This post was originally published on Tumblr on August 9, 2024

Trauma is, quite frankly, a load-bearing weight in the fiction space. We’ve all done it: thrown in the saddest, most miserable little factoid about our meow-meows so that they feel not just real, but compelling and sympathetic. It helps readers empathize with them and spices up a story.

Very well-done trauma can also be cathartic for readers, especially if the character prevails despite what has happened to them.

The problem is that poorly written trauma can feel exploitative, cheap, and melodramatic. It turns people off, especially those who have been through a similar experience. Now it feels as if someone is using our pain to sell things or get attention, and it is often obvious when someone has not been through that experience, which can make readers feel uncomfortable.

So, here is my opinion on how to write more compelling trauma.

As always, I am not the ultimate authority on writing, I am not telling you exactly what to do with your writing, my opinions are just opinions, I am not perfect, I might be wrong, this might not resonate with you. Take what you like and leave the rest.

There’s also not going to explicit descriptions of abuse or trauma in this post.

Don’t give a character every trauma ever

Going overboard with trauma is one of the best ways to get people to hate your book. It feels as if you are using trauma as a stand-in for actually developing characters people can resonate with. You’re relying on pity points to force a connection.

Of course, many people go through multiple types of trauma over their lifetime, to the point where if someone read a book about them, it would seem unrealistic.

But characters are not people. They are meant to populate a fictional plot. As such, less is more. Using less trauma forces you to dig deeper into those certain events and identify how your character changed.

Trauma must be transformative

Trauma does not always mean something in real life. Bad things happen for no good reason. You don’t need to derive lessons from it or become a motivational speaker. It sucks, and it hurts, and it’s not fair, and it’s okay if you just never want to think about it again. Not necessarily the healthiest way to deal with it, but a common way.

However, fiction is not real life. We create worlds and characters to show something, to build a symbol, to represent a human experience, to explore human nature. As such, you must demonstrate some sort of change in the character, and you must pick something that makes sense for their personality.

Options for you (not an exhaustive list):

Developing anxiety. This may be a more globalized anxiety, such as agoraphobia, or it may be more specific.

Shying away from “unsafe” situations that seem perfectly safe to other people. This is another form of anxiety.

Becoming withdrawn and refusing to trust anyone.

Clinging to “safe” people; becoming dependent and helpless. They may be codependent and childlike. This is common with childhood abuse, particularly childhood sexual abuse. Their emotional coping skills were stunted after the event and they never developed a healthy sense of self.

Growing cold and unemotional; isolating themselves from other people. They may refuse to talk about the event and insist that they are fine.

Advocating for others dealing with the same thing.

Acting like an emotional “open wound:” intense, trauma vomiting all over other people, failing to self-regulate.

Having extreme bursts of rage. This is more common in men, but it can also happen in women.

For sexual trauma, becoming hypersexual or having no interest in sex whatsoever. They may become incredibly touch-averse, even getting antsy when someone touches their hand.

Making risky decisions that lead to further traumatization. Especially true regarding child abuse; those who were molested as children are far more likely to be revictimized later in life. BTW, this is not victim-blaming: it is still the abuser’s fault for hurting them. No one should take advantage of someone’s vulnerability like that.

Keeping everything surface level and refusing to open up to anyone about anything. They may seem “bland” and uninteresting to the outside observer because everything about them has been stuffed down.

Again, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s an idea of what you might be able to work with.

The earlier the trauma happens, the more it changes a character

There is a reason that any therapist will ask you about Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs): because it completely shifts who you are and affects you forever.

I won’t bore you with the research, but those who went through childhood trauma are more likely to have substance abuse issues, heart disease, mental health problems, social challenges, and much more. The list of things that correlate to child abuse is very depressing and shocking.

This isn’t to say that adult abuse isn’t going to cause problems, but it won’t be quite as deeply rooted and horrifying as childhood trauma. Your character will likely not go through a 180 degree shift because their personality is already well rooted. Children are still having their personality molded by their environment and are going to be more deeply scarred.

It’s not always necessary to show the event

This is especially true if you are writing about characters who have childhood trauma. Full-on cinematic flashbacks are a cheap way to get out of showing us how the trauma changed them. This is especially true if this is the only flashback in the story, or you are only flashing back to show us increasingly more disturbing examples of their trauma.

The most compelling stories I have read do not show the trauma; they show us the aftermath. We see how the character is haunted by what happened and how they can never go back to who they were before. It makes for deeper and more interesting characterization than just “oh look at this bad thing that happened.”

There’s also the fact that it’s more intriguing to give us hints and subtle references to something. The fear of the unknown is worse than the true, explicit details, because then the reader is filling in the blanks in their own mind and imagining how bad it must have been by seeing what is before them: the traumatized character.

Flashbacks are not little movies

Nothing irks me more than writers who decide that the best possible way to explain someone’s trauma is to just go back in time and show it in exhaustive detail because that is not how trauma generally works. You don’t just see the whole thing in vivid technicolor most of the time.

Why? Because trauma is … traumatic. Your brain wants to protect you from that experience and isn’t going to force you to relive it exactly as it happened.

