Reading and Empathy

April 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve often heard that reading fiction can help a person develop empathy, and that could be true. I’ve certainly spent a rather significant part of my life reading, and I also seem to have an enormous amount of empathy.

What I do know is that reading can also help inure a person to other people’s pain. Too many books describe in excruciating detail the agonies characters are going through, and I figure I’ve had more than enough pain in my life, I don’t need to feel made-up people’s made-up pain, so I’m trying to teach myself to hold back the empathy when I’m reading.

I’m currently reading The Name of the Wind, which is interesting enough to hold my interest, but so far not more than that. One major drawback is that the character is subjected to one terrible trauma after another — deaths, losses, beatings, disappointments. Whenever something good happens to him, almost immediately two or more bad things happen. Normally I wouldn’t bother continuing to read, but I bought the book (paid a whole dime for it!) and lugged the weighty volume home, so I feel as if I have some stake in the story. I imagine all this trauma is going somewhere, turning him into the character he is supposed to be (a wizard maybe?) but getting there isn’t fun.

So, I mentally stand apart from his pain. Refuse to imagine what he is going through. And dampen any empathy I might normally feel.

I’m still a long way from knowing if the book is worth reading, and even longer from knowing if the second book is worth it (even though I paid another dime for the second volume). And probably so far from ever reading the third volume as to be as close to never as never can be.

Apparently, the author waited to submit his trilogy until the whole thing was written (being a rather obsessive writer, it took him fifteen years), and after the first book was accepted, there were huge editorial changes, which supposedly made it a much better story. But as any writer knows, small changes ripple to make bigger changes later on, and if those changes weren’t small, then the changes are almost insurmountable. Still, he did make whatever changes were necessary to get the second book published, but the third never made an appearance. As you can imagine, all those changes to the first two books demanded that the third be rewritten almost from scratch, and the poor author ended up with severe writer’s block. Not only that, he had custody issues, his publishing company was sold, he developed mental health issues, and fans dumped on him. Which leads to the question of what a writer owes his readers.

[Wait a minute! Doesn’t this sound like a movie? I could have sworn I saw something like this once upon a time.]

Beyond the authorial problems, the major issue, from what I understand is that he got involved in a charity drive where he was supposed to give a chapter to those who donated, and he wasn’t able to write the chapter (and didn’t want to just haphazardly throw out anything to satisfy his obligation), nor could he give back the money since it didn’t go to him.

Whatever the reason, there will never be an end to the story, so if I want, I can imagine a happy ever after for the poor tormented character. I can’t do that for the poor tormented writer. He’ll have to find his own way.

But I can give this poor tormented reader a happy ending whenever I want. All I have to do is step away from the books emotionally. Or physically. It’s a book — if I set it down, it can’t come chasing me!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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The Novel Only You Can Write

June 16, 2008 — Pat Bertram

It seems there are only four ways to get a traditional publisher to notice a new writer: be a celebrity, have a mentor in the publishing industry, be lucky enough so that your manuscript is on the right desk at the right time, or write a novel so extraordinary that it demands publication. Since I am not a celebrity, mentored, or lucky, the only option left for me is to write an extraordinary novel. How do I do that? Perhaps by writing a novel only I can write.

Obviously, we all come to writing from a certain point of view, from a certain set of experiences. To that extent, all writers write the novel only they can write, but still, most books on the market seem interchangeable. Anyone could have written them. So I am trying to figure out what only I can write.

For example, if I take a picture of a highway, it wouldn’t necessarily show any of my unique perspective. Only I would know the smell of road kill skunk that almost suffocated me while I was taking the picture. Only I would know of the traffic barreling toward me from behind and the sound of the jake brakes from the semi that almost ran me down. Only I would know that I stood there for ten minutes waiting for a traffic-less shot. But still, anyone standing in that same spot would have experienced the same thing. So what would make the photograph uniquely me? Heart and spirit? Memories and emotions evoked by the highway?

All I know is that to write something that only you or I can write, whether novel or blog, we have to know who we are, what makes us the same as everyone else, and what makes us different. The sameness creates empathy, the difference takes the writing out of the ordinary and into a class of its own.

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