Caring about Real People

If you want to write quality fiction that people will want to read, and that will get published, your writing must have believable, vivid characters that your readers will care about. The reader must love your heroes and hate your villains, or vice-versa. Apathy is not an option. You probably already knew that.

You're probably already trying to do this in your flash fiction, short stories or novel. For the reader to care about your characters, you need to care about them first. You already knew that too, though.

You are never going to truly care about fictional people (characters) unless you first care about real people. I don't mean you have to be a social animal. You do need to understand and care about people – real people that are in your life.

Do you observe people – are you a people-watcher? You should be. It's great fun, and very educational to watch the people in the world around you. Look at how they dress, how they interact, speak, walk, drive and sop. Guess their relationships to others, their background and wealth. Hypothesise: what are their motivations, their frustrations, their fears? Once you start people-watching, you won't be able to stop, and you'll have a steady stream of potential character traits entering your sub-conscious, ready to be pillaged for future works.

Caring about people is deeper than people watching. You have to talk with people – not to people, but with them. When in doubt, shut up and listen. Listen and find out what is making the other person happy, or sad. Have empathy, and show it, within reason. Help others with their problems: as a person this is always a sound investment of time and money. As a writer, the increased richness of your experience ad your personality will flow through the quality of the words on the page.

Good fiction writing demonstrates profound truths about human nature and relationships through real characters. You will only ever achieve this by caring about real people. And even if you only ever write rubbish, and you never get published, you will have become a better person, and be certain to have made some true friends along the journey.

Do you find that the quality of your fiction writing is improved by caring about real people? Have you seen this in other writers – good or bad? Please share your comments below.