathy with a character help readers to trust the lens? And is this a clever method for putting the world front-and-center? Is the character, is the lens, more important than what is viewed through that lens? I think sometimes, the POV approach, when it is deep, leads to the answer "Yes"—but for me personally as a reader, the overall effect is a horribly written story when the character + lensing is obviously the only thing the writer cares about. I'm talking about the bad results, when the world beyond the lens becomes almost incidental, a mere prop; this doesn't mean I think every story is worsened by such a motive.
 
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Addendum:

Harry Potter is a very likeable guy. Do I love him? I don't know. Probably yes, because good, decent, likeable people are easily lovable. But he's one of a million who are good, decent, likeable people.

But if I were given the two choices, and could only make one, would I wish for him to be transported to my world so we could be friends, or would I wish I could be transported to that wizarding world and live there....:sneaky: I think I'd choose going there and living there.

Did I care more about Harry, or more about the preservation of his world (i.e., Voldemort's defeat)?

Of course, preserving that world would preserve Harry; an absence of Harry, if he died, would not be the same world, not really. From my perspective as a reader, I have Harry to thank for that world. I got to see it through his eyes. He felt wonder when he first left his aunt and uncle's world, and so I knew that world was something wondrous. (Could have easily been a horror story, eh? Well, it almost was.)

Besides, if Harry's there he could still be my friend if I went there too....I suspect I'd probably have other friends however. Too hard to know in this hypothetical. There are many interesting people in that world.
 
Is it really schadenfreude to see a truly evil person defeated?

Nothing shameful about that joy. The shame is in being joyous at the downfall of someone who doesn't really deserve it.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
The Germans invented a wonderful word for that effect: Schadenfreude.

This is why I had to come back here. You teach me so much stuff. I was missing out. I had forgotten about this. I love schadenfreude characters.

I do wonder whether something in the subconscious is also at work. Consciously, we relish the notion that we are superior and would never do what William did; but inside, we worry that we might.

True, good point. Which is maybe why my husband (who is in management) can't watch The Office. It is too much for him. I think it hits a nerve that is too vulnerable for him... the idea that he "could" be a Micheal Scott...
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I've been having a similar conversation recently. Most of the fantasy I've ever read, and all fantasy novels I've read in the last few years, have had medievalish worlds. So when I start conceiving a fantasy setting for my own stories, I default to that. I love reading that! But I'm beginning to realize I don't love trying to write that. This is a weird realization. The audience member inside me loves being taken away to medieval worlds, but the writer in me desires something else for my own stories.

Me too.
*Edit: or, as a lens. For viewing the world. Does empathy with a character help readers to trust the lens? And is this a clever method for putting the world front-and-center? Is the character, is the lens, more important than what is viewed through that lens? I think sometimes, the POV approach, when it is deep, leads to the answer "Yes"—but for me personally as a reader, the overall effect is a horribly written story when the character + lensing is obviously the only thing the writer cares about. I'm talking about the bad results, when the world beyond the lens becomes almost incidental, a mere prop; this doesn't mean I think every story is worsened by such a motive.

Ha!!! You know my obsession with deep POV, so my answer was an unequivocal "YES!" lol.

I am interested to know what a story would be without the lens? Without the POV? It would be a blank page. Even the author has a certain take on what is in the scene. A certain opinion on whether the filthy carpets means the inhabitants are poor, or just slobs. It is impossibly, IMO, to remove the lens completely. And some of the greatest writers of all time wrote purely with a focus on character + lensing... with no attention paid to tight plotting... Virginia Wolfe, Earnest Hemingway, Dickens (who always used the world as a prop to push his opinions on rich vs. poor).

In 1984 the world IS a prop. That is the point. Orwell is using the world as a prop to push his political views. The lens of the narrator is all that matters in this book. What if it was written from the POV of O'Brian? It would be a much different book, with a much different political agenda.

Ursula K. Le Guin in Steering the Craft speaks of crowding and leaping.

