![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/policeline.jpg\" "\\"Police")
I hear it all the time: people hearing about something that falls outside their sphere of comfort that makes them say, “I just don’t understand that…”<\/p>\nI hear it all the time: people hearing about something that falls outside their sphere of comfort that makes them say, “I just don’t understand that…”<\/p>\n
It can be related to a story somebody tells at work, or something seen on the news; it can be something somebody in an extended family does, or have to do with the actions of a complete stranger.<\/p>\n
But it always comes back to those words (often a coping mechanism): “I don’t understand…”<\/em><\/p>\n I think what people really mean when they say, “I don’t understand…,” is, “That’s not something I would ever do.”<\/p>\n To confuse the two as a writer is a very dangerous thing.<\/p>\n Unless you make a living writing constantly uplifting stuff based on personal experience, it’s important to be able to step into the minds of other people.<\/p>\n I’m not a hateful person, but if I have a hateful person in a story, it’s my job to pull it off well. I’m able to do it because, when I hear about something hateful happening, I try to understand why a person would do certain things, even if I’d never do them in a steady stream of lifetimes.<\/p>\n I don’t have children. I’m a very loving person and know if I had children that I would center my life around them and be a great father. I find it beyond appalling when I hear a story on the news about a parent harming or killing their children. But as a writer — even though it’s an act I can’t agree with for any reason — I can at least understand what might make a person do something so horrible.<\/p>\n I can understand why a bullied teenager picks up a gun one day, heads off to school, and comes out in one of a pile of body bags. I don’t agree with the act, but I understand why people do things like that.<\/p>\n I never agreed with the bigoted side of my father, but I understood where he came from, and why he was so angry about so much.<\/p>\n When I hear something that appalls me, it doesn’t change my feelings about how horrible people can be to each other (or even to themselves), but as a writer, I do all I can to try understanding why<\/em> somebody would do something I would never do.<\/p>\n It’s when you reach that point when actions and their consequences aren’t so black and white that I think you reach a point where a story can transcend just a well-crafted string of words, sentences, and paragraphs and be something more.<\/p>\n When a writer can make a reader feel sympathy for the character readers initially didn’t like — when a writer can make a reader stop and think about why terrible things happen (and, hopefully, what we can do about them) — great stories happen.<\/p>\n I’ll go as far as saying it’s a writer’s duty<\/em> to understand.<\/p>\n I’m not saying we have to agree<\/em> with things that happen in the world, but we at least need to understand why people do certain things we’d never do in a million years.<\/p>\n The next time you hear somebody say, “I just don’t understand…” — understand why it’s so important to tell stories that might, at the very least, make that person think a little deeper.<\/p>\n I’m not advocating making a reader agree with the actions of a horrible character, but I really do<\/em> believe that when people understand things better that they can see problems at a deeper level and, hopefully, help change things for the better…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hear it all the time: people hearing about something that falls outside their sphere of comfort that makes them say, “I just don’t understand that…” It can be related to a story somebody tells at work, or something seen on the news; it can be something somebody in an extended family does, or have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It’s a Writer’s Job to Understand<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What’s to Understand?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Why Understand?<\/strong><\/h2>\n