The Writer's Comfort Levels
~ PART 12 ~
"Empathy"
BLOG SESSION
February 8th, 2018
Welcome back Writers, Authors, Poets, Novelists, Memoirists, Journalists, Diary Writers, Short Story Writers, Blog Readers, Followers & Visitors!
You are in for a very special session concerning our continuing topic in relation to The Writer's Comfort Levels. Today's Session will be focused on the emotion of "empathy".
If you are new to our Blog Sessions, we welcome you. You're in the right place, and you will find information here that you will be able to take notes on and keep for later use to help you with your Book Writing Projects. We use our Journals when we come here to take notes. If you do not yet have a blank Journal, be sure to grab one the next time you are out shopping, or you may use any notebook that you have around the house or your office for today's Blog Session . . .
Journal Notes
As you begin to start your note-taking for today, please make a note that we are now on emotion #12 ~ "Empathy". The first eleven (11) emotions have been covered in our previous Blog Sessions. Following is the complete list of all of the (21) twenty-one emotions that we are going over during our Blog Sessions connected to The Writer's Comfort Levels. . .
1) Sadness (Sorrow)
2) True intensity
3) Joy
4) Disappointment
5) Wonder
6) Curiosity
7) Betrayal
8) Hurt
9) Grief
10) Passion
11) Warmth
12) Empathy
13) Fear
14) Hate
15) Happiness
16) Anger
17) Disgust
18) Shock
19) Kindness
20) introversion (personality)
21) extroversion (personality)
If you missed any of our Blog Sessions on emotions 1 - 11, you may easily review and read any of those Sessions by scrolling down past this current Blog Session or by clicking on any of the links you are interested in over in the far right-hand column where you see the heading, "Blog Archive".
If you are new, be sure to Bookmark our Blog, and you may also sign up to "Follow by Email" right under my eyeball in the far right-hand column. Enter your email address, then click on the "Submit" button. You will then receive each Blog Session in your email box as soon as the Session is published. You'll find that option to be very convenient.
There is one question that you may want to ask yourself today as we get rolling on our Blog Session, (and be sure to make a note of your answer)....
To start your notes off for today's Session the question is ~ "Do you personally have empathy?" [Please make a note of your answer in your Journal].
As you can see from reading our heading for today's Blog Session, Empathy is the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings; and identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.
Babies intuitively have the capacity
to empathize with others.
If you really take a moment to think on this one question, you will learn a lot about yourself today. How tuned in are you to others? How much to you really care about others and what is going on around you?
To empathize is to understand or relate to someone else's emotional experience. If you get teary-eyed upon hearing about the death of your friend's family member, you are actually empathizing with your friend and feeling their emotions right along with them.
As a Writer, you must be able to "feel" your characters (and empathize so to speak), and you should also be able to describe their emotional states well in your story.
Empathize is often used interchangeably with the term sympathize, but you'll get no empathy (or sympathy) from usage experts if you confuse the two. When you sympathize with another person, you feel sad that she is suffering, but you don't necessarily relate to her experience.
It is easiest to empathize when you've been through a similar experience; for example, if your relative recently passed away, your friend's passing relative story will also break your heart due to empathy.
Writer ~ Take a moment to think...
How well can you describe a storyline about something that seeks for the Reader to have empathy for the character?
How good are you at creating characters that are able to empathize with other characters in your story?
Try your hand at writing a simple paragraph with a descriptive situation involving the emotion of "empathy".
As you reflect on the emotion of empathy, be sure to make notes about what you are discovering so that you will be able to write storylines easily concerning the emotion of empathy.
As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, of if you'd like to have discussions here on the Blog about a certain topic ~ be sure to place your questions, suggestions, or discussion ideas in our "Comments Section" at the bottom of our Blog here.
Writers, Authors & Novelists ~ We'll see you in our next Blog Session!
The Writer's Comfort Levels
PART 13
"Fear"
Peace, Love & Light
By René Allen
©Copyright - René Allen - 2014-2018 - All Rights Reserved
