How To Use Empathy to Become a Better Writer and Communicator

What would you do if your kitchen caught ablaze? Would you fight fire with fire? Or would you instead grab the fire extinguisher and kill the flame? In any type of situation, it is essential to know how to best approach it first, instead of going with your instinct and ending up in hot water. 

Learning how to control the situation will prevent your kitchen from burning down to the ground. This applies in both the literal and metaphorical sense. It is also very relevant in communicating with people. 

Miscommunication is unavoidable in our everyday interactions; it is easy to have your message and its meaning lost in all the noise. Everyone has different interpretations of the same words, and our beliefs, values, and culture further filters everything we hear and read.

But there’s one thing that can help you cut through this. It’s called empathy, the ability to put things into perspective and see the situation from another person’s point of view to fully recognize a situation.

In this post I will show you why empathy is important for a writer, and how you can develop it. The better you can see where your readers are coming from, the more successful you can be in offering them precisely what they need.