Day 273 – Empathetic writing

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The Empathy Engine: How Writers Make You Fall in Love with People Who Don’t Exist

Have you ever sobbed uncontrollably over the death of a fictional character? Or felt your heart race as a made-up detective navigated a dark alley? Or closed a book and felt a lingering, hollow ache, as if you’d just said goodbye to a real, lifelong friend?

It’s a peculiar magic, when you think about it. You are sitting on a couch, staring at dead trees covered in squiggly black ink, yet your nervous system responds as though you are experiencing a real-world event. You are feeling profound grief, joy, terror, and love for people who have never drawn a breath.

How do writers pull off this psychological sleight of hand? How do they make us see, hear, and—most importantly—feel for strangers who live only on the page?

Let’s pull back the curtain on the writer’s craft and explore the anatomy of literary empathy.

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1. The Visual Illusion: Painting with Specificity, Not Adjectives

A common misconception among beginner writers is that to make readers see a character, they need to describe every physical detail: eye colour, height, clothing brand, hair texture. But human brains don’t process people by cataloguing inventory. We process people through impression, movement, and telling details.

Master writers know that specificity breeds reality.

Instead of writing: “She was an old, tired woman who wore a faded blue coat,” a skilled writer might write: “Aunt Mae wore her winter coat into June, the hem frayed where she’d stepped on it a hundred times, smelling faintly of mothballs and spearmint.”

Suddenly, you don’t just see the coat; you feel the weight of it, you smell it, you understand Aunt Mae’s stubbornness and her isolation.

Writers also master the art of visceral action. They show characters interacting with their environment in ways that reveal personality. A nervous character doesn’t just “feel anxious”—they pick at the cuticle of their thumb until it bleeds, or they repeatedly check the lock on the door. By anchoring the character in physical space through sensory details (sight, sound, texture, smell), the writer tricks our brains into treating the character as a physical presence in the room with us.

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2. The Sound of Truth: Capturing the Inner and Outer Voice

To make a reader hear a character, a writer must master dialogue and internal monologue.

Human speech is messy. We interrupt each other, trail off, use subtext, and lie. If a writer makes dialogue too grammatically correct and polished, it sounds like a robot reading a script. But when a writer captures the rhythm, cadence, and vernacular of a real voice—complete with hesitations, regional slang, and unspoken tensions—the character springs to life.

Consider the difference between:

• “I am very angry that you forgot our anniversary,” said John.
• “Right. Well. The restaurant takes reservations until eight, I suppose,” John said, staring intently at his thumbnail.

Which one do you hear? Which one makes you lean in?

Furthermore, writers invite us into the inner sanctum of the character’s mind. Through interiority—the thoughts, doubts, and rationalisations that bounce around inside a person’s head—we hear their private voice. When a character admits a shameful secret to the reader that they would never dare tell anyone in the story, an intimate bond of trust is formed. You are now accomplices.

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3. The Empathy Engine: Universal Vulnerability

Seeing and hearing a character are just the entry points. The real magic trick is making the reader feel for them. How does a writer cross the chasm from “this is an interesting person” to “I care about what happens to them as if they were my own child”?

The secret is vulnerability and flaws.

Perfection is repellent. If a character is impossibly brave, flawlessly beautiful, remarkably intelligent, and always does the right thing, we might admire them, but we won’t feel for them. We admire statues; we empathise with humans.

Writers make us care by giving their characters:

• Contradictory desires: They want to be loved, but they push people away.
• A secret shame: A memory or a fear they try desperately to hide from the world.
• Unmet needs: A deep, aching void—whether it’s a missing parent, a lost love, or a lack of self-worth—that drives their every action.

When we see a character trying desperately to maintain their dignity while the universe relentlessly kicks them down, our mirror neurons fire. We recognize our own insecurities, our own heartbreaks, and our own frailties in that fictional creation. We don’t feel pity for them; we feel camaraderie.

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4. The Power of Empathy Engineering (The Writer’s Toolkit)

Underneath the artistry, writers use specific psychological levers to guide our emotions:

• The “Save the Cat” Moment: Popularised by screenwriter Blake Snyder, this is a moment early in a story where a character does something inherently kind or endearing (like saving a stray cat), instantly earning the reader’s affection.
• Stakes and Consequences: We care about characters in proportion to what they stand to lose. A character losing a dollar bill doesn’t move us; a character losing custody of their child, or losing their last chance at redemption, grips our soul.
• Empathy by Association: How other characters treat someone influences how we feel about them. If a universally despised tyrant is kind to a stray dog, our perception of the tyrant shifts. We look for the humanity underneath.

