HOW TO GET INSIDE A CHARACTER'S HEAD

 

In Writer’s Helping Writer’s website, a young man once asked, “How can I go about writing a woman’s voice?” Good question. How does a man write from a woman’s perspective? He can know some things viscerally through observation and through conversation, but he hasn’t had a woman’s experience. He can never know what it’s like to be a woman in a man’s world. He can only know second hand what it feels like to carry a child, or to give birth. He will never fully understand how vulnerable women often feel venturing out into the night and the need to protect herself from unwanted advances.  So how is it possible for any of us to write from someone else’s perspective? I mean, as writer’s that’s what we’re expected to do, right?

IN MY OWN EXPERIENCE:

When I wrote about artist Tom Thomson for my new book, Gift of the Loon, I felt intimidated. Not only was Tom Thomson of the male persuasion, he is also a famous artist. People already have pre-conceived ideas of what he is like. To some he was a lady’s man, to others he was the quintessential Canadian artist, to yet others, he was the consummate outdoors man who enjoyed fishing and canoeing.

As a Tom Thomson fan, I had already read a lot about his life. But that only gave me an outside view based on someone else’s perspective. What I needed to know was, who is Tom Thomson, the man? It was then a writer friend suggested reading his letters. This is not something we can do today as people don't write letters much anymore. But in the early 1900s it was a common practice. Reading Tom Thomson's letters gave me an idea of the things he was interested in, how he spoke, how he related to others, and how he felt about things.

Of course, this can’t go all the way to helping you know another person. At some point, I had to dive in and create my own interpretation of what I thought Thomson was like based on all the information I had gathered.

TAKE THE PLUNGE:

Instead of trying to placate other people’s expectations about what Thomson was like, I decided to dive in and surprise my reader by having him go head to head with my main character, Margaret Harrison. Maggie is a force of nature, a woman out of her time who was trying to find a place for herself in the art world of the early 1900s. To do this she has had to go against her family, and the society in which she lived in. So when Maggie and Tom meet, sparks fly in the form of words bouncing back and forth as Maggie challenges Tom at every turn. The fun part is, Tom just gives it right back to her. At times it’s funny to watch them act like an old married couple. At other times, it’s interesting to watch Maggie challenge Tom’s thinking. I soon began to feel confident in how these two people related to each other.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING:

To answer the young man’s question at the beginning of this post, “How does a man write from a woman’s perspective?” I would suggest, he can’t. Not really. How can he? But he can talk to the women in his life and find out how they feel about things. He can read biographies about women to learn how they lived their lives to gain some perspective. He can pay attention to how women move and act in the movies and in real life. He could even read a few romance novels to learn about what women hope for, but rarely experience in the romance department. And particularly how women sometimes feel threatened by men who want more from them than they are willing to give. Once he’s done all he can to learn about life from a woman’s perspective, he will be in a better position to write about her. 

EMPATHY:

When writing about any type of character, it is important to be empathetic toward the person you are writing. Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feeling in a situation from their point of view, rather than your own.  It’s climbing down into the hole to sit beside them, making yourself vulnerable to sincerely connect with them. In order to write about a different type of person than you, it’s important to be able to walk in their shoes and imagine how they might react to certain stimuli based on what you have learned about that person. Only then can you write convincing characters.