Regardless of genre, novelists must create empathy for protagonists at their first appearance. Mere action isn’t enough! The most interesting plot won’t matter to readers if they don’t care about your main character. Here’s how to make that happen. Most of these work best when combined with at least one other.

Your character must be:

1. Displaying a valued trait such as loyalty, love, or courage.

Especially important if the protagonist soon makes a bad choice. It’s far easier to create empathy for a character right away than to erase negativity. So before he makes any negative choice, show your protagonist help a child, tend a sick person, stand up for a friend…

2. Particularly good at something.

People enjoy watching real talent. This approach involves details. Don’t merely tell us a hunter is efficient with a gun. Show him treating the weapon lovingly, oiling it, practicing with it. Besides a keen eye, maybe he smells prey before seeing it.

3. Treated unjustly.

This approach can work on its own, although other techniques can enhance it. It’s human nature to feel bad for someone who meets injustice.

4. Wishing for something universally understood.

This includes love, acceptance, purpose. Such desires help soften characters—even those who first come across as selfish or uncaring. So this is a great approach to characters harder to like.

5. Thrust into danger.

Anything from facing a storm to a bad guy with a gun. But because we’ve read so many danger-filled scenes, use at least one other technique to make us care about the character.

6. Thrust into grief.

The challenge here is that readers don’t yet know the character well enough to feel her pain. But resist the temptation to load in a bunch of backstory to enhance the grief. It’ll slow your story. Find ways to incorporate other empathy approaches within the action.

7. Caring for others, especially at a cost to oneself.

Known as a pet-the-dog scene, the Bad Guy shows his tender side: kill the human, kiss the hound. Two points to remember when using this technique: (A) Overdone, the scene can become syrupy. (B) The caring needs to be unassuming. A true caregiver doesn’t stop to think how kind he’s being.

8. Unique, attention-getting.

Your character may do off-the-wall things, may look different or think in unique ways, may have an unusual first-person voice. The possibilities are many. This approach needs to be mixed with at least one other. A character can act in all sorts of unusual ways to make you look twice. That doesn’t mean you’ll like him enough to keep reading.

9. Attempting to overcome a fear or make a change.

Readers identify with this. We don’t like facing our fears or change. But two challenges: (A) Present the problem clearly enough that readers understand what’s must be overcome and why it’s so hard for the character—without loading in backstory. (B) Sometimes this is more of an internal battle. The character may be deciding whether to walk out on a relationship, or he may have conflicting desires. To make an inner struggle compelling in the opening scene, put it in the context of action.

10. Facing an inner struggle.

Differs from #9 in that the character isn’t trying to make a change. She doesn’t know how to handle a burden—guilt, depression, bitterness, jealousy, hate…

Sometimes the character doesn’t even know she’s burdened. She may be in bondage due to intense bitterness but not realize it. In this case, give the reader just enough information to understand more about the character than the character understands about herself. Just remember that you want the reader to like your character, not think she’s an idiot. Again, it helps to mix in other approaches.

Exercise

Read the opening scenes to at least five novels you’ve enjoyed. Which techniques were used, and how were they combined? Then read your novel’s first scene. Will readers empathize with your protagonist by the end of it? See how others—who’ll be honest