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Why We Need the Illusion

Why do we willingly subject ourselves to the emotional rollercoaster of reading about fictional pain and triumph?

Because in our daily lives, we are trapped behind the glass wall of our own skull. We can never truly know what it feels like to be someone else. We are limited to one perspective, one life, one set of experiences.

Great writers are the bridge builders across that isolation. They take us by the hand and lead us into the minds of murderers, saints, monarchs, paupers, heroes, and cowards. They stretch our capacity for compassion until it breaks open.

When a writer makes you weep for a person who has never existed, they aren’t just telling a story—they are expanding your humanity. They are proving that empathy knows no boundaries, and that even in the quietest, loneliest corners of your imagination, you are never truly alone.

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Day 272 – Writing Exercise

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The one thing they tell you about writing is to not be put off by criticism.

In fact the one basic tenet I try to get across as the most important, if you want to be a writer, is to take criticism as the best form of encouragement.

The second, you are writing for yourself, not for the masses out there, because there are writers who churn out pulp fiction.  You may do that one day, but first be the best writer you can.

Then once you’ve finished that first draft, you can send it out to a respected and qualified group of beta readers, but be prepared to get constructive criticism.

It was a pity I didn’t take my own advice.

I always wanted to be a writer. I spent most of my spare time scribbling on notepads, buying a typewriter and turning scribbles into typed pages.

I was always going to finish it.

Then I met a girl, Samantha Biggins, and I took a sojourn.  With marriage and work and juggling everything else, writing took a step back.

Until we decided to get a bigger house.

While getting ready for the move, I found all of my work packed into a half dozen boxes.  Marked “Toss” in Samantha’s scrawl.

I’d told her once that I wanted to be a writer, and she told me to be practical.  Unless I became a best-selling author, there was no money in it.

She was right, but I was not tossing it.

When she asked why I was keeping it, I asked her to read what I’d written; she did, and then simply told me not to give up my day job.

Five more years of being abjectly unhappy, I found out she was having an affair with my best friend.  He is no longer my best friend; she is no longer my wife; there were no children; she refused to become a mother, and it all ended on a sour note.

I quit my job, moved, changed my name, and became an associate professor teaching students to write. 

It was the best of both worlds, teaching writing, and writing that first novel.

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It was a new intake for my class, twenty-three souls who thought they wanted to become writers.  On average, only fifteen would survive, and perhaps one or two would continue after the classes ended.

Day one, they were full of enthusiasm, or at least most of them were.

When I told them their first assignment was to write a ten-thousand-word story over the next four weeks, applying what they learned, that enthusiasm waned.

This was not the class to use as a break between the hard stuff.  The next class dropped to twenty.

After two weeks, the student with the mt enthusiasm, Charlene, stopped on her way out the door and asked, “Are you a writer?”

Of all of them, she was the most promising, but that might be because she was a mature-age student, finally doing the university degree she would have if she had not got pregnant before graduating high school.

She was a little too forthcoming in her introduction of herself.

I wondered where this was leading.  “Yes.”

“Published?”

“No.  Still working on that first blockbuster.”

“When did you start writing?”

“About 13 or 14 years old.”

“In all that time…”

This was not going to be a time when I defended myself.

“Sometimes life gets in the way, and your priorities change.  I took a ten-year sabbatical, if you could call it that.  It happens.  Sometimes the idea of becoming a published author has to be put aside because food and rent don’t appear out of thin air.”

“Wouldn’t you just find a job that allows you to do both?”

“That’s the final lesson.  It took me ten years to figure that one out.”

“So you didn’t go to university and have to survive while studying?”

“My university studies were paid for.  The struggle came afterwards.”

She shrugged.  “We all get there, I guess, in our own time.  You want anyone to beta read your stuff, I’m available.”

I was not sure how to take that, so it was best avoided.  “If I do, I’ll let you know “

She left with an expression I couldn’t fathom.

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Charlene’s story, exactly 10,000 words, was a story of struggle.  It had me from the first page.

