The Angles of Your Life
You have many stories about you to write…from different angles.
Go ahead and admit it…everything you write is about you!
It’s ok, there’s really no way around it. Everything you write about is from behind your eyes, even if you write a biography of somebody else.
All of the characters that you create have traits of you, no matter what you do. You can’t change that because everything you write is from your perspective and always will be.
You’re not locked into only your perspective though.
We have an ability called empathy. This allows us to, as the old saying goes, put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.
We can see an event from the other person’s perspective. It’s impossible to trade places completely with another person, except in the movies, but it helps us to understand the other’s reactions to events.
We change our angle of perspective!
We shift from looking behind our own eyes to looking behind their eyes. It might be only a glimpse, but it’s enough.
I’m going to harbor a guess and say all good writers are highly empathetic. I don’t believe anyone can write their whole life from only their own perspective and be judged as a quality writer.
