As a 'self proclaimed' writer...I've found that there is no stronger, no more engaging, tool in your arsenal than character empathy when it comes to truly crafting an immersive experience when it comes to your readers' involvement in your story. This is something that a lot of writer's believe they can 'tell' their audience, and they'll obviously fall in line and agree with the author, because how you can not feel bad for people (fictional as they may be) going through such a rough time.

But I think there's a lot more to it than that. There's a bigger difference between sympathy and empathy than most people can really recognize until you directly ask them to define the difference. One example always comes to mind when I think of this subtle/but not-so-subtle space between the two...

I can remember driving downtown one day, and there was a church at one of my stops. And someone was getting married, and the family was there, and they were all happy and smiling and wishing them well as they were walking towards their limo to start their new life together as husband and wife. And the sympathetic part of me was like, "Awwww...that's so cute! Good for you! Whoever they are, I wish them all the best that life has to offer!" Hehehe, I'm a big softie at heart, but you guys knew that already. That's my sympathetic emotions rising to the surface and sort of putting me in their particular head space at that moment. It's awesome.

Flash forward a few years...and one of my very best friends EVER was getting married. He asked me to stand with him. We've known each other since we were about thirteen or fourteen years old, and still talk often to this day. I fell sooooo hard for him in high school, and I can guarantee you that parts of our long lasting relation are threaded into the stories on this site in more ways than I could ever hope to count. Hehehe! But, even though he was straight, and I knew that I'd never get my very first dream boy like I had always wished I would...it filled my heart to the point of bursting to know that he was happy. And I balled like a baby! LOL! I really did!

That was 'empathy'. I'm using both sympathy and empathy in a positive way, because I think a lot of people often look at those words as feeling 'bad' about tragic events, and it's not always about that. To put it simply...sympathy is feeling for something that's happening outside of you, and empathy is about feeling something that is inspired inside of you. To feel good or bad for something that someone else is going through is a special and lovable trait to have. Always keep that, and hold on to it for as long as you can. But...to actually be sucked IN to the situation in a way where you feel a symbiotic bond with a character's plight and truly relate to what is going on, whether they've shared the same experience or not? That's a whole other level, indeed. And it can be reached once you know what you're looking for, and build a game plan around that goal.

So, let's talk about character empathy today folks! It comes with a few handy tricks that you might want to use for later. Especially if you're writing romance or erotica themed stories. Sex is just sex, no matter how amazing you might be at writing it, no matter how graphic or how metaphorical you are with the details. But if you can create an emotional space around your characters and sync yourself up with your fictional lovers and your real life readers...you'll create gold. Every time. Promise!

I've found that...for a lot of people...feeling bad for someone else can be a very deep emotional involvement...but it's also temporary. Maybe I've gotten old and a bit jaded about it all...but I can remember the "We Are The World" video was the most important thing in the world. People are starving in Africa. We need to help. And then I remember AIDS being the big thing. Then breast cancer. Then the war on drugs. Then 9/11. Then Hurricane Katrina. Then the Haiti earthquake. But, let's be honest...when was the last time any of these issues led the news highlights? Do we really think that these problems have magically gone away? Cyber bullying? Teen suicide? Matthew Shepard? George Floyd? The #MeToo movement? Not 'popular' anymore? How long will it be until everybody forgets about Covid-19 and goes out for a crowded beach party? That's not a judgement on anyone who was there to give time and effort and money to those causes, and God bless those who did so! Honestly. I only use that as an example because...deep down...we're all grown up children. Caring about other people only lasts so long until it becomes all about 'me' again. It's a noble gesture, but I feel like hardly anything becomes a passion until it affects us directly. Agree or disagree, but that's truly how I feel. And I'd be a hypocrite if I tried to remove myself from that equation.

Don't worry...it doesn't make any of us bad people. But it's something to take notice of when it comes to figuring out the balance between sympathy and empathy.

