on Live Write Thrive:

As writers, we are constantly thinking about the lens through which our characters view the world. We’re often told to “walk in someone else’s shoes” or to “climb into his skin and walk around in it,” as Atticus Finch says.

But how do we achieve this in our own writing?

Normally, I start this by fully immersing myself in a character’s perspective, whether writing an internal monologue, pretending I’m interviewing the character or exploring how their past shapes their present.

But, recently, I was reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and I was struck by a passage that didn’t filter the world through the characters’ eyes but used a shared experience to reveal their reality.