Other People’s Heads
By Dave King | March 15, 2016 |
How do you get inside someone else’s head?
Seeing the world through the filter of someone else’s personality, history, and concerns is how you create a wide range of distinctive characters with depth and relationships that feel authentic and unpredictable. It’s how you immerse your readers into a different culture, whether it’s one from the past, the far future, or simply elsewhere on the globe. The chance to inhabit the lives of other people is why many readers read. To succeed as a writer, you need to do it very well.
But getting out of your own head and into someone else’s is a lot harder than you might think. Most people naturally assume that they’re looking at the world in the only reasonable way — they’re seeing the world as it is, not as it filters through their own personality and experiences. This is why most writers, even the best ones, tend to build their characters from themselves, or at least parts of themselves. Hence the old joke that MFA programs tend to produce first novels about MFA writers who are struggling with their first novels.
But if you want to create characters who are more independent of you, then you need to learn to see past your own filters – to get out of your own head. There are a couple of techniques that can help.
The first and most obvious is to talk to other people, preferably people who think very differently from you. I’ve found that Facebook is a good venue for this, more than Twitter – it’s just ridiculous to expect people to pack complex thoughts into 140 characters. So look online for people who disagree with you on important matters, whether it’s Evangelical Christians or atheists, Trump supporters or Bernie Bros.
Then genuinely talk to them. Don’t simply trade talking points and barbs. Don’t troll them, and stay away from people who troll you. You’re looking for people who honestly disagree with you and are willing to open up about it. If you’re like me, you’ll soon discover that the people who disagree with you aren’t necessarily ignorant, venal, or stupid. They simply have their own way of looking at the world, their own priorities. Even if you still think they’re mistaken – and they may be – you’ll understand where they’re coming from.
Read. As I say, good writers let you see the world as someone else, often someone very different from yourself. Look for books that deliberately create this different sense of things, whether it’s a sympathetic look inside a serial killer (Joyce Carol Oates’ Zombie is a good example), or a vampire (I’d recommend Ann Rice rather than Twilight), or something even stranger. A personal favorite is C. J. Cherryh’s Wave Without a Shore, which is told from the point of view of a practicing solipsist – someone who believes that he is the only person who exists, and that everyone else on his planet is a figment of his own imagination.
I’ve just finished Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, whose narrator is an autistic teenager named Christopher. Haddon’s use of language and detail puts you very much in the mind of someone for whom minor deviations from routine are terrifyingly overwhelming, who has no idea how jokes and metaphors work, and who can only walk across a crowded train station by imagining a red line painted on the floor, leading him to where he’s going. Being in Christopher’s head can feel a little claustrophobic, but because you experience his world, you gain a real appreciation for his courage and ingenuity, even as he demonstrates just how hard he can be to live with.
Books from the past are even more effective at putting you into a different sort of mind, because here you aren’t just entering the head of an unusual individual. You’re inhabiting an entire forgotten culture. I’ve written before about how different eras have their own concerns and blind spots. When you read a book that was written in an earlier era, you immerse yourself in the view of the world they had then. You can come to understand why they believed what they did, strange as it may seem today, and perhaps learn to see some of your own historical blind spots.
I recently read a sermon given by John Tillotson before the House of Commons on Guy Fawkes’ day, 1678. The text he’s preaching from is the passage in the gospels (Luke 9:55 and 56, for those of you keeping score at home) where James and John want to call down fire from heaven to toast some people who turned Jesus away, and Jesus dresses them down for it.
The point of Tillotson’s sermon is that killing other people in the name of Christianity isn’t a very Christian thing to do. “As if he whom we call the Father of Mercies were delighted with Cruelty, and could not have a more pleasing Sacrifice offer’d to him than a Massacre, or to put a greater honor on his Priests than to make them Judges of an Inquisition; that is the Inventors and Decreers of Torments for Men more Righteous and Innocent than themselves.” Granted he does focus a fair amount of the sermon on how the Roman Catholic church broke this principle – Guy Fawkes was part of a Roman Catholic conspiracy to blow up Parliament, after all. But even there, he pulls himself back. “But I must remember my Text and take heed of imitating that Spirit which is there condemned, whilst I am inveighing against it.”