To write characters and storylines that will ultimately get your audience to truly be involved in your narrative...you can't just tell a good story from the outside. You have to connect. It has to be about THEM, and not just the characters themselves. I don't want to insult any of my readers in any way, shape, or form...but the brutal reality of gaining a captivated audience comes from making your project somewhat of a selfish experience.

(Ugh! I feel so dirty saying it like that!)

It's a part of the art and the craft that you have at your fingertips. Readers who feel as though they are participating and living through the story that you've laid out in front of them will be the most loyal and most helpful (and occasionally, the most critical...but in a good way) readers that you will ever have. Don't ever be afraid to include them in ways that will compel them to form a symbiotic bond with your characters. Even if they haven't been through the same experiences in their lives, the emotions will still snatch them up, regardless...and truly force them into investing all the emotion they have into every word that you type out on that screen.

When I was writing "My Only Escape" about severe childhood abuse, many of the comments that I got from the first few chapters on the site or the library or in my emails drifted between, "Oh God! That's EXACTLY what it feels like! How did you know?" and "Oh God! This is to much! I can't read this anymore!" But both are the greatest compliments that I ever could have hoped for. Because it touched the nerves that I wanted it to touch. I wanted to tell my story and have people really gt a sense for what it was really like to live that life. Not just as a bystander feeling for sorry for some poor kid who was living this way (Which could have also been successful in the long run), but as an immersive and visceral experience that really puts you in the mindset of the protagonist and SHOWS them what a life like that would really be like. This creates more than just sympathy. This is where empathy comes from. Knowledge of self leads to knowledge of others. Period. If you can bring your audience into that space...they'll understand things on a whole other level, and they'll come looking for more until the story has been told.

Let me use this as my first example...

Like I said, I don't want you guys to think that character empathy has to be all about tragedy and pain...and that's why I wanted to keep things light in the beginning of this article. But, since pain is a much more 'recognizable' emotion for many people...I'm going to flip the script and head in that direction to hammer home my point.

Now...I've never been to war. I can't even imagine it, to be honest. I've had friends go overseas, and some of them came back changed forever. But they all came home. So, I can easily sympathize with all of the stress and harsh situations that they had to deal with. Even for people that I don't know and have never met. I salute every last one of you for being involved in whatever mess you were enlisted for. However...watch this scene from Sylvester Stallone's movie "First Blood". And if you've ever had any doubts about him as an actual actor… I think this is one of the finest performances that he's ever given in his entire career. It still brings tears to my eyes, to this day. Because there's something there that I relate to and truly understand. A soldier, coming back from war...disrespected and hunted. A true hero who's just trying to find his way back to a normal life again, and having people look down on him without having any IDEA what he had to go through to even be alive in this moment. It's so heartbreaking that it's worthy of tears. And begs the question...

What would YOU do if you were in this position?

Let me say that one of the most brilliant choices made in this scene is simply having John's commanding officer stand off to the side in complete silence and not say a single word. It could have easily been a 'back and forth' dialogue between the two where you have one character trying to get the other one to calm down and return to suppressing those feelings long enough to disarm him and walk him out of that place alive. But I feel as though that would have really robbed us of the humanity and the connection that we needed as an audience to really feel immersed in that situation. He's able to give a heartbreaking monologue that draws us in and creates empathy for his situation. Remember...'sympathy' comes from outside...'empathy' comes from inside. That's the difference. In the four or five minutes that it takes him to tell that story...uninterrupted...we aren't just listening to him. We BECOME him. And that makes for a much more powerful experience.

I'm sure that we all have stories to tell, regrets, problems, and parts of ourselves from the past or even in the present, that we wish we could scream out loud to the rest of the world. We want to scream and cry and bare our souls for someone who's really willing to just sit there and listen...but we don't. We feel like a burden, or a maniac, or like we'll be made fun of, or have our problems minimized by people who we could never epect to understand. But you watch the scene above...and you see someone who is finally able to bleed all of that emotional poison out of their system for, what might be, the first time ever...and it becomes a cathartic sigh of relief for us all. Yes, we sympathize...but on a more 'selfish' level...he's speaking for us. He makes ME feel better! And that's what tips the scales from a great story towards it being an unforgettable moment in our lives.

