Writing is deeply rooted in psychology. Even the plainest business email requires us to understand how other people think so that we can effectively communicate with them. The very concept of “audience” demands that we anticipate how readers will interact with our writing and incorporate this in our text so that they will enjoy our work.
In short, we must have Theory of Mind (ToM) to succeed in writing, which manifests in a few different ways. I’ll discuss its significance and how to leverage Theory of Mind in writing, then explain how you can enhance your ToM for more realistic fiction.
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What is Theory of Mind?
Simply put, Theory of Mind is the understanding that other people think differently than you and may have different knowledge bases than you.
In general, ToM develops in children around 3 to 5 years old based on their experience with caregivers, siblings, friends, and others in their social circle. Understanding that other people are separate from them is a foundational milestone for kids and can be tested in experiments to identify developmental delays or disabilities.
One of the simplest tests of Theory of Mind is the false-belief test. For example, the tester will let the subject see a marble being moved from one basket to another basket, then ask whether someone who just entered the room would know which basket the marble is in. Those who pass the test will say that no, the newcomer won’t know which basket contains the marble.
ToM is closely connected to empathy, though the two are not the same thing. For example, someone with a strong ToM will be able to consider how someone’s life circumstances could impact behavior. If they know that their friend is having a bad day, they will give that person more grace and think about what might help their friend feel better. Similarly, they can predict how someone would react to negative news and work to soften the blow.
Those with great ToM often make excellent therapists or mediators because they can see another person’s perspective and work to create healthier dialogue, benefiting all parties.
Contrary to popular belief, neurodivergent people do not entirely lack ToM, though they may develop this skill later in life. Just like with your writing ability, you can strengthen your ToM through certain activities.
But enough about what it is. Let’s talk about why ToM is a critical for writers and how to leverage it for best effect.
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Why is Theory of Mind Important in Writing?
Theory of Mind helps you get into a character’s mind or anticipate how your audience will react to certain scenes. Let’s consider all the ways that ToM can enhance your writing.
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Developing good characters.
Characters, like real people, are molded by their environment. Someone who grew up poor and entered the military at age 18 will think and act very differently than a rich kid who has been protected from the hard facts of life.
This is part of the reason why understanding a bit of your character’s backstory is crucial to making them feel real. You don’t need to develop a 20-page life biography for every character, but the basic facts can help you determine what their mindsets might involve.
As an example, my character Cerie Korviridi lost her parents when she was 7 years old. She was raised partly by her older brother Uileac Korviridi, partly by the High Poet Society.
These influences shine through in her personality. She can be very confrontational, but that’s tempered by her training as a High Poet; she’s more likely to curse you out than punch you.
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Crafting realistic interactions between characters.
Theory of Mind allows you to see multiple perspectives when you’re writing, including those that aren’t immediately apparent in the text itself.
As an example, let’s say that you have an argument between the POV character and a non-POV character. You, as the author, know both their perspectives, but you’re able to understand that neither knows what the other is thinking beyond what is explicitly stated.
By recognizing this, you can create conflict through a mismatch between what the non-POV character says and what the POV character understands.
You’ll also be able to go deeper and think about how both the characters’ backstories inform their responses to things. This is a major plot point in my third book, Funeral of Hopes.
Uileac, the POV character, loves and misses his late parents, while his husband Orrinir, the non-POV character, hates his abusive estranged parents. When Orrinir finds out that his estranged father is dying, he reacts in ways that absolutely baffle his husband because Uileac cannot look past his own grief and filial piety.
Both have valid reasons to think the way they do, but neither are emotionally mature enough to address this when the pain is so intense.
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Managing backstory and details.
It is absolutely essential that you remember what certain characters know versus what they do not. Otherwise, you have the unfortunate situation where you accidentally turn your character into a telepath, and everyone is annoyed.
When talking about this with my mom, she loves to bring up a romance author that she hates. This author will have the MC meet someone they have never met with something like, “Grayson was a 36-year-old lawyer with two kids and a Ferrari. He was a rangy 6’4″ and had a physique honed by years of martial arts.”
Unless the MC has been told all these details by someone else, she cannot possibly know this information right away. Grayson would need to tell her about his life, or she’d have to creep on his social media accounts to find out. Even the 6’4″ factoid is suspect unless she’s extremely good at eyeballing heights.
