Challenge
Empathy
Make your readers care about your characters. It’s a piece of advice you hear a lot in the writing world. Strange, isn’t it, that invoking empathy is a marketable skill?
Anyway, try to make us connect with a character in one short paragraph.
Molly
Molly pushes a baby stroller sometimes. It holds her precious finds along the roads and alley short cuts she knows well. She is evasive and skinny. Her hair is matted, congruent to the rugged look of her face. I've seen Molly a few times. Whenever I see her I give her money or cigarettes, whatever's in my wallet and purse at the time. Molly speaks very little and quickly disperses. One day I saw Molly inside a McDonalds. It was there she looked into my eyes for the first time. How beautifully blue her eyes are. The town tried to give her a permanent shelter; she left it. Molly is out there somewhere in her tattered and dirty clothes, surviving.
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