Tillotson’s point — that you can’t win people over by terrorizing them — seems blindingly obvious today. But it wasn’t at the time. The original Guy Fawkes plot took place only 73 years earlier, which meant there were still people alive who remembered it. A few decades before Tillotson preached the sermon, England had executed a king and fought civil wars over religious matters. Twenty years earlier, the Pilgrims in Boston were imprisoning Baptists and hanging Quakers. And the Salem witch trials were still a decade and a half in the future.
As I read this sermon, I felt like I was watching the Enlightenment take hold. Tillotson’s central idea had been floated before – in Luke, for instance — but this is where it first began to catch on. Tillotson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was a major force in the intellectual currents of his day. I can feel the hope behind his contention that you don’t have to destroy people who disagree with you. You can convince them. Everyone, regardless of what they believe, is blessed with the gift of reason, and appeals to good sense can break down the divisions between different camps and bring an end to the religious battles that had ripped apart Europe for a century and a half. Listening to Dr. Tillotson, I can feel the blossoming vision of a peaceful world in which all people are united and ruled by the dictates of right reason.
Of course, it’s turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. But being able to dip into that hopeful world takes me out of twenty-first century New England, and to an extent out of myself. It’s a chance to be someone very different for a while.
And that’s the point. You can’t ever get out of your own head entirely. But by entering into the head of someone else, you can learn to recognize that some of the truths you take for granted aren’t shared by everyone. If you do this often enough, it becomes easier to understand people – and to create characters – who are very different from each other and from you.
I’d love to hear what you have to say about getting into other people’s heads — the comments are half the fun. In addition, if you have any questions about your own work whose answers might be of general interest, please feel free to ask, either in the comments or on the Writer Unboxed Facebook page.
[coffee]
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
Hey, Dave:
I love this topic. I could write a book about it.
Oops. Too Late. Already did.
Seriously, it’s this habitation of a consciousness other than one’s own that makes characterization great fun — but also a bit odd. It can almost seem — for lack of a better word — mystical.
In Art of Character I describe the work as something akin to fingering smoke or mercury, or as having the adult version of an invisible friend. Sometimes we can create them, sometimes they emerge from our unconscious fully formed, most often it’s a back-and-forth effort between conscious and unconscious that leads us to that separate persona that is, nonetheless, a part of ourselves.
I think you’re right, that reading — especially when young — helps develop a “cast of characters” within one’s imagination who transmogrify into the various characters we employ in our stories.
But I also think, as you note, that personal engagement with people who are different than us is of particular usefulness. And I’d add that the opportunity to engage them in physical space, not just online, is immeasurably helpful.
The reason: people leave an impression on our minds, but also our bodies. We physically react to others. And this combination of physical and emotional effect is the source of many of our most unique characters. They’re the product of the other person and our inner impression, our understanding, of him or her.
I also think other people, real people, provide our best source of escaping types. Real people are a great lesson in contradiction — the more you know someone, the more you’re aware of how they’re wonderfully kind but also viciously self-critical; generous but also bigoted, etc.
Where real people fall short is in secrets — we typically don’t know another person’s secrets. (Or if we do, they’re probably confidences at that point.) Often, again, we need to return to books, biographies or novels, to understand how a person’s secrets affect their behavior.
But those two simple observations — a person’s contradictions and their secrets — can create an incredible portal to their uniqueness.
Last — since I know you’re also a musician — I often select a piece of music not as a theme song to conjure the character, but more as a representation of their yearning — the person they want to be, the way of life they want to live.
Example: the protagonist of my WIP is a young arts lawyer named Lisa Balamaro. She’s the middle child of a federal judge who has generally looked right past her to either her older brother, the golden boy, or her younger sister, the princess.
Lisa yearns to be seen as beautiful and talented. To capture that, I took the menuet section from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin: it’s courtly but playful, lovely but precise, with hints of the classic film scores that stole so liberally from Ravel. This is the world she yearns for, a kind of screwball comedy version of the French court.
And yet this morning, another piece of music started banging around inside my skull, and wouldn’t stop. It was Bernard Hermann’s theme from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And I realized that, if Ravel’s menuet was the positive aspect of Lisa’s yearning, this theme was a slightly darker, but still sentimentalized version. In the book she’s in love with a fascinating older man, one of her clients, a former rodeo rider who became the greatest forger of American western art in history. She fears the attraction she feels is an illusion — that, like Mrs. Muir, she will spend her life chasing a ghost.
