This past week was a busy one: MFA orientation, meetings with my thesis advisees, two classes taught, annual physical exam, another chemo treatment for Cathy. This time, we were to arrive at 2:15, so we didn’t pack our usual breakfast/brunch food. Instead, we had snacks provided by the treatment center: pretzels and animal crackers. I posted a photo of the snacks in my weekly update about Cathy on social media. Throughout this very difficult and scary journey, we’ve been lifted up by so many people’s kind words of love and encouragement. It was a surprise, then, to find two comments on my post that were anything but helpful. To be completely honest, these comments that came from people neither of us know (I suppose they were friends of friends, but I don’t know that for sure) upset us, and I ended up hiding them. They were, in short, nothing a cancer patient and her loved ones would want to hear.

According to the two mystery posters, the pretzels and animal crackers were “cancer causing foods,” and the doctors should be more forceful concerning what cancer patients should and shouldn’t eat. “You shouldn’t eat these things,” one person said. Keep in mind these are the treats that the center offers. The validity of the comments isn’t mine to determine. What upset Cathy and me the most was how insensitive they were. The people who made those comments had failed to consider their audience.

So in an attempt to turn a negative to a positive, I intend to use the story of these hurtful comments to offer some thoughts about one way to provide a catalyst for a narrative.

Tobias Wolff’s story, “Say Yes,” opens with a husband and wife washing dishes. Their conversation turns to the question of whether white people should marry Black people. The wife is in favor; the husband says he thinks it’s a bad idea. The wife asks him whether he would have married her if she’d been Black, and he says no. He tries to explain that he probably wouldn’t have known her had she been Black because they would have moved through different worlds, but it’s too late; he can’t take back what he’s already said.

The Wolff story is a classic example of a character misreading an audience. What wife would want to hear her husband say he wouldn’t have married her if this or that had been the case? This misreading throws the narrative into motion.

Once upon a time, when I was in the fourth grade, I unintentionally said something that turned out to be insensitive, thereby hurting a classmate. When that classmate began crying, I was stunned and deeply ashamed to know I was the cause. Looking back on the situation now, I know I offered up a scientific fact I’d learned from my mother because I wanted to demonstrate what I knew. I didn’t stop to think it wasn’t the right place nor the right time to share my knowledge. I spoke from my ego, and the results still haunt me. My classmate’s father was ill with hepatitis, and I said, “Isn’t it true people can die from that?”

Think before you speak, we often hear when we’re children. Excellent advice, but maybe not for characters. Misreading an audience and saying something insensitive can determine the rest of the story. Maybe you’ll find a place for a character to do just that. You might think about egocentric displays like the one in my example, or maybe you’ll think of backhanded compliments, or blatant honesty—anything to upset another character and to throw the resolution of the narrative into doubt.