Writing Empathy Series Part Three: Empathy for your READER 

We’re delighted to share PART THREE of our WRITING EMPATHY SERIES! (Read part One, and Two)

Empathy for your READER 

By Jen Braaksma 

There’s a girl. She’s 16, and her world has just shattered. Unexpectedly, suddenly, shockingly, her parents announce their divorce. There’d been no fights, no tension, no problems in their house, so why? She doesn’t have answers. All she has are deep, overwhelming emotions. Sadness, fear, anger, loneliness. She’s lived in a comfortable middle-class town her whole life, yet still she feels lost. Her friends, none of whom have divorced parents, don’t understand the big deal; she gets to stay in her house and stay at her school. So what does it matter if she now only sees her dad once a week? She’s hurt by their callousness, though she doesn’t blame them. And she feels incredibly guilty, too. What did she do—or not do—that could have driven her parents apart? All she wants now is to escape into a world where other people, other characters, may actually understand her so she doesn’t feel so alone.

Does this sound like someone you know? Or have read about?

She doesn’t actually exists. She’s a composite in my mind, a combination of real people and characters I made up. 

But she’s my ideal reader. 

And she is why I need to write. 

If we must have empathy for ourselves as writers (and we do) and we must have empathy for our characters, then we must also have empathy for our readers. We write for them. 

It may feel silly to think like that, especially if you haven’t yet been published, or you choose not to publish. But writing is only half the story. Reading is the other half. Without readers, our stories shrivel on the page. 

But who are those readers? Everyone who buys your book? Your family or friends who read your drafts? Yes and no. Too many people have too many tastes; no matter the real people in your life, you may not please everyone. So who do you write for?

One person. Choose an ideal reader, someone you imagine would most benefit from reading your story. It could be a real person, or completely fictional, or, like mine, a composite. But it’s someone to whom you answer as a writer. Imagine your ideal reader sitting beside you, reading over your shoulder as you write. Is what you say going to resonate with them? Help them cope? Or learn something or escape into your story? If not, maybe you want to revise what you’ve written. But if your story is exactly what your ideal reader needs, then you’re well on your way to a meaningful book. 

That’s why you have to keep writing. Your ideal reader—who may very well translate into a real reader in the real world—needs you. Only you can write your story, so if you give up, you risk giving up on your reader. 

The most challenging part about holding onto empathy for our readers is that we may never know our impact. May I assume you don’t contact every author whose stories have touched your heart? Neither will all your readers. We can’t possibly know the extent of our impact, which means we have to keep going. If there’s one reader, like my ideal reader, who has issues with her parents and can benefit reading from my young adult fantasy novel, Evangeline’s Heaven, a story about Lucifer’s daughter, then it’s worth my effort, whether I know of that benefit or not.

My reader—ideal or real—is therefore worth my empathy. So for her, whomever she is, I’ll keep writing. 

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Evangeline’s Heaven

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