Empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their perspective, and imagine yourself in their place.
The
above is probably an essential skill in being able to create characters and
have them interact in a story. It is also a skill some adults actually never
mastered. It is currently one of the many criticisms of the President of
the United states Donald J Trump. As the definition suggests, this is a complex
skill that develops over time, and the young author may find some aspects
exceedingly difficult.
That
was carried out in the classroom when I used to teach. The task was to have the children write from the point of view of somebody in a story, and the quality of the work
that came out was varied.
An
example could be the breaking into a home at Christmas as seen through the
eyes of the family cat or dog. I know the example would be telling the story of
Jesus and trying to go to Jerusalem on a donkey from the point of view of the donkey.
The
first stage in answering these questions would be to describe the emotions felt
at the time. Questions such as how would you feel in that situation are quite
useful prompts.
Being able to practise empathy brings about the tempering of your behaviour towards other people and hopefully leads you to become a more understanding adult. So you can see why, when writing a story, the skill is important.
When
I was writing the Steele novels, my lead character Patrick steagall add to manage
relationships between himself and three or four other people and those
relationships pertain throughout all 11 books and so weren't stationary but
developed and in some cases broke up. From my point of view, I found this one
with the enjoyable parts of writing stories. The manipulation of the characters
and situations they found themselves in was great fun, or at least it could be and
also influenced the direction in which stories progressed.
As
an exercise for oneself, writing a short story from a different point of view
can be a very valuable exercise.
God Bless
