Building Character Empathy

How to help your character make friends and influence readers

I’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to read excerpts from other authors’ works in progress. I find that reading others’ drafts helps me find the strengths and weaknesses in my own writing.

One of the things I’ve learned to focus on is building the reader’s connection with my characters. This is particularly vital for the main character. If my reader isn’t connecting with my main character, they’re going to put my book down early on, and may never read my writing again. But if I can make that connection with the reader, they can immerse themselves in the story and live the adventure through my protagonist.

The best advice I’ve ever heard about building character empathy comes from two of my favorite “story doctors:” Michal Hauge and James Scott Bell.

Michael Hauge gives us 5 powerful tools to create character empathy. He suggests choosing at least one of the first 3, and at least one of the last 2 items on his list:

• Undeserved Misfortune

• Jeopardy

• Likeability

• Funny

• Highly Skilled

These circumstances/qualities need to be introduced as quickly as possible in your story. I want to start building that bond on page 1.

I try to be careful with Undeserved Misfortune. Bad things happen to good people, particularly in fiction, but I want to make sure I don’t stray into melodrama territory. I pick one bad thing and make it hurt. Other bad things that happen after that need to be reflections of the original bad thing, and they need to twist the knife.

Jeopardy is fairly easy. As a writer, it’s my job to throw danger in the path of my main character, as well as my other characters.

Likeability is self-explanatory. There are some recent examples in popular fiction where main characters aren’t likeable, but the books still became best-sellers. However, I personally have trouble reading 400 or more pages about someone I don’t like. Since “likeability” is subjective, not to mention nebulous, James Scott Bell will help us pin it down better below.

I don’t know about you, but I love Funny. However, there’s a trick to it. For something to be truly funny, it must be character appropriate. That means I have to know my characters well. Comedy in fiction is no accident. It’s not cheap gags coming from set ups that have nothing to do with the story. It has to be very carefully thought out and crafted, often going through stages of development. If you want to do comedy correctly, I highly recommend any book written by Steve Kaplan (like The Comic Hero’s Journey). Since comedy is one of my favor parts of writing, and because it is so complex, I’ll save my thoughts about crafting it for a future blog.

Highly Skilled is particularly common in fiction these days. Superheroes all fall in this category, but my main characters aren’t that freakishly talented. However, I make sure that whatever it is they do, they do it very well, whether or not they’re happy doing it.

So, my favorite example of applying these 5 tools is the TV show Firefly. As each character is introduced in the pilot, they each show multiples of these traits. For example, the character Wash (played by the amazing Alan Tudyk) is likeable, funny, and he’s an incredible pilot. Zoë (Gina Torres) is a highly skilled soldier, she’s often in jeopardy, and she is definitely the recipient of undeserved misfortune. Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is the full package, he hits all 5, and I have to admit that I’m a little in love with him.

Now I want to share James Scott Bell’s approach to creating character empathy. It’s similar to Hauge’s, but has some important differences. He focuses on three aspects with sub-aspects:

• Sympathy

  • Jeopardy

  • Hardship

  • Underdog

• Likeability

  • Care Package

  • Pet the Dog

  • Determination

  • Competence

  • Wit

• Vulnerability

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to continue using Firefly for my examples.

To create Sympathy, Bell uses Jeopardy, Hardship, and the Underdog. See, sounds a lot like Hauge, right? I think these guys are on to something. Again, Malcolm Reynolds hits all of these. He’s a soldier in jeopardy as he fights a losing war, facing the hardship of living each day by whatever he can do and find to keep his soldiers going, and he knows he probably doesn’t stand a chance against his better equipped, better financed enemy, making him the underdog. I feel bad for him just thinking about the pilot episode.

Let’s take a closer look at Likeability here and see if we can’t pin it down.

