Let's Start With A Little Empathy
-Sarah Sarandon
Em-pa-thy
The ability to identify with or understand another's situations or feelings
The first and most important part about being able to create an alternate chapter of a book is to be able to place yourself in the mindset of the characters. You must be able to picture yourself in their situation and think about: how you would react, what you would be thinking, how you would be feeling. All of these are elements of empathy. Empathy allows us, as readers, to fully immerse ourselves in the text and step outside our own lives to view the world in the eyes of someone else. The connection we can make with the characters that we read, once we have developed empathy, is what helps us into becoming more compassionate and tolerant human beings.
Below is an exercise to help you be able to develop the skill of empathy. In doing so, you will be able to think about how the character you are going to create would feel and behave when fighting to survive during the games.
Before you begin watching the videos, please take out a piece of paper and a pen/pencil. As you watch the clips, write down what emotions you are feeling. You can write it in bullet point form, short sentences, random words scattered across your page. However you want to jot down your emotions, do so. Try and think about how you would feel if you were the people in these videos.
Now that you have watched these videos and written down how you felt, I'm going to ask you to do a 5 minute quick write. Take on the perspective of any of the people in the videos above, and write a short paragraph as if you are them. If a video does not have specific people, imagine yourself in the situation and write from that perspective. You can write about how you think they're feeling in the moments of the video, or perhaps you want to create a backstory for the person you choose and write about that. You could even write about how you would be feeling in those situations. However you want to put yourself in the mindset of the person or event, you are free to do so. Take these 5 minutes to let your creativity free and really immerse yourself into the life of someone else.
