People tend to make assumptions about others based on first impressions, on secondhand information or on stereotypes that we have internally accepted as truth, sometimes unwittingly. Most of us are guilty of making assumptions, at least on occasion, but a well-crafted story may be just the medicine we need to get us to turn our microscopes inward and improve our "character" vision.
Instructions
1. Make a list of common assumptions that people may make about others, as well as myths that enable those assumptions to exist. Dig deeper and consider assumptions that you may unwittingly entertain yourself. Think broadly about how we often categorize people based on education, background, profession, age, geography, physical appearance, health and so on.
2. Pick from your list the assumptions that you want to address in your story. If you are writing a short story you may need to stick to only one or two. Consider developing two distinct characters who form biased judgments about each other, especially if you want your reader to really think about his perception of others as well as the way others perceive him.
3. Choose a point of view from which to present your story. Writing in third person allows you the freedom to express thoughts and interpret actions for multiple characters as an omniscient author or for only one character as a limited omniscient author. can also restrict your knowledge to external factors and write in the third person as an objective author, according to the book Writing Fiction.
If you're writing a short story you may not have time to effectively execute an omniscient point of view. If you write in first person, the "I" character presents the action and events of the story and helps shape the reader's perception. Second-person storytelling is not very common in literature.
4. Fully develop your characters in order to prevent distance between the reader and the story's action and message. According to Writing Fiction there are four direct methods of character presentation---"appearance, action, dialogue, and thought." Through these four methods, "a character is captured in print and transformed from a concept in the writer's mind to a living presence in the reader's. If you are writing from one character's perspective, use dialogue or behavior to reveal the thoughts of secondary characters.
5. Show the reader what you want him to experience. When writing about assumptions that people make about others, the only way to get your reader to feel the personal applicability is to make her feel implicit in those assumptions. "Literature," says poet John Ciardi, "is never only about ideas, but about the experience of ideas." If you want your reader to experience your ideas about assumptions and stereotypes, you need to set up compelling dialogue and action that depict the experience of the characters. Avoid excessive authorial moralizing, and allow your story to convey your message subtly.
