Writing Tips!

Traumatized Characters Shame?

this post is by spookymegido on tumblr, or https://spookymegido.tumblr.com/post/165953630114/i-just-saw-a-post-that-basically-said-traumatizing

my favourite thing to do is traumatise my characters basically lmao but check them out and enjoy

I just saw a post that basically said traumatizing your characters makes you a bad person!

Guess every single content creator is a bad person, the creative writing industry is shut down y'all

No, but seriously.

A good plot tears your established characters down and leaves them to rebuild themselves and fight back.

You get to watch as a name unfolds in front of you into a fullblown person, and then watch as they get pushed over, time and time again- sometimes even destroyed, then rebuild.

That's the whole point of a narrative- the conflict. The way your characters move and react. How the conflict changes them and vice versa. The most important part, though, is how they overcome.

They push back at the plot, at the conflict. They fight- sometimes they lose. Sometimes, though, they don't- and that's the first part of any story.

If you put your characters through hell and they aren't traumatized, that means three things about your writing

-your characters are underdeveloped, and so you don't see the trauma.

-the narrative is rose colored and doesn't address it at all.

-you are making your characters underdeveloped, forcing them to remain as flat, two dimensional characters.

Real people react to traumatic experiences, are affected by it. If your characters don't then your problem is poor writing.

And this doesn't even come into the idea that characters are stepping points, for authors and readers alike- to better build ourselves up.

Writing traumatized characters is hard, and messy, and it's wonderful- because my recovery is hard and messy and now they're a reminder that recovery is always that way.

Seeing them go through trauma reminds me I'm not alone, even if there aren't any real people I can reach out to.

Writing them getting through their bad days helps me get through mine- because if they can, I can.

Writing them having good days gives me hope- that maybe i'll have good days.

as they work through their trauma, I work through mine.

So don't you dare demonize people for writing traumatized characters