Daily Cascade

The Way We See Others

Prompt: The way we see others
Write about why we each judge differently any one person and/or write about someone you know or a character in fiction from the viewpoints of three different people.

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I like this prompt of building a character from different viewpoints ever since I was in my late teens and took a writing class on characterization. It not only helped me with my writing but also it made me see real-life people from all different angles.

Different viewpoints on a person happens as the result of our own experiences, biases, emotions, and values. That must be why one person can be admired by some and disliked by others.

The strange truth of it is, none of those varying assessments are right or wrong. It may just be that the same principle goes for all things and not just about people. People, however, can be ever-changing or so flitting and volatile that what we interpret about them can differ much more than our interpretations of other ideas and objects.

Still, I believe that the most striking differences, as to our judgments of others, stem from our personal backgrounds, family dynamics, education, and mostly, the social structure we are familiar with. Added to this our emotional state and personal needs, the gap grows even larger. All this happens probably because we often project our insecurities or unresolved issues onto others.

Then, sometimes, we hate to see in another person a side of us that we don't like to have in ourselves, although it may be the very side in us we have tried to get rid of but couldn't. As an opposite to this, we may admire something in someone else that we wish we had ourselves, which leads to a more positive view of that person.

Then, I once read something about what they call "the confirmation bias." This means in my layman's terms, we are more likely to interpret someone's behavior in a way that confirms our existing beliefs about them.

In the same vein, we can be influenced by the others' interpretation of a person or how we relate to them usually. Added to all this is our first negative or positive view of a person within a setting. Isn't it true that a person who we find very likable in a casual setting may be impossible to get along with in a professional situation?

Well, I had first thought of taking one of my old stories and assessing its main character from the viewpoints of other characters, but then, I thought I'd better put together a general text about the subject, so this entry happened.

In writing classes, though, an exercise in characterization is given, similar to this:

A. The Character "A" you the writer wants to present:
1. What the main second main character and other second characters see in "A"
2. What other characters view "A" as being...
3. What the additional characters, such as the mailman, grocer, a neighbor, etc. see as "A"

Most or some writers find out that once they do this exercise with their stories, they find out that the "A" they first wanted to present can change quite a bit.

Now that some of our WdC writers are planning their NANO work, I wish them the best of luck with characterization, which, I think, they already do very well.