And it made me think she was a faculty spy, sent to see if I knew what I was doing.  To be truthful, it was my second year at it, and it was a learning process.  My first wasn’t so great.

Teaching wasn’t the same as doing.

The other nineteen varied in length, from a thousand to five thousand words.  Stories started and petered out, some with a strong start and then hitting that invisible brick wall.  Several were in the realm of fantasy, but none could go down the superhero with humility path.

It gave me a lot of scope.

Most were glad they would not be revisiting that story until towards the end of the year.

During the previous year, I thought about restarting my book, even starting to unpack the writing boxes, but it went into recess again when I told myself I had to write class lessons and prompt papers 

In other words, I found any excuse not to write.

But during the summer break, when I finally stopped prevaricating, I dragged everything out of the boxes, arranged my writing nook, and put a piece of paper in the typewriter.

Nothing came.

I pulled out the notepads and decided I would write longhand.  That went from writing to planning to maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.

I was still prevaricating at the start of the year, and perhaps it was going to go into a recess like the year before.

Then I woke in the middle of the night, halfway through the first semester, thinking I should retype and edit the story I gave Samantha to read, and see what Charlene’s thought.

Perhaps I was looking for compliments.  If I was, then maybe I should just burn it and move on.

That morning’s lesson, we were going to visit non-fiction, and we were all going to embark on a genealogical expedition. 

I found the previous year the notion of having relatives that go back in time, and where they came from, was as much of a writing adventure for me as it was for them.  It also honed another important writing skill; research.

I was shocked to discover I came from England and Germany.  There were Irish, Welsh, Scots, but no Americans.  There was even a little Scandinavian.  They were mostly agricultural labourers, though there was the odd publican and shop owner.

I often wondered how I could be related to any of those given my school results.

Charlene’s relatives, going back, were famous, or maybe they would have been if she hadn’t noticed that a cousin had been previously down that path, and picked the most interesting rather than the actual people who were her forebears.

Who wouldn’t do that if they were looking for a more interesting story?  After all, they had been dead for a long time and were not going to argue the point.

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By the end of the first semester I had rewritten the first three chapters, the magic amount I thought would set up the story, and would be what I would send to a publisher for appraisal.

It had been a lot of long nights and ruthlessness I hadn’t thought was in me.    Sometimes it was not so much about what was on the page as having the backbone to throw out what was simply padding.

It was my own advice echoing in my head: 200 tightly written pages trumped 500 pages of mostly fluff.

Last day of semester, after setting an assignment to be delivered the first day back, I called Charlene over and handed her the brown, anonymous envelope.

“My marching orders,” she asked.

“The first three chapters.  If you want to read it.  I don’t usually give anyone anything, not after the last time.”

She looked at me with a quizzical expression.

“A long story that involves an ex, and it would be in poor taste to air what most people would call petty grievances.”

“We all have them.”

“Petty differences or exes?”

“Both.  But let me guess, you finally gave in to showing your work to your spouse and you got everything but what you wanted.”

“I was told not to give up my day job.”

She smiled, or perhaps it was something else.  “I was told to stick to what women like me did best: cooking, cleaning, and babies.  After that comment, I did none of the above.”

“I stopped writing.”

“So did I.  And you were right.  Life gets in the way.  I have coffee some mornings at the Three Moon cafe.  If you pick the right day, I’ll give you my honest opinion.”

She left before I could think of a suitable reply.

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Perception is everything.

Rather than working on my novel, I spent the time fretting over the implications of Charlene’s invitation.

And, yes, it was an invitation.

That I had all sorts of feelings about the matter, right down to reading and rereading the rule book five times, the answer was always going to be the same.

It was verboten.

If it wasn’t my imagination running wild.  If it was not what I thought it was.

Normally it was not something I would think about.  And, like I said, it might be just my overactive imagination.  It had happened to a colleague the previous year.  He had ignored it, and when push came to shove, the university sacked him, even when her had done nothing to encourage the relationship.

It was for him either the devil or the deep blue sea.  Even when the girl in question told the Dean, eventually, that he had never been interested, and she did it out of spite.

It was an ugly world we lived in sometimes.

So, armed with the rule book, I reluctantly went to the Three Moon café.  She was not there, but I felt like a coffee and stayed, pretending to be one of my characters, on surveillance while waiting for the contact with the top secret information.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the university types, or the students. After all, I had heard of it from class members, a place where good food was reasonably priced, better than living on fast food and coffee

Other than the business types.