This goes for non-POV characters, too. It’s highly unlikely that every background character your MC comes across will know who they are, what they’re doing right now, and what they want.
In fact, I dislike when authors write stories where everyone seems to know and love the MC. Just as in real life, most of your background characters will not give a shit about your MC’s shenanigans unless they are directly affected by them.
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Organizing plot points.
This is both knowing what your characters know and what the audience knows. Your audience only knows what you directly show them or what they can infer based on character actions.
Forgetting what you’ve told readers often happens when you have done way too much plotting and worldbuilding. Since you have all these details at your disposal, it’s easy to slip things in without properly grounding them because you have too much to remember, and then the reader is confused by something that comes out of left field.
To avoid this issue, put aside your million-word worldbuilding document and let things grow organically. You’ll be able to insert things as they make sense so that you are learning along with the reader. Then, once you’re done, you can figure out whether something needs more explanation.
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Predicting audience reactions.
Of course, your own predictions may be wrong, which is why beta readers and editors are so important. However, good Theory of Mind can help you identify what’s not working by taking yourself out of the writer’s seat.
As an example, suppose you have a plot twist. Really well-done plot twists need to be foreshadowed so that when the reader looks back, it seems like a foregone conclusion. However, you don’t want your foreshadowing to be so hamfisted that anyone can see it coming from a mile away.
By blanking out your own knowledge of the plot twist, you can start reading from the beginning and try to identify whether you’ve hinted enough at what’s going to happen. This can be really challenging because you have foresight, but it helps to put your project aside for a while so you can come at it with fresher eyes.
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Improving emotional resonance.
Humans prioritize emotion. How we feel tells us what to seek, what to avoid, who to trust, who to hate. Emotions evolved to help us make quicker decisions because they are wired into the most ancient parts of our brain. If our ancestors felt immediate disgust and fear upon coming across someone with a contagious skin disease, they were less likely to get sick.
This is why so many people make irrational decisions: they were focused on how something made them feel and not the expected outcome. Even though emotions are a motivator, they’re not always right, especially if we have any cognitive distortions.
Our brains have not caught up with the modern world and still run wild with those tribal thoughts; that’s one core hypothesis for racism. Those securely in a given ingroup tend to be more prejudiced than those on the peripheral because that protects their status.
Understanding how your character thinks allows them to behave naturally, which makes them feel more relatable. We can see ourselves in them, even if we don’t necessarily like what we see there; it reminds us of something we’ve experienced in our own lives or of a time when we felt the same way.
As such, readers will care more about what happens to this person, and they will be more invested in your book.
Now, I have seen people complain that understanding human behavior can only allow you to depict neurotypical people. Not true.
In fact, I’d argue that you need even better Theory of Mind to explore mental illnesses in your work because most people will not intuitively understand how your character feels. You have to translate their actions and rationale for readers so it is coherent, even if not consistent.
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How to Improve Your Theory of Mind
I do understand that certain people naturally have poorer ToM due to disabilities or neurodivergencies. However, you’re not doomed; it’s possible to strengthen this skill through practice. Not only will it improve your writing, but it will also help you navigate real-life social situations more easily.
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Read more fiction.
Surprisingly enough, the very thing we need to do in order to write better fiction – reading – also helps us improve our Theory of Mind overall. For over a decade, we’ve known that literary fiction can improve our understanding of other people because we’re getting absorbed in their worldview.
Research continues to validate this hypothesis, most recently in proving that reading can help people with schizophrenia better understand others. Given that schizophrenics have very impaired Theory of Mind – moreso than for autistic people, who can often relate well with others on the spectrum – this is extremely heartening news.
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Learn about human psychology.
I don’t expect you to become a psychologist, of course. But some basic understanding of why people do what they do can be very helpful.
My particular interest in human psychology is body language, which allows for richer nuance in character behavior and can make even the smallest things feel significant. Yes, behavioral analysis alone can’t solve a crime or prove that someone is lying, but it can still add a naturalistic touch to your writing.
For example, people rub their noses or blush when they’re lying because lying is stressful, and the stress response causes increased blood flow in the face. When feeling threatened, people often shield their stomach, where all their most precious organs are hidden behind a thin layer of viscera. That’s why therapists’ offices have a billion throw pillows for you to hug.
You can also delve into things like depression and what it does to the brain that would make people behave a certain way, or why people fall in love with one another. All of these factoids, when applied correctly, will give a better sense of realism.
