From Edie: Learn how to write believable characters whose experiences differ from your own by tapping into emotional DNA—your internal library of feelings, instincts, and empathy. This practical guide helps writers create authentic emotional depth, avoid stereotypes, and bring every character to life with honesty and nuance.
Emotional DNA for Writers: How to Write Characters Unlike Yourself
by Sarah Sally Hamer @SarahSallyHamer
One of the biggest challenges we as writers, both fiction and non-fiction, face is how to write characters whose lives, choices, or personalities are completely different from our own. We create characters, both “good” and “bad” who act in ways we never would. How do you write a serial killer if you’re not one? Or a grieving father if you’ve never lost a child? Or a jealous friend, a corrupt politician, a runaway teen?
It’s not about searching your soul every time you want to put a real villain in your story, since the chances are that you’ve never killed anyone. (And, if you have, I don’t want to know!) It’s about understanding the emotions that drive the bad guys —and recognizing that you’ve felt versions of those emotions yourself, even if you’ve never acted on them. In so many words, you’re lending your emotional DNA to your character.
What Is Emotional DNA?
Emotional DNA is the set of feelings, instincts, and experiences you carry as a human being. Just because you may never have committed a crime, you’ve probably felt anger. You may not have betrayed someone, but you’ve felt tempted. You may not have run away, but you’ve wanted to escape. If one of your characters needs to express themselves by doing something you’ve never done, you still have that emotional DNA buried somewhere in your brain that you can access to make it seem real to your readers.
According to Judy Wilkins-Smith in an article from 2023 in Psychology Today, “An emotional blueprint is the compilation of patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions that we inherit from our ancestors who create emotional DNA in response to events that happen to them.” www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-author-speaks/202206/decoding-your-emotional-blueprint. This is, of course, for “real” people, not characters, but our characters are, at some level, a representation of who we are, even if we never act in the way they do.
When you write a character, you’re not copying their life—you’re translating their emotional logic. You’re asking, “What would it take for someone to make this choice?” and then using your own emotional insight to build that answer.
Examples in Fiction
Take Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. The character Amy Dunne is manipulative and dangerous. Most readers would never act like her—but many understand the feeling of being underestimated, dismissed, or boxed in. Flynn used those emotions to build a character who takes those feelings to an extreme.
Or look at Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Sethe, the main character, kills her child to spare her from slavery. It’s a horrifying act, but Morrison helps us understand the emotional logic behind it: love, fear, desperation. Morrison didn’t justify the act—she made us feel its complexity.
These writers didn’t become their characters. Nor did they have to commit the act they are creating for those characters. They used empathy, imagination, and emotional truth to write them.
Writing the “Other” with Care
Writing characters unlike yourself also raises ethical questions. If you’re writing against your morality or across race, gender, trauma, or lived experience, it’s not enough to rely on imagination. Research. Listen. Ask whether you’re the right person to tell this story—and if so, how to do it responsibly. I’ve found in my editing career that many writers don’t dig deeply enough into a situation to make it seem real, simply because they’re skimming along the surface. For instance, I know there are actors who completely immerse themselves in a role. In The Hunt for Red October, Scott Glenn played the captain of a US submarine. He was allowed to join the crew for research and shadow the actual captain. He has said in an interview that, without that experience, he could have never played a sub captain in a believable manner. It’s not that all writers have that opportunity. But asking questions of the people who actually have experience in their field can at least guide us in a good direction.
Emotional DNA helps you connect, but it doesn’t replace lived experience. It’s a starting point, not a shortcut.
Why This Matters
When writers avoid characters they don’t fully understand, they risk limiting their stories. But when they write those characters without care, they risk causing harm. Emotional DNA is the bridge—it helps you write with depth and honesty, while also reminding you to stay curious and humble.
It also helps you grow. Writing someone unlike you forces you to stretch your empathy, challenge your assumptions, and explore parts of yourself you might not usually access.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need to be your character. You just need to understand what drives them—and find the emotional threads that connect you. That’s how you write what you’re not. That’s how you build believable, complex, human stories. So go ahead. Write the villain. Write the hero. Write the person who makes choices you never would. But write them with care. Write them with curiosity. And write them with the emotional truth only you can offer.
What emotion would you like to express on the page? Where do you go to research it?
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A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online for Margie Lawson at WWW.MARGIELAWSON.COM and atHTTPS://NOSTRESSWRITING.COM/. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors. You can find her at SALLY@MINDPOTENTIAL.ORG
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