Because music touches me in a particularly emotional way — beneath the chatter of words — these two pieces of music have opened this character up in truly unique ways. (She’s also a composite based on three women I know, and care for deeply.)
Sorry to have rattled on so long. As I said, it’s a topic that fascinates me. Wonderful post. Thanks for the Tillotson reference. Have an utterly grand day.
Very nice points, David. I particularly like the use of music to put yourself elsewhere emotionally. It is true that the best music captures someone else’s emotional state. Immersing yourself in it is another way to get out of yourself.
And, once again the comments section proves as valuable as the article itself.
Ahh, the peanut butter of WU followed by the jelly: great post further enlivened by a great comment.
Dave, I loved Curious Incident too—being in the narrator’s head was fresh and jarring, and intriguingly uncomfortable at times for the reasons you state.
My WIP’s protagonist is a problem drinker in post-Crash Prohibition days, and Depression history plays a significant part in the book (and in how he manages to continue drinking—and continue having problems). I do have to continue to remind myself that today’s concerns aren’t his own, though the larger life concerns do take on the universal. Thanks for a good post.
Great advice. Thanks for the post. Another way I’ve learned to understand how others see the world is by reading (thoughtful) reviews of books I’ve loved and even those I’ve put down, especially if they were well reviewed. It’s amazing and enlightening how much difference there is in what each reader takes away (or puts into) a story.
Another nice technique, akin to talking with people who disagree with you.
What a useful tip! I also read “contrary” reviews, but had not thought of the exercise in terms of “getting inside a potential character’s head”. I will hone in on that next time I’m scanning through the online reviews and thinking: “did this person read the same book as me?”.
I enjoyed this article. What you speak of takes a higher level of maturity than most people have…just stating the obvious. I actually found a respectful Atheist, I am a Christian, to discuss beliefs with on FB. He was very nice and helped me understand my questions. We talked for weeks asking each other questions. Now, he had great maturity all the people who throw barbs do NOT! I learned so much from him being a nice guy, not that I agreed, but I could have taken our conversation and created a character that was totally opposite from myself. If you can actually have these conversations with people who have opposing views, it WILL help your writing.
That’s exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.
And you’re right about civil discourse requiring a level of maturity that we’re seeing less and less of. Humans have been demonizing other groups — seeing them not as different or even mistaken but evil — since before history was written. But if you’re a writer, you need to overcome that tendency. Otherwise, all of your characters are either going to be you or caricatures of your enemies. And what’s the fun of reading about them?
Sometimes I think getting into the heads of our characters is a lot like acting. You immerse yourself in the backstory of another person, in the culture they come from, replete with worldview, clothing choices, cuisine. Maybe you even adopt an accent. Immersion. For me, travel helps. Being the ‘other’ in an unfamiliar place can cause a change in perspective.Even traveling from a small town to a big city for a day can shock you out of one world and into another.
The challenge for me is in creating distinctive voices, so that no two characters sound or feel alike. And my personal preference for getting out of my own head is a sojourn in Middle Earth, followed at a close second by 15th C. England. Thank you for a wonderful post!
Another good point that I’d missed — the way travel broadens the mind. You’re right that immersing yourself physically in a different culture can take you out of yourself in ways that the techniques I’ve mentioned here won’t. Foreign cultures are often most strikingly different in ways that don’t show up in most books.
I once spent some time in Bangkok, where I bought some fresh pineapple chunks from a street vendor. Along with them, he gave me a little packet of red and white flakes. I figured it was cinnamon and sugar or something similar. It was hot pepper and rock salt. That’s the sort of telling cultural detail that you probably won’t discover without going there.
If you read a lot ABOUT someone, your brain starts to sort out what could possibly underlie a person who does or says all these things, because the person is the source of it.
With some empathy, you can add what would be necessary for YOU to feel the same way, do the same things.
I find this comes in when I switch from the head of one of my three main characters to another, to write the next scene from a different pov. It takes time for me to change characters.
I think of it as literally getting out of the inside of one head, where I’m sitting right behind the eyeballs; and moving to another head, finding the controls, getting comfortable in the chair, rereading my notes and the previous scene from that pov, until I AM that other character again. Kind of like switching cars.