Crowding
means to load every sentence up with stuff that actually matters to the story you are trying to tell. Don't fluff it up with fluff. Crowd it all together, avoiding flabby language and cliches, never use ten vague words when two exact words will do, always seek the vivid phrase. The exact word. Always keep the story full, always full of what is happening in it; keeping it moving not slacking and wandering into irrelevancies, keeping it interconnected with itself, rich with echoes forward and backward. Vivid, exact, concrete, accurate, dense, rich.

Leaping means leaving out more than you leave in. Only the relevant belongs. God/Devil is in the details. Remove the padding, repetition, anything that slows or impedes your story. Decide what counts and cut the rest. Leap boldly. Focus.

Crowding and leaping have to do with the FOCUS and the trajectory of the story. Everything that is crowded in to enrich the story sensually, intellectually, emotionally, should be in FOCUS (this is where POV comes in). And every leap should be along the trajectory, following the shape and movement of the story as a whole.

I'd argue what is worse than a story which only focuses on POV and lensing is a story that waffles around with no specific focus at all. One that wanders aimlessly around the room, telling me about every minute detail and action... with none of them contributing to the story.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Heliotrope, I would never presume to disagree with the redoubtable Le Guin. I do, however, hold that the writer who knows how to take this advice--who can recognize fluff, knows the two exact words, what to leave out, and how to leap boldly rather than foolishly--is the very writer who doesn't need the advice.

The trick is how we mere mortals can climb that mountain, learning to ascend more often than we slip. Heck, how even to recognize we're on the right mountain!
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Heliotrope, I would never presume to disagree with the redoubtable Le Guin. I do, however, hold that the writer who knows how to take this advice--who can recognize fluff, knows the two exact words, what to leave out, and how to leap boldly rather than foolishly--is the very writer who doesn't need the advice.

The trick is how we mere mortals can climb that mountain, learning to ascend more often than we slip. Heck, how even to recognize we're on the right mountain!

Gah. I know. It's ridiculously hard.
 
I am interested to know what a story would be without the lens? Without the POV? It would be a blank page. Even the author has a certain take on what is in the scene. A certain opinion on whether the filthy carpets means the inhabitants are poor, or just slobs. It is impossibly, IMO, to remove the lens completely.

I agree, every story will have a lens. Or more than one. But here you have minimized the author's role, heh.

I began a previous reply that meandered long and meta, but I was tired and the meander grew to be too much, so I erased it.

All hinges on lens. In some respect, POV itself may be different from lens, in the way a square is a rectangle but a rectangle might not be a square.

In my previous comment, I suggested that the deep POV character might be a lens the writer creates for readers. The POV character interacts with the world in that story; she reacts to that world and may be evaluating and judging the world. The reader sees that world through the eyes and mind of the POV character. If the reader grows to identify with that character, finds himself mostly in agreement most of the time, then the reader may be tempted to trust that character's impressions and thoughts about the world.

If the character is suddenly frightened when a huge, mysterious shadow flies across the ground, over her and beyond, then maybe the reader knows it's really something to fear. If the character mistrusts another character, the reader might begin to mistrust that character. At the very least, that shadow or that other character are potentially bad. Much will depend on how trustworthy the POV character is—is she often wrong, naive, paranoid, simply lacking information—and on whether that world in the story is usually straightforward or more complex, nuanced, and even surprising.

Let's consider something of the latter is true. The character isn't omniscient, may have faults or handicaps involving her ability to know what's happening, and the world in the story is complex and often surprising. As a reader, I wonder whether that great thing flying above her might be something good after all. That other character might not be so bad, might even be someone who turns into an ally. I don't know either of these until the shadow and the other character are revealed in full; but, identifying with the POV character, I know they are only potentially bad. How am I, the reader, seeing this? What lens is the author using in this case?

