In this episode of Fable and the Verbivore, we’re talking about empathetically embodying characters.

We open by calling back to the episode we did back in June about writing with empathy and adding in the idea of using a practice of embodying to connect more deeply with our characters. The word embody can be defined as:

• To give a concrete form to

• To express, personify, or exemplify

• To make corporeal, to give body to a spirit, or to incorporate

We also touch on how as writers getting into a character’s inner world can sometimes stop at their thoughts, which can tend to keep some of our characters at arms length from the readers. Writing characters that feel more real and we connect with deeply usually also means describing some of their emotional landscape and their physical sensations as well.

Because of this, we unpack some embodying practices and exercises that can help express or communicate a character’s inner world more fully. But we also acknowledge that this can be hard to do, because it does take actively stepping into their shoes (mentally, emotionally, and physically) and finding ways to translate what we don’t always have a good way of expressing even about our own inner worlds.

In our conversation, we touch on things like:

• Use an emotion or wound thesaurus like the ones by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman to move past more shallow and cliched emotions and descriptions to more nuanced, visceral, or specific ones

• Read over lists of powerful descriptor words for a feeling or experience and picking the specific one that resonates — For instance, words to describe pain

• Employ figurative language like a metaphor or simile — remember that we tend to feel metaphors closer since it’s a more direct connection than a simile

• Seek out how other individuals express these parts of their own inner world and work on doing personally exercises to create a vocabulary to communicate yours

• When you personally feel a strong emotion or physical sensation step back from it and observe — try to verbalize and put those observations into words

• Notice writing that you personally find affective (eliciting your emotion) or effective (making an experience visceral) — study what it does

• Pull from your own memory of difficult moments, physical sensations, or strong emotions — For example, how did your last sudden flash of rage feel? What did you do to try to calm yourself?

• Observe someone’s outer actions during difficult situations and imagine their inner world of emotions, fears, and sensations that accompanies it

• Seek out what an actor says about how they approached doing a difficult or emotive scene that you connect with. Often in interviews, they unpack what feelings and sensations they experienced during filming

• Look for where you’re forcing an emotion on your characters and see if another more surprising or nuanced emotion is underneath — For example, anger that’s covering up grief

• Get your character’s action in your body and/or words in your throat and pay attention to your sensations

• General or overt emotions tend to leave us a little unmoved. The more specific and immersive the experience, the more likely our mirror neurons will activate and help us to feel them too.

As we close this episode, we talk a little about how this process can also just be used as a practice in building active empathy for others. That acknowledging that we all have complex inner worlds and trying to understand them can help us more easily see things from each other’s point of view.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Next week, we’ll be taking this topic a little deeper by unpacking the book “Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors” by Brandilyn Collins.

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Though we don’t directly mention them by name, these previous episodes are connected with this series:

• Episode 31: Writing diverse characters

• Episode 188: Neurodivergence and Creativity Part 1

• Episode 189: Neurodivergence and Creativity Part 2

• Episode 190: A panel on neurodiversity and creativity

• Episode 202: Language affects perception

• Episode 239: Writing with Disabilities

• Episode 240: Writing Characters with Disabilities

• Episode 241: Diversity in Six of Crows

As part of this discussion, we use this definition of embodying:

• “To give a concrete form to; To express, personify, or exemplify; To make corporeal, to give body to a spirit, or to incorporate.”

Here are a few articles and videos we consulted in preparation for this episode:

• Amy Tan Teaches Fiction, Memory, and Imagination Masterclass Video “3. Memory, Truth, and Imagination”

• TedEd Video “How to write descriptively - Nalo Hopkinson”

• Diane Callahan Quotidian Video “Writing Fiction with Emotional Honesty”

• Jericho Writers Article “Emotions In Writing: How To Make Your Readers Feel”

• Writers Helping Writers Website & “https://onestopforwriters.com/thesaurus”

• LitHub.com Article “Nicola Griffith on Writing Immersive Historical Fiction”

• Writer’s Digest Article “The Journey of Character Creation: How Trauma and Empathy Inspire Fiction”

• The Guardian Article “Character building and what makes a truly great actor”

• Arts.ac.uk Article “Techniques: Get audition ready- Embody a character”

• Mariam-Webster.com Definition of Empathy

• GreaterGood.Berkely.Org Article “What is Empathy?”

• Linda S. Clare Article “Writing with Empathy”

Books and Films Mentioned:

• The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression (Second Edition) by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

• The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)