It is intense, but necessary. Or the characters all sound the same.
Yes, that’s a good description of the process. And I think it’s one that many writers don’t even realize they need to do. This may be why a lot of first novels are written in first person, from a single point of view. It saves you this effort.
Lazy writing – doing what saves you effort.
Writers need to do the HARD work, so readers can just lap it up. That’s why we get paid.
First person is fine for some detective stories (Sue Grafton is one of my favorites), where the reader and the detective discover things more or less simultaneously (I really hate it when the author hides things by telling you people talked, but suddenly not letting you listen).
It works well for stories like Jane Eyre, where the whole story is her telling what happened to her.
But it leaves out a lot of layers, and makes it awkward, for example, to present the same thing from two or three different points of view.
Too many close third povs gets tiring; Albert Zuckerman’s book Writing the Blockbuster Novel recommends a small number, and has an example by Ken Follet with four main characters (The Man from St. Petersburg).
Many novels have two – Romances do this a lot (though I don’t like the headhopping to show them semi-simultaneously).
I use three – which works perfectly for a triangle story. It is still wrenching to switch when I’m writing, because I get so invested in one.
This is a wonderful conversation.
The other day I drove along familiar roads trying to figure out s.th. about a wip – staring at the road ahead. When I turned my head I was startled to see nothing but flatness – my character is living in a alpine village – where was I i.e. she, what happened to the mountains through which she/I was driving – it was scary for a couple of seconds until I had relocated myself.
I’ve learned a lot reading this. Thank you, Dave. I will definitely get you a few cups of coffee.
I love your reference to John and James. After the dressing down, Jesus gave them, what I think might have been a tongue-in-cheek nickname, the Sons of Thunder. Chuckle.
I’d write more, as I did have one of those head-to-head discussions with a friend this recently, but I’m staring at the final chapter of a 50 page chunk due a certain editor. I’d like to get it in the cybermall this week. :)
Excellent post, Dave. We live in a day when exchanging insults is considered political dialogue. As writers, we have to get deeper than that (and as human beings, by the way). As a conservative, I have little trouble finding people to debate, especially among writer circles. And they are friends. I learn a lot about how other people think and can see their point of view. If we can’t understand those with whom we disagree, we have no hope of writing believable characters, unless they all share our political and religious beliefs, which would make for a boring story.
Another good place to study different thought is in the writing of the US Constitution. You cannot put together a more diverse-thinking room full of men at a time when an agreement was absolutely necessary for a new nation’s survival (we almost died at the age of 10). When you read some of the arguments posed over that long, hot summer, you almost find yourself agreeing with some really insane ideas. That’s when you know you can write that character, when he starts to make sense to you.
Thanks for a great post!
I may be at a bit of an advantage when it comes to talking to people who disagree with me. As an editor, one of my job skills is to convince writers to make changes — often deep changes — to the manuscript that is the child of their heart. It requires a fair amount of empathy and delicacy, explaining ideas in a way that they’re not only clear but non-threatening and even enticing. I find myself exercising those same skills when talking to people on Facebook.
And thanks for the suggestion about the deliberations on the Constitution. You’re right, it is a good example of intelligent, educated people of different opinions coming together to create a remarkable consensus document. Of course, the enlightenment was still in full swing, so they all believed in the dictates of right reason. That probably made things easier.
Watching Kirk Ellis’s wonderful John Adams miniseries on HBO right now. Your point about the US dying at age 10 is poignantly and powerfully captured there. Also a wonderful example of how fiercely opinionated people found common ground for the greater good.
We call that: the good old days.
Like I say, it’s hard to knock the dictates of right reason.
Of course, they also came up with that whole 3/5 of a person thing, so the dictates of right reason had their limitations.
Dave, the 3/5 person was insisted upon by the northern states. Southern states wanted slaves to count as a whole person, which would have gained them more congressional seats. Of course, the slaves couldn’t vote, so it did them no good. The northern states wanted the slaves to count for zero as far as congressional reresentation. 3/5 was the compromise, and it was beneficial for the anti-slavery movement.
