You have a dilemma. Your fellow has some problems, or he’s not at all interesting (and the story is over a few paragraphs after it starts). But you want your audience to like him, or at least to feel empathy for him. He needs to do something selfless, or nice, or just plain sweet. Maybe he gives flowers to old ladies or dances with wallflowers or says nice things to our shy heroine or plays ball with children. How about using the comments to show me an excerpt of an empathy scene? Mine is from Abbie’s wish. Ethan remembers rescuing his cat.

Boss was up for a ride. Like all cats, she was territorial, sticking to the place she loved best. Unlike most, her territory comprised the Triumph and Ethan. Had ever since Ethan had rescued her and her brother, two scrawny kittens tossed into a deep drain and left to die. Ethan took them home inside his jacket and stayed up all night feeding them the goat’s milk preparation he’d found on the Internet. The brother didn’t make it. Boss got her name from the pre-emptory demands she was making when Ethan returned inside after removing the frail body of the dead kitten.

Boss thrived on frequent feeds, graduating from an eye dropper to a baby’s bottle and then to tinned kitten food and biscuits. She lived in Ethan’s pocket, or around Ethan’s shoulders, or in the pannier bags of the Triumph as Ethan moved from job to job, getting experience but never finding a place he wanted to settle. Two years on, Boss was a magnificent beast; at least, Ethan thought so. Tucked inside Ethan’s jacket as they cruised the highway out to Valentine Bay, she mostly slept, but poked her nose out from time to time, her eyes shut and her hair and whiskers streaming back in the wind.