I would say that the world building aspects, which include other characters beyond the POV character—i.e., all things outside the POV character, are another type of lens. We may be seeing the world of the story through the POV character's eyes and mind; but we are also seeing that world separate from the character's eyes and mind. I say this, because we can evaluate what is happening, and react to it, without having to be led entirely by the POV character. It's true that we bring our own eyes and mind, our own personal experiences to the story, and I'm tempted to say we bring our own lens, a reader's lens. But I think a more useful ... er, characterization of this, heh, is that the author's choice of words, inclusion of elements of world building, structuring of all and sunder, and focus — Le Guin's crowding and leaping — taken together is the lens. And, it's an essential lens if you want a good story.

This is why I disagree with this, re 1984:

The lens of the narrator is all that matters in this book.

How can a reader identify with and like a character? What if the character saves a cat? Well, there must first be a cat.

The power of "save the cat" or "kill the dog" is not that some character in a story feels something and reacts to a cat-saving or a dog-killing. No, it's in the fact that we react to those things. Just look at various cat videos on YouTube or Twitter, heh, involving no humans. We don't need another human telling us how cute they are. The same goes for prose.

I don't want to minimize the power of having a great POV. I am interested in exploring why great POV's work.

for me personally as a reader, the overall effect is a horribly written story when the character + lensing is obviously the only thing the writer cares about.

By this I meant that I need more. My mind must be engaged by more than that, or it won't be very engaged—most of the time. There are other things at play in the story, elements of world building, ideas, dynamics, that are missing in these worst-case scenarios—missing, or simply very poor, poorly considered, anemic.

This long digression leads back to the original question, and why some things may fall flat. What I'm about to say may seem heretical to you Helio, heh, but since I'm always also viewing the elements of a story separate from the POV character, this means I'm also evaluating that character from a distance (distance between me and her) no matter how close and intimate the POV may be. For me, sometimes the character becomes the cat.
 
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pmmg

Myth Weaver
Personally, I found I wanted to challenge more than a few aspects of the article. But I do think it is true that an empathic being (such as a reader) will connect better to an individual character than to an affected group. So, I think it is a strong hook to show tragedy towards an individual in a group, than to the group as a whole. I do not know that it is true that empathy for group cannot be achieved. I know I feel empathy for some groups around the world even though I don't know any of the individuals. I recall feeling for the sneeches that 'had no stars upon thars' even though I did not know any of the individuals in the sneech community when I last reading it to my kids.

But I do think it is just human nature to feel empathy, when it is towards an individual, it feels more concentrated, and with a group if feels more spread out, but I am not sure the degree to which one feels empathy is really more or less depending, I think we tend to feel empathy to similar degrees. Which is to say, if you can get my empathy sliding scale to max out for a group, it wont feel any different to me, than if it were for an individual. My ability to do something about it, and to do something that actually is helpful and makes sense would be another measure, not a measure of my empathy. This would be more along the lines of cost/benefit.

But for a story, bringing me into the plight of an individual works better for immersion, and making me care. I think it is a stronger way to approach it.

As a psychology mechanism, I once read, and believe it is true, that one way to help with memory, is to attach a human face to it. A calendar appointment, for example, will be easier to remember if you simply draw a smiley face in the box, rather than just write the event. As human's we are wired to read faces, and connect with them. A single sad face, is more powerful than 1000 words about it. (Seems like something someone should coin a phrase to...).
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I think that is key, and I am not sure if I read that earlier in this thread or not. But yeah, show me the characters and their goals. Characters are not really good ones and bad one, they are people who believe they are doing something that matters, something that needs to be done and compels them to act on it. If my goal is to save the innocents of the Kobold camp and your goal is to destroy all the kobolds cause they cannot be redeemed, then seems like there is going to be a conflict, even if we don't know each other. If you have conflicts that set characters on an unalterable course, and put it in a context where it must be resolved, then you got the makings of something compelling.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
This is an important topic, and I've been scouring this thread looking for a place to contribute something. My apologies in advance if this post is a bit reactionary and all over the place.

I do think this distinction between fiction and real life is very, very interesting. Do I identify with the hero, or do I merely wish I could identify with the hero? I.e., is he not so much something I can identify with, except to the degree that I wish to be him and not be quite myself? Have those good qualities, that certainty, that faith, that success that ... (shudder) I don't really see in myself, or that I doubt in myself?

