The empathy equation

Over the Easter weekend I decided to revise an old story.  I liked the idea of the previous version, but it was very short. My original had a very hip character going through a major life change that didn't change him enough.  I loved the idea, and thought it really did have mileage.  

But when I re-read my original story I realised my character came across as unsympathetic and shallow. And to add to the story's problems, he'd done something very bad and wasn't getting his just rewards.  He spent half the story whining about his punishment.

My character was a classic antihero, so I'd have to work much harder to get the reader to empathise with him.  Part of my problem was the brevity of the story.  I hadn't devoted enough attention to the enormous change processes going on in his mind.  

The idea of the story was to show how walking in another's shoes for a while can foster understanding and empathy.  My character was being forced to examine his beliefs and values, and examine his life script.  But I needed to get these changes across through his thought processes.  So I got him feeling bone-deep fear for the first time in his life,

He had a callous disregard for the needs of the women he met, and I needed to know how he got this  lack of sensitivity.  So I added a family background of an abusive father who also disrespected women.  Now he was becoming understandable.

He'd been sentenced to a year of a most unusual treatment.  I had to go with him on his journey through that year. I needed to chart the changes in his attitudes and show the new person emerging.  At the end of his sentence he has the opportunity to return to his old life.  In the original version he hadn't changed enough and got off too lightly by riding off into the sunset to a town where he'd be understood.

In my new version, he discovers that his actions prompted a woman to commit suicide.  He visits the spot where she died.  I wanted him to face up to the stark reality of what he'd done, and finally take responsibility for her death.  I wanted him to have to actively choose whether to take the easy option or to continue the hard work he'd been doing to reinvent himself.  My rewritten end is more ambivalent.  We get a sense that life isn't going to be easy for him, which is as it should be.

The rewritten story ended up three times the length of the original, and for once, more is more.  The story's now packed with his emotional reactions and his unfolding realisations of how he came to that place.  I now think it packs a powerful punch.  Let's hope the magazine I've just sent it to feels the same way.