Thread by @xasymptote

Lately a lot of people have told me in different context how they appreciate the compassion I show for my characters, even the "unlikable" ones.

So I want to thread a bit about how I do that. It's a learned skill, and I was not always any good at it.

I should mention first of all that thinking of this in terms of "compassion" is strange for me, because that's not how I think of it or what I call it in my head, and it took me a long time to understand what people were referring to when they said they saw this in my writing.

But what I think it comes down to for me is simply remembering that everyone has a reason for what they are doing.

It's not always a good reason - but also, you don't have to think of it in terms of reasons being "good" and "bad." They're just reasons.

Some people are basically cartoon villains! That's cool. They don't have to have a sad backstory that "justifies" their villainy. But there's some thought in their head that leads them to get out of bed and do the particular villainy they're doing that day.

There's something they want, or something they think they need to do, or something they're afraid will happen.

The secret to having empathy for your characters is simply to find that thing.

There are some authors who are really, really good at sussing out these reasons and showing them to readers, even for minor characters. You can study how they do it. One of my favorite examples is Mike, Linda, and Louise Carey's book "The Steel Seraglio."

Omnisicent POV, dozens and dozens of characters, some of whom are quite unpleasant, but each one has some motivation that makes perfect sense from their own point of view and the authors go out of their way to show you every single one.

Some authors refer to this as "everyone is the hero of their own story." I dislike that formulation - I think most people don't think of themselves as heroes.

But everyone is *in* their own story.

Ironically I actually have an easier time sussing out these motivations for villains and antiheroes than I do for heroes. I have a lot of baggage to unpack around the idea of "goodness" as passivity, which is antithetical to having your own reasons for things.

My early work in particular was full of passive, helpless, "whiny" heroines (that is to say, they seemed whiny to readers, because they experienced negative emotions about their situation but didn't take initiative to do anything about it - I don't like the word "whiny" myself.)

It's something I've had to consciously unlearn, and I'm not where I want to be with it yet.

Yasira, the heroine of THE OUTSIDE, was an extremely difficult character to get right, and it took many drafts before I stopped getting feedback that she was "flat."

Yasira has her reasons for behaving as she does, too. But it took a while to uncover them. An extremely smart beta reader pointed out that Yasira seemed depressed, and one of the things that helped fix the character was hunting down and clarifying the reasons for *that.*

And again, it doesn't require a long treatise about how the character came to be that way (especially if you're in the early part of the novel). It's more about making it clear to the reader what's going on in the present and how the character currently sees it.

So, again, the secret to having "compassion" for one's characters is to figure out what each character wants to do in the moment and why, and what that looks like from their perspective.

I think a lot of people would add "without judging" and I get what they mean by that but I think in some ways it's a lie.

I judge my characters all the time.

Akavi's a jerk! Elu has a nice temperament but is COMPLICIT IN GREAT EVIL AND SHOULD STOP.

However, the key is to separate your own judgment, as a person writing the story, from the character's feelings as a person *in* the story.

Your character doesn't care what you think. They have their own opinion, and that's the one you use when you write them.

Anyway, I hope that was helpful or useful or interesting for some people. Feel free to comment about your own process in terms of compassion for characters, or other works that you feel do this especially well.