A valuable lesson

 One of my favorite things about learning to write fiction is how much writing has taught me.  I am not a fan of first-person narrative, so my books are all written in third-person.

To effectively write a third-person narrative I have to immerse myself in the character I am writing about.  I have to understand what motivates them, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what frustrates them, and what angers them.

I was still very early in my writing vocation when I realized that my characters were so strongly formed in my mind that they would not let me write a story line that did not 'fit' with their character.  I have reworked story lines and scenes because it feels like my character told me they would never react or act in a certain way.

Where is the valuable lesson in this?  Learning to see the world through my character's eyes and mind has allowed me to see that my perspective is not the only one.  In the real world, that has slowed my emotional reaction time.  I find myself wondering why a person behaved in a certain way before reacting to their behavior.  I'm certainly not perfect, and I don't remember to take that step back all the time.  But the more I write, and the more I try to see all sides of a scene in a book to make it realistic, the more able I seem to be to see all the sides in the scenes in my own life.

Even more than in the present, the work on seeing all sides has allowed me to look back over my life and see my past differently.  I have so much less angst about the past than I used to.  I am able to run the scenes in my life through a different filter, one that has developed as a byproduct of my writing.

Everyone is unique.  Everyone is experiencing every situation from their own perspective, with their own life experience influencing how they are seeing the same thing you are seeing.  When I can remember to step back and realize that, and allow that knowledge to inform my reactions, I am much less likely to do unintended harm to the people in my world.

And anything that I have learned that can allow me to do less harm is a valuable lesson indeed.