I have a friend who asked how I can write stories about foster children when I haven’t been one.
A fair question.
The answer I gave her was empathy and having gone through a training program, and then spending time with them.
Does that make me an expert?
Far from it.
But, in fact, I don’t write stories about foster children, I write stories that have foster characters.
Being part of their lives through the CASA organization was an emotional education for me.
There’s a saying about knowing just enough to be dangerous.
But I think I know just enough about foster children to feel for them, and understand them and their situation—their fears, as well as their universal wish for belonging, love, stability, “normalcy.”
And that’s how I can write about them.
Non-writers and writers know the adage, write what you know.
But what do we know?
What we’re taught in school?
What we see at the store?
What we learn from the news?
The adage should be: write what you feel.
You can learn about anything (hello, Google).
But a story full of facts is dullllllllll.
I’ve said it before: it’s the emotion that keeps a reader interested.
If you, as a writer, can feel something about a character and transmit that feeling to your reader, you could write about anything.
Learn the facts.
Write the emotion.
I just started reading an historical fiction book called Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
I think it was made into a movie or maybe a PBS series—hold on, let me check Google…
Ok, it was a PBS British miniseries.
Anyway, it’s mostly about Thomas Cromwell, the dirty-deed-doer of Henry VIII.
Any other book I’ve read with Thomas Cromwell in it does not show him in a very good light.
At all.
But this book, my goodness, I’m about 75 pages in and I would champion Cromwell to anyone.
How does Mantel make such a bad guy so sympathetic?
It’s the emotion she elicits.
A sympathetic character for me (and it can be different for every reader) needs some of these things: they love their mother, they are bullied, they love dogs, they love their siblings, they try to make the lives of others better, they rise from the ashes, they work hard, they are honest, etc.
But having said all that, I’d be sympathetic to a character who hated their mother because of something she did, feared dogs because they were mauled, tried only to make their own life better because they had so little to share, were dishonest because they needed to be to survive.
It’s the emotion that follows the reason that makes for a sympathetic character.
If you can make your readers feel, you’ve got them in the palm of your hand.
If you’re a reader and you find yourself feeling sympathetic to a character such as, say, Thomas Cromwell, you’ve been hooked by emotion.
Have a cheerful week.
~ Gail
(Tick-tock)
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