I loved this post Dave and thanks to the other David too for his essay-worthy comment. I enjoy reading diaries and transcripts. Lately, I’ve been immersing myself into St. Joan of Arc and the trial transcripts afford a wonderful view into her voice and thinking. Reading the retrial gives one a good impression of what others thought about her. The portrait that emerges is full and vibrant.
My favorite novel that delves deeply into the psyche of the anti-hero is Hatter’s Castle by AJ Cronin. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it was his first book. Brilliant.
Thanks.
And old trial transcripts are a wonderful source of historical attitudes. One of the resources I recommend is a searchable archive of the transcripts of trials at The Old Bailey. (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) You can read about the Bow Street Runners, the earliest police force, professional thief takers, and wonderful little details, like this man taken up for trying to pass counterfeit Spanish coins who was acquitted because the jury didn’t think it was worth the bother.
https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t16940418-34
Thank you for this :) I do so love these kinds of details.
I love your point and it reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom last week. I told her that there is no right or wrong choice in politics. A voter’s background and their needs should reflect who they choose. So someone who is young and struggling might choose a different candidate than a CEO of a corporation.
Then I pointed out that since she counts on government programs, the VA and Social Security, for income, she might want to consider Bernie Sanders instead of Trump. You should have seen her face!
As I write my newest book, I am considering my protagonist’s life experiences, which are completely different from mine in every way. I am using logic, but base her decisions on her gifts, weaknesses and fears. It’s pretty cool to stand back and see what she does.
Actually, I think I want to push you even further. Sometimes, the people we disagree with are mistaken. The trick to really getting into their heads is to recognize that they are wrong but are still reasonable.
This is most critical when you’re creating a fully human villain. You want your villain to be doing something that your readers will recognize as clearly wrong, yet will understand why he or she is doing it. This sort of head is the hardest to project yourself into.
Hmm. All this lovey-dovey interaction among friends. Sort of makes this blog begin to look like a self-promotional site. Not trying to insult anyone, just sayin’.
How do we get into other people’s heads?
Don’t you remember how we play-acted as kids? No problem getting into other heads. Heck, I was often a horse in my play. Or a cowboy or an indian, or Aladdin with his lamp or the Queen of Sheba. No problem. The roles got a bit bigger and more complex as I got a bit older.
Are we, as adults, simply unable to think as children again? Except, of course, adults have experienced so much more in life, it gives us much more to investigate and play with.
Everyone together now. “Kum ba yah, my Lord . . . Kum ba yah . . . ”
Seriously, it’s a lot easier to learn to enter other people’s heads as a writer if you can revive that childhood ability to adopt different personas. There’s a bit more to it than that, a degree of sophistication we didn’t have as children. But I think the two are connected.
Dave-
You are wonderfully lucid on craft topics. Theology too. Who else could make comprehensible a 1678 sermon by John Tillotson on Guy Fawkes’ Day?
(BTW, hundreds of sermons have sprung from Luke 9:51-55. See https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/scripture/sermons-on-luke-951-955.asp?passage=luke%209:51-9:55)
Back in history, people were always preoccupied by the news, what was happening right in front of them. It’s as if the future of the world depended on what was happening right then, a focus on short term ripples over long term tides. We are the same.
Psychology and economics tell us that people are always self-interested. We judge, buy and vote according to what serves us, pleases us and affirms our inner beliefs about ourselves, others, the world. We follow scripts and imagine that everyone else should live according to ours.
You can see this when you go through a life struggle, say a divorce. Everyone cares yet everyone’s advice is to do what they did in the same situation.
The life research you are talking about is great advice. I find all kinds of people more than willing to talk about themselves. The trickier part is then allowing a character on the page to become independent of oneself, the author. Like everyone else, we want everyone else–even our characters–to think, feel, choose and live as we do.
As important, then, as listening and reading may be to getting out of one’s own head and into a character’s, I think it’s just as important to approach characters in a selfless and generous spirit.
Give them room. Give them freedom. Let go of control, which in writerly terms means one’s outline and plot requirements. “Set my people free” is easy to say, harder for us selfish human beings to do, even though we have been granted great freedom ourselves:
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
Getting into character’s heads means being open, accepting and generous in our own hearts. Thanks, Dave. I find your posts more helpful than I can say.
Thanks, Benjamin. Some nice insights there.
