10 Ways To Create Immediate Character Empathy

10 Ways To Create Immediate Character Empathy 10 Ways To Create Immediate Character Empathy Need fast, practical help getting readers to care about your main character? Enjoy this blog by my friend and colleague, an award-winning, bestselling novelist. JJ Guest post by Brandilyn Collins Regardless of genre, novelists must create empathy for protagonists at their first appearance. Mere actionisn’t enough! The most interesting plot won’t matter to readers if they don’t care about your main character. Here’s how to make that happen. Most of these work best when combined with at least one other. Your character must be: Need help writing your novel?Click here to download my ultimate 12-step guide. 1. Displaying a valued trait such as loyalty, love, or courage. Especially important if the protagonist soon makes a bad choice. It’s far easier to create empathy for a character right away than to erase negativity. So before he makes any negative choice, show your protagonist help a child, tend a sick person, stand up for a friend†¦ 2. Particularly good at something. People enjoy watching real talent. This approach involves details. Don’t merely tell us a hunter is efficient with a gun. Show him treating the weapon lovingly, oiling it, practicing with it. Besides a keen eye, maybe he smells prey before seeing it. 3. Treated unjustly. This approach can work on its own, although other techniques can enhance it. It’s human nature to feel bad for someone who meets injustice. 4. Wishing for something universally understood. This includes love, acceptance, purpose. Such desires help soften characters- even those who first come across as selfish or uncaring. So this is a great approach to characters harder to like. 5. Thrust into danger. Anything from facing a storm to a bad guy with a gun. But because we’ve read so many danger-filled scenes, use at least one other technique to make us care about the character. 6. Thrust into grief. The challenge here is that readers don’t yet know the character well enough to feel her pain. But resist the temptation to load in a bunch of backstory to enhance the grief. It’ll slow your story. Find ways to incorporate other empathy approaches within the action. 7. Caring for others, especially at a cost to oneself. Known as a pet-the-dog scene, the Bad Guy shows his tender side: kill the human, kiss the hound. Two points to remember when using this technique: (A) Overdone, the scene can become syrupy. (B) The caring needs to be unassuming. A true caregiver doesn’t stop to think how kind he’s being. 8. Unique, attention-getting. Your character may do off-the-wall things, may look different or think in unique ways, may have an unusual first-person voice. The possibilities are many. This approach needs to be mixed with at least one other. A character can act in all sorts of unusual ways to make you look twice. That doesn’t mean you’ll like him enough to keep reading. 9. Attempting to overcome a fear or make a change. Readers identify with this. We don’t like facing our fears or change. But two challenges: (A) Present the problem clearly enough that readers understand what’s must be overcome and why it’s so hard for the character- without loading in backstory. (B) Sometimes this is more of an internal battle. The character may be deciding whether to walk out on a relationship, or he may have conflicting desires. To make an inner struggle compelling in the opening scene, put it in the context of action. 10. Facing an inner struggle. Differs from #9 in that the character isn’t trying to make a change. She doesn’t know how to handle a burden- guilt, depression, bitterness, jealousy, hate Sometimes the character doesn’t even know she’s burdened. She may be in bondage due to intense bitterness but not realize it. In this case, give the reader just enough information to understand more about the character than the character understands about herself. Just remember that you want the reader to like your character, not think she’s an idiot. Again, it helps to mix in other approaches. Exercise Read the opening scenes to at least five novels you’ve enjoyed. Which techniques were used, and how were they combined? Then read your novel’s first scene. Will readers empathize with your protagonist by the end of it? See how others- who’ll be honest with you- react. Brandilyn Collins (www.brandilyncollins.com) is a best-selling author of 30 books. She isknown for her Seatbelt Suspense ®- fast-paced, character-driven novels with myriad twists and a thread of faith. Brandilyn teaches fiction-writing techniques in her book Getting Into Character. She has won numerous writing awards and is a frequent speaker at writers conferences. Brandilyn and her husband have three grown children and live in the Pacific Northwest. Which of her techniques above will help your work-in-progress? Tell me in the Comments below. Need help writing your novel?Click here to download my ultimate 12-step guide.

The Factorial (!) in Mathematics and Statistics

The Factorial (!) in Mathematics and Statistics In mathematics, symbols that have certain meanings in the English language can mean very specialized and different things. For example, consider the following expression: 3! No, we did not use the exclamation point to show that we’re excited about three, and we shouldn’t read the last sentence with emphasis. In mathematics, the expression 3! is read as three factorial and is really a shorthand way to denote the multiplication of several consecutive whole numbers. Since there are many places throughout mathematics and statistics where we need to multiply numbers together, the factorial is quite useful. Some of the main places where it shows up are combinatorics and probability calculus. Definition The definition of the factorial is that for any positive whole number n, the factorial: n! n x (n -1) x (n - 2) x . . . x 2 x 1 Examples for Small Values First we will look at a few examples of the factorial with small values of n: 1! 12! 2 x 1 23! 3 x 2 x 1 64! 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 245! 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 1206! 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 7207! 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 50408! 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 403209! 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 36288010! 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 3628800 As we can see the factorial gets very large very quickly. Something that may seem small, such as 20! actually has 19 digits. Factorials are easy to compute, but they can be somewhat tedious to calculate. Fortunately, many calculators have a factorial key (look for the ! symbol). This function of the calculator will automate the multiplications. A Special Case One other value of the factorial  and one for which the standard definition above does not hold is that of zero factorial. If we follow the formula, then we would not arrive at any value for 0!. There are no positive whole numbers less than 0. For several reasons, it is appropriate to define 0! 1. The factorial for this value shows up particularly in the formulas for combinations and permutations. More Advanced Calculations When dealing with calculations, it is important to think before we press the factorial key on our calculator. To calculate an expression such as 100!/98! there are a couple of different ways of going about this. One way is to use a calculator to find both 100! and 98!, then divide one by the other. Although this is a direct way to calculate, it has some difficulties associated with it. Some calculators cannot handle expressions as large as 100! 9.33262154 x 10157. (The expression 10157 is a scientific notation that means that we multiply by 1 followed by 157 zeros.) Not only is this number massive, but it is also only an estimate to the real value of 100! Another way to simplify an expression with factorials like the one seen here does not require a calculator at all. The way to approach this problem is to recognize that we can rewrite 100! not as 100 x 99 x 98 x 97 x . . . x 2 x 1, but instead as 100 x 99 x 98! The expression 100!/98! now becomes (100 x 99 x 98!)/98! 100 x 99 9900.