The Writer - 04.2020

writermag.com • The Writer | 9

is...well, always: We start to only pay
attention to the things that support
and confirm our point of view. In
everyday relations, this results in
#awkward moments, hurt feelings,
missed opportunities.
When writers fall prey to uncon-
scious bias, we can only see the charac-
ters we expect to see. We can’t see the
things that might make them shine.
First, I’d like you to take a break
here and think about your favorite
characters in literature, the most mem-
orable ones. Ask yourself what you
really liked about them. Odds are,
you’ll find that they were unusual in
some way, that they broke the mold
you expected.
Me, I love Mole, from The Wind in
the Willows. Here he is, a pleasant fel-
low, who’s decided he’s tired of his old
life and needs a new one. (In the origi-
nal Ernest H. Shepard illustrations, he
is wearing a smoking jacket and slip-
pers when we meet him – can’t you just
picture him?) And then! Out of
nowhere, one day he begins to follow
his nose, and it leads him and his
friend Ratty back to his unattended,
dusty old burrow, where we find that
he is really a worrisome, annoying
character. He’s not really capable, or not
as much as we thought he was, anyway.
Here’s another example. In Dick
Francis’ Proof, the hero, Tony Beach,
keeps telling us about how he doesn’t
stand out at all. How he’s really a failure
compared to his brave father, who died
in battle and won the Victoria Cross, or
his mother, who is a huntmaster. It’s
kind of true. Tony mooches around,
feeling sorry for himself. He thinks
about his dead wife a lot, keeps out of
the way of danger. But then, sheer bore-
dom drives him to take part in a police
investigation, and we discover someone
more interesting hidden beneath the
sorrow and quotidian occupations.
What about these characters sur-
prises us? If you drill down deep, you
might find that you’re suffering from a

little bounded awareness yourself, as a

reader. Maybe you love these charac-

ters because they’re acting in ways you

didn’t expect people in their circum-

stances to act.

How do we write these characters,

then? Each one is an individual; each

of them has a unique storyline, a

unique point of view. Ask yourself,

what circumstances will make them

act differently?

So now we come around to the

crux of the matter. Writing multi-

dimensional, interesting characters

isn’t just about the characters them-

selves – it’s about the situations you

can find to put them in. Some ques-

tions for you: What can you do to this

character to make them act in a way

that we wouldn’t expect them to act?

What situations can this character put

him- or herself into that will really

push the limits of that character’s own

bounded awareness?

In the case of Tony Beach, he

[spoiler alert] would have never

guessed that two guys in bad wigs

would break into his unassuming little

wine shop. In the case of Mole, he

could have never foreseen that his best

friend in the whole wide world, whom

he loves and respects, would actually

visit Mole’s cobwebby old hovel.

One more thing I want to point out

here. Some scientists studying the ben-

efits of literature found that reading lit-

erary fiction fosters empathy. An

article about the study noted that char-

acters in literary fiction “disrupt reader

expectations, undermining prejudices

and stereotypes,” which in turn forces

readers to imagine what those charac-

ters might be thinking of, why they’re

reacting the way they are.

Writers, I think, would be well

served to remember this empathy,

with a twist on it: Putting yourself in a

frame of mind to feel empathy for the

characters you’re writing might be the

best way you have of writing charac-

ters who feel real, as opposed to

characters who merely fulfill our read-

ers’ expectations.

Yi Shun Lai is the fiction editor and co-owner

of Tahoma Literary Review. Read about her

writing coaching and editing services; her

novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadven-

tures of Marty Wu; and her daily adventures at

thegooddirt.org.

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