Bell’s first sub-aspect is called Care Package. This is when our character has developed a caring relationship for another character or an animal before the story even begins. Through this relationship, we see that the character isn’t self-absorbed, they’re capable of putting someone else’s needs before their own. This is particularly powerful when the character commits to doing something they don’t want to do. For Firefly, this is all about Simon (Sean Maher). He gave up an amazing future as a gifted trauma surgeon to save his sister, River (Summer Glau). When Kaylee (Jewel Staite) is shot, Simon wants to help her, but he needs to save River, so he refuses to help Kaylee unless Captain Reynolds agrees to run from the Alliance cruiser that’s after them.

Next is Pet the Dog. This is where the character takes the time and trouble away from their goal to care for someone or something vulnerable. In the train heist episode, Mal and Zoë find out the cargo they just stole from the train is medicine that’s desperately needed in the nearby settlement. Despite the fact a terrifying mobster will torture and kill them if they don’t deliver the cargo to him, they decide to return the medicine to the settlers.

Determination also helps establish likeability. In the pilot episode, it’s clear by his actions that Captain Mal is determined to win the battle. Even though the Browncoats lost the war, Mal and his misfits are determined to keep their independence from the Alliance. Their ship is not in the best shape, the jobs they do to earn money are thin on the ground and sketchy, the Alliance is always after them, but they never give up.

There isn’t a character in Firefly who isn’t brimming with Competence. Captain Reynolds is a veteran soldier, and so is Zoë. Wash is, as mentioned before, and amazing pilot. Kaylee is a wizard of a mechanic. Inara (Morena Baccarin) is a gifted “diplomat.” Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) has a way with people, even those with whom he disagrees. Jayne (Adam Baldwin) is a skilled and sassy mercenary. The entire crew is a dream team, and I want to join the crew, even though I’d be the worthless one.

Wit, as I covered above under Funny, must be character specific and appropriate. Wash’s offbeat sense of humor is established the first time we see him, and it plays well and consistently through the entire series. He clearly amuses himself, and me, too. (I can’t even watch the end of Serenity.)

Finally, we come to Vulnerability. Your character should always be under the threat of the forces stacked against them. Bell uses this to increase the reader’s worry factor. Even readers who don’t read suspense genre books love a little suspense in their story. The Firefly crew is always under threats from the Alliance, Reavers, and dangerous people on the outskirts. Vulnerability doesn’t have to be about physical danger exclusively. It can also come from the threat of internal conflict. We can see emotional vulnerability when Mal and Inara have their exchanges. Mal says some very hurtful things about Inara’s profession, clearly out of painful jealousy and difficulty allowing others to get close. Inara is often threatening to leave or shutting Mal out as a response to his disrespect and out of a desire to remain professional, even though she clearly cares about him. One of the best examples of this is in the Shindig episode, where Mal asks Inara to reject Wing’s offer. He tries to make weak excuses for her refusing, but we know it’s because he loves her and doesn’t want to lose her. We human beings are all vulnerable, and we identify with others when they’re vulnerable.

The opening scene of the Firefly pilot portrays Captain Malcolm Reynolds as in jeopardy, suffering hardship, as an underdog, as extremely competent, very determined, a brief moment to “pet the dog,” and he even gives us a little wit. The audience can’t help but like him, because he’s a pretty amazing guy. He shows us his vulnerability when he stops to kiss the cross he’s wearing around his neck, and when he stares as the Alliance ships arrive. The scene ends with him receiving undeserved misfortune. This is all in just the first scene, and cements Mal as one of the most beloved characters of science fiction. I admire the skill with which the writer, Joss Whedon, has shown us exactly who Mal is in such a short amount of time without overwhelming the audience or making him seem too complex to identify with. If you want to understand how to introduce characters and build instant empathy, it’s totally worth watching and taking notes.

One more thing about building character empathy: Don’t forget your antagonist. Stories are so much richer when the “bad” person has some of these traits, too. A villain is still a person. They should be determined and very competent. They can still be funny. They can still be the recipients of undeserved misfortune, or have any of the other traits I’ve listed. I’m working to give one of my antagonists a little bit of likeability. He’s not really bad, he just makes bad choices. Indeed, I try to build reader empathy for all my characters. The more the reader cares about the people in your story, the more they’ll care about the story.

What are your favorite ways of building reader empathy for your characters?