Master that skill with your writing? And you are bound to create classics that will stick with people of all ages long after you're gone. And isn't that the goal of every creative mind in some way? To create something that will outlive the creator? It is for me.

I don't want to leave a trophy behind. I'd rather leave a footprint.

The entire time that I was writing the story, "My Only Escape" (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/myonlyescape)...I felt like I was learning more and more about how to truly manifest a series of emotions that not only spoke to my readers, but could actually drag them, kicking and screaming, into the reality of it all. Pretty much the same way that I was, growing up. There was a scene that I vividly remember actually happening to me, where I was thrown out of the house in my sock feet in the rain, and my father refused to let me back in the house. No shoes, soaking wet...and I stayed out there in the freezing cold for a long time. Until I finally got the courage to walk a few blocks, puddles and all, to have my friend take me in for a while. But where the cruelty of that could be easily observed and understood by the people reading...what I really wanted to emphasize was the utter shame that I felt, having to make that choice. That was a chapter that took me a long time to write, because even putting myself back in that space again...it hurt. I could have skipped it...but what good would that have done me, or anybody else for that matter? It was a part of the story that needed to be there. Because, whether or not the members of my audience have ever lived through abuse...shame is something that I think we all have a shared of understanding of. And in an emotionally charged story like that, that's the kind of empathy that you would want your audience to bond with. So why not, right? Put it out there. Dig deep and bring as much honesty to your work as you're comfortable with...and then, maybe a little bit more.

Alright, one more example, and then I'll stop yapping. Promise!

This is a scene from the movie, "Schindler's List"...and it's another one of those specific choices in a movie that I feel was a stroke of absolute genius. Taking place during the Holocaust...this scene is jam packed with chaos and hysteria and blood and murder on an unfathomable level. Soooo many lives lost, and brutally unflinching in its depiction of the horror that those people had to go through during that time. And our protagonist (Played by Liam Neeson) is looking down on this main street with all of this going on...and the movie is shot entirely on black and white film...but there is a little girl who's wearing a red jacket. It's such a powerful moment, and it makes a huge statement about what is really going on here. That ONE flare of color draws your eye to her, and it works to give her a sense of humanity. Without that that particular attention to detail, she might just blend in with the rest of the horrific pandemonium going on all around her. The kind of violence that we, as an audience, are now becoming accustomed to and nearly desensitized to the point where we become numb to it all. But this is different. This singles someone out as being special, and we're reminded that all of these people are special. At least to somebody! Right? They're not cattle. It's not like pulling weeds out of a garden. It brings a sense of empathy rushing up at you in a really visceral way. Sure, you have sympathy for everybody involved, but human emotion can be overwhelmed at a certain point...and it's like our brains attempt to protect us by blocking it out or at least dampening its affect on us. But when you see the red coat in this black and white world...you can't help but to be drawn to it, and recognize this little girl's importance. You want to help. To protect. And now you're involved. Again...in an honorable, but somewhat selfish, kind of way.

It's not an insult. It's a human trait that we all eperience from time to time.

Anyway, that's my talk about character empathy and how to make that a part of your stories. It's hard to pull off sometimes, and even harder to explain with any sort of expertise, believe me...but examine your own projects and see if you can tell the difference between making your readers feel bad for a fictional character...and making them feel bad, in general, because there's no separation between them and the character, thanks to your storytelling finesse. There's a difference. And a balance. As with everything else, this all comes with hard work and practice. So the more you write, the easier it'll be for you to achieve the level of empathy the you're looking for. K?

Bring your readers into your world, and keep them captivated by making their concern for your main characters a selfish pursuit. Hehehe, it's not a bad word. Selfish can work wonders when it comes to holding a reader's attention hostage for a little while. Use it to your advantage!

God, I sound so manipulative right now! LOL! Let me go before I say too much! Happy writing! And I'll seezya soon!