More commonly, flashbacks are small snippets of the event. For example, you might see the person’s eyes as they are staring at you, or a very brief image of the worst part of it. You’ll see what your eyes were focusing on in the moment, but you’re not going to see the whole thing all at once. Sometimes, a flashback is like a still image, or like a GIF. But it’s not a little movie.

In other cases, a flashback is just a body sensation with no actual visual images shown. You might feel pain in the place where you were hurt, and you may not even realize it’s a flashback.

This can actually make for very compelling writing when done correctly, because you can show small snapshots of the event sprinkled throughout the story so that the reader slowly develops a full understanding of what happened.

So what could you show?

• The eyes of the perpetrator
• Expressions on a perpetrator’s face
• A “diorama” of the room/location where it took place
• Repeating images of a small section of the event
• Physical pain: pelvic pain for assault, tender ribs, old wounds starting to hurt again
• Darkness or swirls of motion
• Sounds or phrases that were said during the event
• The aftermath: what happened right after they were safe or rescued
• Sensations: pressure, heat, cold, weightlessness, heaviness, exhaustion, pain

Triggers are not always obvious

A trigger can be anything that reminds you of trauma. Scents, sounds, words, certain brands, the tone of someone’s voice, specific locations that just remind you of where it happened, anything. I am sure there are people out there who are triggered by Dolce & Gabbana handbags or certain ice cream flavors.

Sometimes, a trigger is not even obvious to the person who suffered. They may not realize why they shy away from certain experiences, like swinging on a playset or walking through a certain area of town, because they can’t remember why that’s relevant to what happened.

Characters do not always tell every single person about the trauma

My greatest annoyance. Characters putting it all out into the open for every single person to know about is just … unrealistic. Even if it just happened yesterday, not everyone is going to know. Certainly if it was childhood trauma, only a few select people are going to know about it, especially in explicit detail.

For example, the vast majority of people sexually abused as children never disclose the abuse to anyone. Anyone! This makes it incredibly challenging to identify how many people were molested because so many people don’t want to share.

There’s a lot of shame and vulnerability that comes from disclosing abuse, and everyone, no matter who they are, wants to avoid pain. It’s in our nature. There’s also the fact that if it was a childhood event, the child was likely threatened with punishment if they disclosed, and that will carry on into adulthood. They will be afraid of repercussions if they share it, even if their abuser is dead or absent.

As such, you need to decide on the circle of trust. Who would your character rely on when wanting to discuss their problems? Maybe a lover, a close friend, or a parent.

One quick note here: it’s actually pretty common for people who went through trauma together to not discuss it with one another. Neither wants to trigger their friend/relative/partner/etc by bringing it up, so there may just be an unspoken agreement not to mention it. If they do discuss it, it might be in more vague and referential terms instead of explicit exposition.

Characters themselves may not be explicit when discussing the trauma

It’s just not realistic for your character to go through every exhaustive detail of any traumatic event when sharing it with someone. There will be brief sum-up statements, not a gory and intense description of it, for example:

• “Something bad happened.”
• “He hit me.”
• “I was trapped.”
• “I was assaulted/raped.”
• “I fell.”
• “There was a car crash.”
• “Someone died in front of me.”
• “I was there when [x] happened.”
• “There was a robbery/break-in.”
• “I was kidnapped.”

Or the classic:

• “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Our minds don’t want to make us relive it, so we will keep it vague to avoid triggering ourselves. For some people, they dissociated during the event and don’t even have those details to share because they weren’t consciously encoded.

Think of a bad thing that happened to you. If someone asks you, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to walk through it step by step for them. More likely, you’ll summarize it. Your characters will do the same.

Action points for writing trauma:

Consider when the trauma happened to decide on the impact.

Pick one or two types of trauma (death of a parent, sexual assault, being mugged, getting into a car accident, watching someone die, etc) and then stick with that only.

Identify what a character would have been had they not been traumatized, and then shift that personality based on the kind of trauma.

Decide whether it’s necessary to show the abuse.

Focus on sensory details rather than explicit narration when doing. any form of flashback: sights, sounds, smells, textures, how hot or cold it was, pressure, etc.

Sprinkle flashbacks throughout in snippets as they become relevant based on a trigger.

Don’t dump the entire experience of past trauma on the reader in one go because the character wouldn’t do that themselves.

Remember that people may dissociate during a traumatic event and their own descriptions might be vague and dreamlike.

Look at the scene yourself and consider what might become a trigger. A certain perfume? Cigarette smoke? A birdsong?

Decide who would be told based on relationships with the character. Again, the checkout clerk isn’t going to get the details. Maybe a therapist, a partner, a close friend.

People who were traumatized together may avoid any discussion of it.

Characters will typically summarize the experience when talking about it to others unless they have a very, very close relationship.

So many of your readers may have experienced some form of trauma, particularly domestic violence and sexual assault. As such, it’s crucial that you treat trauma with care so that your readers feel understood, not shamed or ridiculed.

You may even find that they reach out with their appreciation for your thoughtful depictions. This is my favorite type of reader comment, and I feel honored every time someone shares a bit of their experience with me.

While these tips are not exhaustive, they can give you a framework for planning out your character trauma. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with these heavy topics.