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Go to therapy.
Speaking of hugging pillows in therapy, you should have this experience too. Get a therapist. Talk about your feelings. Maybe cry a little.
Yes, you can and should go to therapy even if you are well-adjusted and neurotypical. We’ve all taken some hard knocks, and real life can be so hard that it makes us not want to write. Anything you can do to build your own resilience can help you remain productive.
But most importantly, understanding how you think – and that others don’t always think like you – can be crucial insight. You can then become more intentional about how you develop characters because you’ll recognize what parts of you make you act in a certain way.
I have done multiple therapy modalities, namely Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (for cognitive distortions), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (for managing bipolar mood swings), and Eye Movement Densensitization and Reprocessing (for healing trauma).
For me, I found that DBT was the best option for learning how to create realistic character actions and picking up on the nuances of emotion. This is because DBT is all about understanding, predicting, and moderating your emotional responses, which will also show you how to represent them.
Therapy has been one of the best ways to improve my writing, and I really encourage everyone to give it a shot. I don’t think I would have as strong a Theory of Mind if I did not understand myself so well.
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Observe a wide range of humans on a regular basis.
I touched on this in my article about how to improve your writing through non-writing means. Not just people like you, and not just your friend group. Everyone you can possibly find.
Humans, as you may have noticed by now in your life, are very diverse. Everyone thinks a bit differently, even those who grew up with the same life circumstances.
Some will come out and tell you everything about themselves during the first meeting, while others will take years to tell you even the barest details. Some are insincere and feel “fake” because that’s their coping/defense mechanism. Others are sweet people pleasers, even when it’s to their detriment.
You have to spend a lot of time with a lot of different people before you can start to notice these trends, which you can then incorporate into a new character. Plus, the more people you meet, the more diverse your influences are, and the less likely that you’ll accidentally create a doppelganger of someone you know.
Yes, I get that humans can be very scary if you have social anxiety. Maybe reframing it as book research can help you feel less nervous about approaching others. Certainly, I find that when I’m listening to someone ramble about their lives, telling myself that I might learn something new about humanity makes me less impatient.
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Practice active listening.
Listening often feels like a lost art these days. Too many people don’t actually absorb what other people say because they don’t really care. They only want to talk about themselves, not realizing that conversations are a give-and-take.
But how are you supposed to learn about human behavior if you’re not actually listening when humans are coming right out and telling you about themselves? Going all in during every conversation can teach you so, so much about how to make a human fascimile in your work.
This guide by PsychCentral gives a lot of tips for active listening, but the most important thing is to stop waiting for your chance to speak. Ignore the ego part of your brain that goes “what about my turn? I want to talk about me!”
You won’t die if you don’t get a chance to say what you want to say. There may be a next time, or there might not, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter unless you’re telling that person time-sensitive information.
Instead, ask open-ended questions and encourage the person to keep talking if they want to. Get specific in your questions, not just “and then what happened?” Respond in real time to what they’re saying. Nod regularly and make reaction gestures.
By doing so, you can gain different perspectives on life and see how other people think.
Plus, you’ll find that people like you more. Everyone wants to feel important and listened to, especially about what matters most to them. When you do that, you become beloved, even if the other person knows almost nothing whatsoever about you. Becoming a good listener will improve your social life more than just about anything else you can do.
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Characters are not something you can skimp on. Making amazing characters is what elevates your work beyond boring genre fiction and into something truly special.
If you’ve ever wondered why certain media franchises get more fanfiction and reader investment, it’s because of the characters – namely, the fact that they feel like real people whose emotional responses we can predict. When a reader can’t imagine what a character would do in a situation outside of the canon, they can’t create new stories about them.
Those authors have a great Theory of Mind. They know how humans behave, so they can create coherent and understandable characters that people want to know more about.
Yes, some people have a stronger Theory of Mind than others, but it is completely possible to enhance this skill through reading, research, therapy, and social interaction. You are not doomed if you don’t fully understand people just yet.
And here’s the secret – no one fully understands why people act the way they do, not even forensic psychologists or neuropsychiatrists. It’s all still a bit of a mystery, but that’s what makes it so fun to learn about.
Maybe you, like me, will fall in love with how humans act so dumb all the time, always wanting to know what would compel anyone to behave in such a way. Then you’ve got some incredible fodder for your work.