I tried not to look like a university associate professor, but as some of my students said, it was an acquired look.  Not even changing the style of my clothes worked.

One of my latest group of budding writers had said that a professor in a five-thousand-dollar suit and expensive shoes, even a Rolex watch, was still a professor.

I knew it was me she was talking about.

My coffee arrived, but it was not the waitress who took the order; it was Charlene.  She slid into the booth’s opposite seat.

“You have waitressing skills?”

“Among many others.  Navy SEAL.  Cabinet minister.  Short order chef.  A girl has to be multi-talented.  I work here, off and on.”

It was hard to tell if she was telling me off for categorising her, and if I thought about it, I probably did, and without thinking.

“Perhaps I should apologise.  Sometimes I say stuff without thinking, but it doesn’t excuse what I said.  I’m sorry.”

I was going to have to categorise these expressions of hers.  It was fascinating to watch it change.  This one: perhaps disdain.

“Apology accepted.  Better than most of those tinder dates, but what can you expect?”

“Never used a dating app.  I just think it’s too much effort, and knowing my luck, she would secretly be an axe murderer.”

“Ah, about that…”

I could see, after a moment of apprehension, that she was joking.  Or at least I hope she was.

She pulled the envelope, now creased and crumpled, and put it on the table between us.

I looked at it, but said nothing.

I had left the university rule book on the table, and she had noticed it.  It was a quick glance, one that I wasn’t supposed to see.

“Impressive daytime reading,” a glance, then back.

“Still trying to grapple with being an associate professor, which alternately makes me feel like an aging know-it-all, or just simply a weirdo.”

“What have you learned?”

“The hundred and twenty-two ways of getting into deep water and drowning.”

“Metaphorically speaking.  I still haven’t been able to find the campus pool.”

It was the subject of students’ quests, and an exercise for writing a piece on executing a question, taking something ordinary and turning it into treasure.  It was the imagination test.

She was watching me, over the top of her coffee cup, contemplating or planning my demise.  Talking to her was going to be a slow dance.

“You’re writing, in your mind, a scene, you and I.  There was a flicker of a smile.  Hopes dashed or triumph.”

“No.”  I would go with something a little more topical.  “What’s a girl like you doing the writing course?”

Expressing change, nose wrinkle, eyebrows lift fractionally.  Surprise?

“I want to be a better writer.”

“I don’t think so.  You’re almost there, from what I’m reading of your work.”

“Maybe I just want a break from work.  Working afternoons at the café and nights cleaning up after the grubs that pretend they’re human has taken its toll.”

There was paid in-house eyes, along with a self-realisation that may or may not be what I thought it was.  It was the sort of pain I’d never had to endure.

She ordered another coffee.  Mine was going cold.

Then she came out with it.  “We’re not supposed to be here together, or anywhere.  If you’re checking the rules, it could mean one of two things.  You’re wondering about my motives, or you’re wondering about yours.”

“Or I’m looking for ways to cure my insomnia.”  I picked the book up.  “Reading this, or trying to, is better than any sleeping pill.”  I put it down again.  ” We can meet like this; there just can’t be any other reason than to discuss the coursework.”

“And you thought…”

“I don’t think.  I’m just telling you what I read, just before it put me to sleep.  I’m not going to bore you with details.  Perhaps we could talk about my train wreck book.”

Another smile, less warmth.  Perhaps I was unconsciously trying to be unworthy of her attention. 

“It’s anything but a train wreck, but it does tell me a lot about you.  No, its good.  Can’t wait to see more.”  She watched my reaction before adding, “Do you dance?”

I made a mental note to curse the person that gave me an imagination, because it was working overtime.

“Ballroom, or that uncoordinated wriggling?”

She laughed, perhaps imagining what I meant by uncoordinated wriggling.  I’d seen it once when I agreed to go out with a girl a friend had recommended.  She had been trying to be something she was not.

“I’ll let you ponder that, until the next batch of pages.”

With that she made an exit, which was so much more than just leaving.

And sitting there, after ordering another coffee, a realisation came over me.  I needed a museum.  Not in the sense that I would pursue romantically, but someone who could stoke the fires of inspiration, because I could see the next part of the story.

And I hadn’t felt like this in a decade.

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©  Charles Heath  2026