
For the past few weeks Brandilyn Collins has been lecturing about character empathy at her Faith & Forensics Blog. How to get your readers to care about your characters. An excerpt...
2. Particularly good at something
Two subpoints here. (A) Emphasis is on the word particularly. Shes not just talented at the piano, shes stunning enough to rise above all others, to capture our attention and admiration with her style, her touch of fingers to keys. (B) This approach involves details... We see him in action... The proficiency of his hands, the tilt of his body as he sights, his absolute stillness and measured patience until the perfect moment arrives to ease back the trigger.
I commented on her blog that this approach was similiar to a technique I learned a few years back called Building Authority. However, this method gave authors a choice to build authority[empathy] through two methods- the heart or the head. If a person was very good at something, then the author used the heart method. If the character had an enduring, but universal flaw, then we call that the heart method.
Last month, Westbow Press release Charles Martin's When Cricket's Cry. It is a beautifully written novel about a broken hearted man and a fragile little girl who are brought together for God's glory. There are so many wonderful passages in this novel I can't pick one. But as this novel relates to Brandilyn's discussion, Charles uses both methods in the opening chapter to pull his readers in. The front cover says that this is A Novel of the Heart. As cheesy at that line may sound, that line sums up the entire novel. Best tagline I've read this year. He uses the heart method to introduce us to the very sprite, but sick Lily.
She was small for her age. Probably six, maybe even seven, but looked more like four or five. A tomboy's heart in a china doll's body...She was pale and thin and bounced around like a mix between Eloise and Tigger.- first lines of When Cricket's Cry.
As the chapter unfolds we learn that this man isn't just a neighbor from a nearby town that occasionally wandered into Clayton, Georgia. But he's Reese, the town's recluse. No. He's more than that--he's a brokenhearted physician, who believes that he is a failure. We learn in the first chapter that he is not a failure, because he saves her life. Martin allows us to enter Reese's mind once he becomes the physician again, if only for that short moment. We see--as do the rest of the town--that Reese is more than he believes. It is the head method and the heart method combined. Because we know what it feels to not digest our full potential, especially when we haven't puled ourselves up from falling. I know this reality too well. In fact, I'm going through the same self-contempt as Reese.
Claudia Burney and I had a similiar conversation last week about our issues. Wink. Wink. Nod. Nod. :) She's a dear.Now let me ask you. Out of your most favorite books what endures you to the
characters the most? Shoot. What characters can you identify with the most? I like to say I identify with Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice and Sophia of The Color Purple. What about you?
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