“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”
~Scott Fitzgerald

The Importance of Creating Empathy for Protagonists

Characters in stories come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and personalities. They can be developed with an infinite variety of beliefs, biases, strengths, weaknesses, powers, faiths, and abilities.

However, characters who we, the audience, care enough about to follow must be compelling to us in some meaningful, hopefully deep way, even when we don’t know why. In most cases, for stories to become both memorable and popular, the viewers (the audience) must willingly suspend their disbelief that a character is fictional and begin to care about what happens to the him or her.

Achieving that is on the creator(s) of a successful dramatic work.

Understanding the Audience Connection to the Hero

The audience must give a damn about the singular character we follow who is in search of a powerful goal in need of a resolution. That character, as we know, is the protagonist, or hero, if you prefer.

Caring deeply about the hero, at least for the time that we spend in his or her company as they go about their quest-like adventure is requisite. This emotional attachment can be for the approximately two hours we spend watching a movie, or the many hours and years it can take to follow an entire television series, or for the hours or days it may take to read a novel.

• Do you care about Clarice Starling as she hunts for Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs”?
• Do you care about Ellen Ripley as she works hard to avoid being killed by that big, slimy Alien in various “Alien” movies?
• Do you care about Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos” as he barrels through New Jersey as a brutal mob boss and anxiety-riddled husband and father?
• Do you care about Princess Leia as she tries to stop the Empire from crushing the rebellion in a series of “Star Wars” movies?
• Do you care about James Bond putting an end (with prejudice) to all those bad guys in every James Bond spy adventure?
• Do you care about Walter White as he gamely continues manufacturing and selling meth in the desert southwest while evading capture by the law or being killed by the Mexican drug cartel in “Breaking Bad”?

Why do we care about any of these people? Would you continue watching any of those stories if you didn’t care about the hero?

I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t last very long if not.

We sometimes care about the characters surrounding the protagonist, too. This can include sidekicks, allies, family, friends, colleagues, pets, even entire societies or worlds. This is also extremely useful toward the success of your work.

It can also be very helpful for the success or failure of any story if we care in some significant way about the antagonist, even if it only means having a strong feeling about his or her demise. Feeling something is what we creators work to induce in the audience.

The Audience Ought to Feel What the Protagonist Feels

To create empathy for protagonists, it’s our job as writers to make audiences feel – not think. Thinking is for school and work and for creators as they create. The audience must feel something viscerally about your story – not consider it intellectually or academically. What audiences typically feel is some kind of empathy toward the protagonist and contempt for the antagonist. Both register emotional reactions in the audience – and that is our primary goal, to get a reaction that draws us in.

If viewers don’t care about the hero, then he or she will quickly become forgettable. And that is, without question, the kiss of death for any story, especially in a dramatic work.

For the audience to care about the protagonist we writers need to find a way to create empathy for that character. So, how do we do that? How do we sway an audience to care? Simple to say, somewhat harder to do.

The most effective way to draw in an audience and hold them is to ratchet up pressure on the protagonist as the story unfolds so that he or she, and thereby we, feel squeezed right alongside the hero. Whenever we watch a motion picture, we live vicariously through the protagonist’s eyes as they experience their journey to their goal. We feel along with them as we pull for their success (although we’ll feel for our hero even if his or her quest ends in failure). And therein lies our big opportunity to generate empathy because the harder it is for the hero to achieve his or her goal, the more the audience feels that pressure building, and the more they’ll empathize.

I’m going to take a leap of faith and assume that you have felt enormous pressure about something in your life. Or more likely many things. When we watch a motion picture or read a novel, we will quite naturally and easily feel the protagonist’s drive and desire to reach a goal and enter into a temporary implied contract with our hero hoping and wishing for his or her success.

Techniques for Creating Empathy for Protagonists

Ramp up the pressure as the story proceeds.

One of the secrets to making a great character great is to put him or her into a cauldron of ever-increasing pressure until the ultimate goal (the story’s superobjective) is resolved. Successful storytellers make the obstacles to the protagonist’s success more and more intense as the story unfolds. This is called “rising action,” and will be discussed in a future article.

Choices Make Character

Pressure forces characters to make choices. Those choices that a character makes tells viewers all about the character—often without having to comment further. Put your hero in such a pressure cooker and see what happens.

• In “Dirty Harry,” Harry Callahan (an anti-hero, if ever there was one) starts his story by investigating what appears to be a random shooting of a woman swimming in a rooftop pool.
• In “Psycho,” Marion Crane is having an affair and needs money, which she steals from one of her boss’s big clients.
• In “The Godfather,” Michael Corleone is making a point to not become like the rest of his family, which, of course, he can’t escape.

What does ever increasing pressure do to each of these well-known characters, and how do they react to it and function under it? Are they given reprieves along the way? Are their lives made easier by the storytellers? Of course not. That would be boring – and that’s the number one cardinal sin of storytelling. Don’t ever be boring!

In memorable, popular movies and TV shows, pressure will always ratchet up on the protagonist, never down.

Pressure must always rise.

The writer must not feel sorry for the protagonist.

Most importantly, you, the writer, can’t make the mistake of empathizing with your own protagonist.

That’s for the audience, not you.

Whatever you do, do not feel sorry for your protagonist. You must become their most intractable taskmaster. It’s on you, the creator of the world in which the protagonist lives to make every step he or she takes extremely challenging, if not brutally so.

In short, you must put the hero through hell.

You get to beat them up. A lot.

Infusing Conflict for Audience Engagement

Audiences love non-stop conflict.

The best way to put you protagonist under continuous pressure is to infuse conflict in every moment of your story.  Remember the definition of conflict is C = D+O.

Conflict equals Desire plus an Obstacle.

That means you must continually put ever more challenging barriers in the protagonist’s path toward reaching his or her goal.

I’ve taught students for many years this analogy: your story should begin with the protagonist pinned to the floor. His or her neck should be beneath your solidly booted foot as you step down firmly. They can’t get up, they can barely move, and they are having a tough time breathing and speaking. It’s a highly effective technique to put your hero under severe pressure at the outset of your tale. As the story progresses, you step down harder and harder on their neck, never for an instant letting up. Continue to apply this increasing pressure until you reach the resolution. Then—and only then—may you allow the hero to find some relief.

Sounds sadistic, I know.

But here’s the good (albeit counterintuitive) news: if you are relentlessly tough on the protagonist, the audience will love you for it.

At the story’s resolution, the audience is likely to experience that most glorious of storytelling elements, catharsis. If your protagonist achieves catharsis, then it is highly probable the audience will, too. If so, the chances increase that the audience will walk out of the theatre (or click off their TV or close your book) and tell their family and friends they need to see your great movie, TV show, play, or read your book.

And when that happens? You are likely to get rich.

Won’t that be fun?

So, kick all your principal characters hard, especially when they’re down. Be relentless. Show them absolutely no mercy whatsoever. Give them no reprieves.

It’s completely legal for you to do so. In fact, it’s the only time I know of in life when it’s a very good thing to do. People will ultimately commend you for it – and I believe it may well be good for your career.

So, get cracking.

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if only one remembers to turn on the light.”
~Dumbledore, In “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

As a writer, how do you creating empathy for protagonists? Comment below!