Reading this made me think of characters in the same way we think of horoscopes or those "which comic book hero are you" personality tests. We can see ourselves in characters and personality descriptions that could be totally random and have nothing to do with us. Some things are just vague and universal. As a real hero once said, we're all heroes in our own special not-that-heroic way. So of course we can relate to a heroic character. The same is true for a variety of character types.

But this kind of begs the question... a bit of empathy really isn't that hard to get. And as others have said, asking for too much of it, "whining," is a huge turn off. People are empathetic, but we don't like to be empathetic unless we know it's going to help. Empathy that ends with more of the same behaviors and problems quickly dies out. I think that's much more true, and more relevant, than the "mass problems" theory presented in the OP. Sometimes there are people for whom empathy - a feeling - just isn't enough to accomplish anything, and so we flip it off.

There's a reason we usually refer to whether characters are "likable" rather than empathetic. I empathize with a lot of people that I really, really don't like. And there are people I like, and I still think, "You did this to yourself dude." Empathy is only part of the bundle.

I was thinking about how bored I'd be if a deep POV character constantly used knitting metaphors, spent lots of her or his time knitting on down time, spoke of knitting constantly when having conversations.

Have you read Moby Dick? The story does this, but with whaling. All the details on ships, and harpoons, and barrels, and sperm whale oil, and the ins and outs of the rigging, and on, and on, and on, about every third chapter. And honestly, it made the book both more difficult and more rewarding to read.

It's friggin' weird sometimes what makes a story work.

Harry Potter is a very likeable guy. Do I love him? I don't know. Probably yes, because good, decent, likeable people are easily lovable. But he's one of a million who are good, decent, likeable people.

But if I were given the two choices, and could only make one, would I wish for him to be transported to my world so we could be friends, or would I wish I could be transported to that wizarding world and live there....:sneaky: I think I'd choose going there and living there.

Did I care more about Harry, or more about the preservation of his world (i.e., Voldemort's defeat)?

Starting to conflate things here. There's different parts of a story. It's not all about character. I love the Harry Potter world, but I wouldn't call it empathy. The question is, how much could you tolerate reading it for the sake of Hogwarts if you didn't like Harry? People tolerate crap worlds for a good character all the time (see: any story set in New Jersey). The reverse just isn't as true.

As a psychology mechanism, I once read, and believe it is true, that one way to help with memory, is to attach a human face to it. A calendar appointment, for example, will be easier to remember if you simply draw a smiley face in the box, rather than just write the event. As human's we are wired to read faces, and connect with them. A single sad face, is more powerful than 1000 words about it. (Seems like something someone should coin a phrase to...).

This is one of the innate ways in which people differ from each other: How much do you react to a basic emotion? They've done studies on this. Complete a task, but the doll figure is going to make a happy face or a sad face, the whole time or based on your results, and with a slew of different varieties to it. Some people are more influenced by the face, doing well when the doll smiles and poorly when it frowns, and some people are more resistant to it, ignoring it completely. And the results correlate to some degree or another with just about everything: gender, religion, political party, and so on.

Some people are highly responsive to emotion and others less so. And to some extent that's normal, even desirable. Somebody needs to yell "Nobody gets left behind!" and someone else has to yell, "Going back will get all of us killed!" That's what makes a good conversation, a better decision, a more interesting story, a good character with a weakness we can relate to (you went back... you got more people killed).

It's also why that kind of memory trick won't work for everyone. (And anyways, who wants to picture emojis all that often.)
 
But this kind of begs the question... a bit of empathy really isn't that hard to get.

I agree. I wonder what degree or sort of empathy we are considering.