As an aside, those of you who follow my stuff know my hobby is antiquarian books. And early theological works are a great place to start since they are cheap and plentiful — I think I paid $10 on British eBay for the 1737 edition of Tillotson I read. I’d never heard of him before, but he is kind of fun to read — clear headed and often delightfully witty. He once summed up a complex epistemological argument with “He seems intent on establishing that no true statement could possibly be false. In this, I know of no one who disagrees.” (Quoted from memory.) And Dryden said he learned what he knew of style from reading Tillotson.
I’ve just picked up a copy of the 1692 edition of A Discourse on Pastoral Care by Gilbert Burnet. It sounds dead boring until you learn that Burnet went into voluntary exile when the Catholic-leaning James II took the throne in 1685. Burnet eventually wound up in the court of William of Orange, for which James tried him in absentia for treason. So, yes, I’m looking forward to reading what a man who was literally persecuted for his beliefs has to say about caring for parishioners.
What an enviable hobby!
This article was great and so were the comments. Thanks to all for chiming in. Just last night I thought how I’ve been married to my husband for 30 years but am still finding out new things about him–going deeper into who he is. Am listening to “The Hired Girl” by Laura Am Schiltz. AMAZING Book to show very different POV’s through the protagonists’s 14-year-old eyes.
I am consistently impressed by the comments that follow my articles. This month, in particular, they have amounted to essentially a second, complete article.
This is a great topic, Dave. I grew up very sheltered in SoCal suburbia, so when I was younger I had difficulty seeing the world from others’ points of view. Then in college I met people whom my neighbors in Perfectville USA could never understand: gangsters, drug addicts, illegal immigrants, extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. Folks on the fringe are often portrayed in books and on TV as mindless bullies and madmen, so I was shocked–shocked!–to discover that these people are actually people, with their own reasons for making the choices they did.
Now my difficulty isn’t understanding different mindsets, but conveying them to others who’ve never left Perfectville. Getting into the heads of my characters is only step one. After that, I have to somehow drag readers in there with me!
Good point. My current WIP takes place in the 1890s. I’m reading some books written in the 1890s that also take place in the 1890s. Because you have to. New England in the 1890s isn’t New England today, and I can’t pretend that it is, or that I can just make Character X have Y thoughts just because I want him to. You have to know the time you’re writing about.
Oh, by the 1890’s, you’ve got a lot of personal journals and newspapers to work with. Especially in New England.
Just a quick nineteenth-century New England story. A lot of farmers out here in the wilds of western Massachusetts used to keep a daily journal. The entries were usually no more than a sentence or two about farm matters — things like “rain in morning, laid half a rod of stone wall.” I suspect they were used to track when crops were planted from year to year and what the weather was doing. But personal details often slipped in.
My wife once transcribed the journal of a local farmer that covered the Civil War years. When the war first broke out, it was all he wrote about. And it was clear he was following events closely. He often mentioned the beginning of a given battle, then the next day told how it was continuing, then on the third day recorded the outcome. He clearly had access to a newspaper that was getting telegraphic reports from the front.
But as the war went on, the daily news of the farm started showing up more and more. He was clearly adjusting to the war as part of his daily life. And finally came the remarkable entry. “Memorial service for President Lincoln this morning. Have got a calf.”
To me this is the great joy and reward of both reading and writing: to see the world through someone else’s eyes and thus broaden our understanding of what it is to be alive. Thanks, Dave.
So much has been said already, but I’ll add this. In our age of 140 characters and vitriolic comments sections and FB blowups, the careful, thoughtful, immersive work of the writer feels all the more vital. We have a high calling and what can sometimes feel like a heavy burden. But may we count it a privilege to be part of helping readers (and ourselves as writers) do the important task of empathizing with and understanding those not like them.
I’ve written elsewhere about how, when your ideas are at the center of your writing, you’re unlikely to convince anyone. But characters and story can often win people over. I think the reason for that is we do lead readers to empathize with people they disagree with. And that helps break down the barriers between us and at least make civil conversation possible.
You’re right. Writers can do real good in the world.
This is good/interesting stuff to think about not just for our writing but from within the current political climate too. Understanding people who’s views we disagree with is so much harder (NOT that we need to try to agree) but the effort would probably help make us all better writers too…