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In Die By the Pen, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

As writers, we are by nature introspective creatures. We always know what we think about things. Sometimes it takes a ridiculously long time to get there, but we tend to arrive at opinions. We have too many or two few of them — depending on your spiritual elevation.

This is wonderful, if we couldn’t tap into what we think or believe,  we wouldn’t be very good at laying down the words. We’d be paralyzed with not only what to write but how to write it.    Introspection is one of our great strengths.

So too is the opposite: empathy.

Sometimes our characters don’t represent our own world view, but being empathetic is crucial to their creation and execution. We need to honestly “feel” them. If we can’t treat those with whom we disagree with the weight they deserve, then how can we treat our characters as living potent beings… And we must!  Characters are as real as we let them be and believe me when I say that the more crystal a character is in your mind the more potency it emerges onto the page with.

Here is an exercise to try to improve our senses of empathy. I’ve personally used this over the course of the years, and when I say that I could have an entire conversation with imaginary people I am as serious as can be.

Read Books and Watch Programming in Genres you Hate:

Coming to terms with genres you hate and trying to find the “good” in them will enable you to see how folks whose tastes you might not agree with perceive entertainment. For me, I had to try books, TV shows, and movies that sell like crazy. Real populist stuff.

I read The Devil Wears Prada and lemme tell ya:  I read every word, and I hated it.  Here’s a book about clothes, where colors are an afterthought, while the dollar value is used as a descriptive term. This is the absolute opposite of what I would enjoy reading. It sold like hot cakes. It inspired a movie. It was a phenomenon.

I could see, by the end, how the character painted herself as a “fool” (in the Tarot sense) and created a rather one sided account of her encounter with a mythic ogre who kept her prisoner until she found the strength to escape. The fairy tale aspects of the book sold it. I can respect that. I think it’s lazy story telling but, ultimately,  I can dig her simple addictive prose.

I still would have loved to have seen Miranda Priestly torture “Ahn-Dre-Ah” with white hot irons and a cattle prod, but that’s just me.

I watch American Idol once per season so that I can talk with family members about the different performers while having seen them. Usually, I ignore it till there’s about six contestants then just watch the one episode. It’s not a rule, I skip years, but by and large I catch one episode per season.

I would love it if Simon Cowell killed the loser of the week execution style with a bag over their head and a small caliber handgun to their temple but that’s just me.

I once paid to see Transformers. I have been struggling with the popular appeal of that movie for two years and now there’s even another one. I think my empathy might have a limit.

I’m just kidding. I can see how for a lot of people hot cars and girls with little outfits (who have magical non-running makeup),  plus  giant robots pounding the stuffing out of each other could constitute an evening of entertainment. It ain’t rocket science. Who doesn’t like giant robots?

I’d love to see a movie where that meat-head kid and his bimbo girlfriend are accidentally stepped on by Optimus Prime leaving an inconsequential smear of blood and pulp as he goes off to battle Megatron. Hey man, collateral damage is a part of war. But that’s just me.

I went to a video shoot for a Lenny Kravitz video once and pretended to like his music. I stood thirty feet back from the stage and clapped my hands in unison with everyone else and plastered a big stupid grin across my face. It felt like when I pretend to pray at family events by somlemnly looking at my belly. But sometimes, it’s fun to just surrender to garbage. I walked away feeling like everyone there was doing the same thing and couldn’t stand his music. I still have yet to meet anyone who has anything more than a grudging appreciation for his music.

In this experiment I failed. I was attempting to ironically enjoy the scene. I felt above Lenny Kravitz and his fans the whole way through the experience. This isn’t the point. You need to truly come around to a way of accepting something that works about the media. Nothing is without merit.  Even Lenny Kravitz… I mean, the guy sells records. There must be something I can latch onto in it, right?

There’s that opening riff to “Are You Gonna’ Go My Way” right where the drums kick in. That’s a good moment in pop music. I saw Melt Banana just play that part over and over again for three minutes once. It was AWESOME! But that’s not the same thing, either. Adulation over one awesome little part of a mediocre work does not equate to greater understanding.

I’m sure someone that’s passionate about anything could steer me into what I need to look for in their favored entertainment.  I wish more people would. I would love to see what they’re seeing when all I can see is crap.  I try my damnedest but the bar seems pretty low these days.

In comics. I have become a bit of a “hurray for everything” type. Even books I can’t stand are testaments to the potential of the form. I’m sure folks who truly love cinema can see what works about The Transformers (they may not enjoy it, but they can see what works). And in the same those who study pop music can see what is good about American Idol and Mr. Kravitz.

I find that I say that I outright “hate” things less and less as I get older. In fact, I think I tend to like more and more books the older I get. Books I hated in my youth have had new light shined on them by the love some have for them. As a child, I loved nineteen-fifties Superman books, as a teen I hated them, as a man I need them. Same goes for Uncle Scrooge and the X-Men.

Try placing yourself in the shoes of the child who might enjoy something your jaded teen self would despise. You might find that you are free to experience more without reservation, and this can only translate to characters that you respect an love.   It will make you stronger. You are a writer, you don’t have the luxury of saying, “Life is too short for trash.” That feeling is for the norms.  You must constantly be prodding yourself and pushing yourself outside of your own comfort zone. If all your characters are liberal vegans and you live in a squat full of hippy-punks there might be a problem. Just sayin’…

Anyway, next week I’ll have a few more empathy exercises. Enjoy your self-torture this week. I’d love to hear what you’ve picked. I’ve got a viewing of Forrest Gump and an Evil Ernie comic book in the works for this week. I’m sure you’ll hear the screams of outright disgust echoing from the South Bronx no matter where you are. It’ll be followed by a long “hmmmmm.”

Jared Gniewek works in the music industry as a back line technician, performer, and promoter. He is also a freelance writer whose work can be seen in the recent re-launch of Tales from the Crypt and heard on The Dark Sense, an audio anthology of the macabre for which he is also the story editor — http://www.earstage.com/darksense.htm.