At its most basic level, living in a physical environment means having a physical reaction to it—the first cool breeze of autumn, the struggle to hike to the top of a tall hill, being engulfed in a cloud of mosquitoes or unable to sleep because of the solitary housefly buzzing in the bedroom—and we as humans who may have experienced much the same thing can empathize with a character similarly affected by the environment. In this case, a close third person POV may help us to re-experience those things, remember those things, and feel ourselves to be in that story world. This sort of empathy seems easiest to achieve and probably occurs throughout the paragraphs of a story—assuming the author isn't using a white room for the settings.

Then there are the psychic reactions to present situations. No, not killing that housefly with telekinesis. It's been a long day, the character wasn't going to get much sleep already, there's a child custody hearing early in the morning and the character fears losing custody, and the damned housefly grates on his mind. Well, we've all probably had similar fears, to the degree that we've also been exhausted, had a big day ahead, felt we needed to operate at 100% in the morning, and some extra, new nuisance not only arrives unexpectedly to further tip the scales against us but almost seems to represent the hand of fate. But I think this sort of attempt to build empathy for the character is less sure than the first. For instance, if we've just spent a whole chapter following that character as he's getting drunk, doing cocaine, having a one-night stand, and then stumbling home to his bed...well, I'd have a problem feeling empathy for him when he hears the housefly. He deserves the housefly. Maybe there would be some Schadenfreude. This would be true even if, during the narration of his wild night, many things happen in that environment which build the sort of empathy I described in the previous paragraph.

Finally, there are what I'd call chronic emotional and/or mental states. These aren't reactions to present situations so much as a reaction to some sort of generalized state probably existing even before the story began. For instance, a character might have the desire of finding her long-lost father throughout the story even if the plot is about something else. Or maybe she just desires to have known her father. Do I have empathy for the character based on this desire? Maybe tendrils. I have parents, after all; and, family. I haven't had a family member missing from my life in the way she has. So maybe this character has also always felt alone. Well, heh, I've felt alone enough times in my life to have some general empathy for her—maybe. There are people all about her, other characters, strangers, acquaintances, friends. Does she drive them away when they get too close? Fail to see the possible boyfriend right beside her? If this character continuously longs to have never been fatherless, does there come a point when I want her to just stop filtering everything through that absence? Quite possibly. Especially if I've come to read a story about stopping the Dark Lord, heh. Building strong empathy via some chronic emotional or mental state seems to me to be much less sure a thing than the other two varieties.

Of course, a story could employ all of these, but also have other things to further engage me.

There's a reason we usually refer to whether characters are "likable" rather than empathetic. I empathize with a lot of people that I really, really don't like. And there are people I like, and I still think, "You did this to yourself dude." Empathy is only part of the bundle.

Yes. Also, I can feel sympathy for a character even if I don't empathize. I can feel neither strongly and still find a character to be interesting, engaging.

Have you read Moby Dick?

My example of knitting came about from a mental experiment. A lot of the characters who have fallen flat for me had a focus that simply bored me to tears. But because they bored me, I've not kept much of them in my mind, heh. So I started thinking of a habitual focus that might bore me, came up with knitting, and ran with it. I also think, as I mentioned, that knitting as a focus could be made interesting for me if it served another, interesting function in the story.

I suppose that example might fall under the "chronic...mental state" category for me. There might be readers who absolutely love knitting, and it would work for them.

Starting to conflate things here. There's different parts of a story. It's not all about character. I love the Harry Potter world, but I wouldn't call it empathy. The question is, how much could you tolerate reading it for the sake of Hogwarts if you didn't like Harry? People tolerate crap worlds for a good character all the time (see: any story set in New Jersey). The reverse just isn't as true.

Do people like Thomas Covenant? I wish I remembered more of those books, because I think there were some things about him I liked.

I'm not sure the conflation is bad in this thread. The original post questioned having a main character introduced right away vs ... not. At least for the prologue. I'm hazy on whether prologues were the true focus, or if this was a more general comparison. The issue of prologues has taken center stage in some replies. If we remove the condition of having a main character right away, what does that leave us?

For me the question was more about how to engage a reader, and I think other things can do that even without a main character. Not for a whole book, however. Just a prologue. Or perhaps long stretches of third person omniscient narration anywhere in a story, not involving the main character. So the world building came to mind. The mention of persons in that world who are not a main character (since we are removing the main character from consideration.) Other things. How can I be engaged?
 
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Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Starting to conflate things here.

Please do! I try to post really open ended questions because I enjoy the conversation. The debate. The way each person is able to see it in a different way and add something new to the discussion. That is the best part :)
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Writer’s writing on writing tend to have this Utopian feel... I see writers talk lean all the time, and yet when I read them, it becomes clear that defintions vary, heh heh. It’s a bit like Steven King disparaging -ly adverbs and then you flip to a page and find several. Huh! We all have our criteria for what matters, and right or wrong we roll with it.

I come at empathy a little different than some folks, I suspect, because I don’t consider myself an empathy reader and I’m not particularly emotional... so writing an emotional empathetic character took some self-awareness of my natural weakness. Probably why it’s satisfying when readers note how they love character X or how they care about the characters a little too much.

It is an interesting notion... can the world become a character? In the LoTR Tolkien begins by painting an idyllic, pastoral piece of the world, a place millions of people would jump to move to, LOL. Sure, he’s also getting us into Frodo and the Hobbits, but we really want to save that world. Martin on the other hand... well, some manly part of me might be okay moving to the Seven Kingdoms, but the soft climate controlled part of me says “Screw that!” so Martin’s world doesn’t hold the “a character worth saving” mystique that Middle Earth does.

That might be the real feat with Tolkien, his might be the only world I really cared about saving.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
It is an interesting notion... can the world become a character? In the LoTR Tolkien begins by painting an idyllic, pastoral piece of the world, a place millions of people would jump to move to, LOL. Sure, he’s also getting us into Frodo and the Hobbits, but we really want to save that world. Martin on the other hand... well, some manly part of me might be okay moving to the Seven Kingdoms, but the soft climate controlled part of me says “Screw that!” so Martin’s world doesn’t hold the “a character worth saving” mystique that Middle Earth does.

That might be the real feat with Tolkien, his might be the only world I really cared about saving.

Ohhhhhh, this is true! Fascinating. By the end of GOT I was in the same boat as you. Burn it to the ground. But for me it was because of the characters...not the world itself... In Tolkein's world I felt there were "people" worth saving... because what would the world be without the elves and hobbits and Ents? Poor old Treebeard! And Galadriel and her people! It would just be New Zealand, lol.

But with GOT there was no people I felt I cared enough for to save. If Dany had just burned it all to the ground I don't think I would have been overly sad about any one character..... So for me at least, it still comes down to character, not landscape.... and not just a "group" of characters, either. Specific characters. Pippin and Merry, Treebeard, Aragorn... Characters I feel were worth saving.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Well, GoT on HBO doesn’t count. I’m waiting to see Martin’s books. There is a sense of enjoying the characters, but yeah, there was no sense of any character who died not desrving their end, LOL... That said, I like Arya and Tyrion... Sansa had potential but for some reason never connected, probably because of her early days of fawning over a sociopath and being a girly-girl, heh heh.

But with ME, it’s the only book I can recall really being into the world itself.
 
Demesnedenoir said, "...it becomes clear that definitions vary."

I'm curious to know what others mean by "empathy," especially empathy with a fictional character.

For some, it seems to mean simply caring about a character and her situation, or liking/loving a character.

I've been taking the term to mean the ability to feel and think as the character feels and thinks, identification with the character, being "in that character's shoes." This will probably lead to those other things mentioned already: caring about, loving a character.

What about understanding a character? The Wikipedia article on the topic mentions cognitive empathy: "the capacity to understand another's perspective or mental state." Does this understanding require identification with, liking/loving a character, caring about the character's situation?

Plus, in fiction, the distinction between these may blur.

Even if I don't particularly identify with a main character, I might still understand that character and like that character—I might be in that character's thoughts, so I have an intimate window on his inner states to help my understanding. If I'm there, is this not also therefore "empathetic", heh, even if the character and I are quite unalike in significant ways? :sneaky: If empathy means feeling and thinking like the character, experiencing the world the way the character experiences the world, then this may sometimes be a kind of false empathy or forced empathy—a literary trick, perhaps. Some villain's POV chapter includes his savoring of the blood of a victim...well, I am in that mind, savoring it with him, during the duration, even if it's not something I'd ever do! (And even if my vicarious experience feels less than real for me; I mean, I'm not literally licking my lips and feeling the warmth of the blood.)

But then let's consider third person omniscient. We are meant to look at the characters rather than through their eyes and minds. The third omniscient approach may include letting us see into those minds, insofar as the narrator tells us what each character is thinking and feeling. Or maybe it's a more objective narration; we only see the characters acting. (In this case, even dialogue between characters is activity for us to view.) I've said before that third omniscient and first person are more natural for us than third limited, because it's how we go about our lives, how we tell stories to one another. WRT distant third omniscient: This is how we experience real people in our real lives. I don't have the psychic ability to see inside another person's mind and heart and literally see through their eyes. I can only record clues in their behavior, appearance, speech and infer their emotional and mental states. If I can have empathy with a real person, why can't I have empathy with these characters in third omniscient?

But even third limited and first person will have side characters, non-POV characters. These are basically like third omniscient characters, but the POV character is the narrator. So our POV protagonist is reading the behaviors and appearances of these other characters. If Harry says Hermione was angry, it's because he knows her well enough to read her behavior and the tone of her voice. Maybe the argument against telling will rear its head, and we'll request seeing those things ourselves and judging her mental state, even if we are also given Harry's thoughts about her anger, and in those little bits it's like reading a more distant third omniscient narrative.

Cinema and television are very distant third om. Or "cinematic POV," using Card's definition. We usually don't dip into the characters' minds but simply look at them, their environment, their behaviors and speech. We can have empathy for characters in these media. In John Wick, the villain literally kills a dog, and John goes ballistic. I think one literary trick for creating empathy is to use behaviors and actions, events and images, viewed "objectively" to trigger readers, heh.

I put "objectively" in quotes because we are literally viewing them from without, at a distance; but look again at the article linked at the head of this thread:

"And then the devastating image of a dead boy washed up on a beach hit the news and everything changed....At the cost of one boy's life, people finally gave a damn."

That's a dead boy, not a person. At least for the author of the linked article. The boy's name was Alan Kurdi. But "dead boy" is how everyone viewed him before the more personal details became known—many people probably never learned those details—and in this article he's simply the boy who died. Like The Boy Who Lived, but different. When we suddenly empathize after seeing such an image, who particularly do we have empathy with? Alan Kurdi at that point is having no experiences, no thoughts, no feelings. He's dead. We can't really feel ourselves in his shoes. But we can imagine ourselves as his parent, his friend, maybe even him in his life before he died or during the moments leading up to his death. The writer of the article says the world suddenly began to empathize with the whole set of Syrian refugees; but how many of those refugees were ever viewed as individuals, with real names and real lives? Could we empathize with them, or were we empathizing with imaginary refugees and imaginary parents, imaginary friends of Alan, or with the Alan we imagined to exist before his death—I mean, these fictional characters in our heads, since we aren't really looking at them when we are seeing this image of Alan Kurdi? But how objective is this viewing?

The same sort of effect occurs with the other examples mentioned or linked in the article. Beware of manipulation, the author says. When we read or hear the personal details, from a politician's mouth or in a news article, we're only getting some of the details. The things that will trigger us in the way the speaker or writer wants us to be triggered. This isn't necessarily evil; who can give a perfectly complete picture of another person to us in thirty minutes or less? [Or in the length of a novel?] It's going to need to be abridged. Consequently, we have "the single mother of three" which is a lot like the boy who died or The Boy Who Lived. If you have a witch in your story, there's a difference between "The witch who lived in a tree" and "The witch who was forced to eat her children."
 
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