Why Your Story SUCKS | Writer's rants & discussions

Rape is just a sob story

As the title says, rape is an overrated sob story in this world of writing.

Your MC was raped by her boyfriend's enemy mafia? Boohoo poor stupid damsel, it's perfectly fine though!

Because she'll forget about it, give it a week after getting saved and she'll be a-okay, as long as her boyfriend holds her while she cries for a couple of days and tells her generic lines of how he loves her she'll do perfect!

She won't have any actual PTSD or need therapy, just a few nightmares that her boyfriend will fix. The book will still end with her getting her insides fucked to shreds by her boyfriend since every book just needs to end with the girl getting piped down by her boyfriend.

Rape became popular in writing because it used to be the worst possible thing someone could go through, and in real life, it is still very much some of the worst things any person could go through. It was a hardship that made people feel for the MC.

But nowadays in books? Rape is just taken lightly and turned into this cheap, shallow attempt at trying to pull some type of emotion out of readers. Books toss around rape and sexual abuse without knowing how serious of a thing it is, it's the exact same with domestic abuse/child abuse.

Sexual trauma and abuse are things a person will carry with them until they're 6 feet under, it's not something that will be forgotten just because they fall in love or for the sake of having a perfect ending. There's people that have been sexually abused as kids and are still needing therapy because they are still trying to cope, so your MC getting molested by her stepdad all her childhood up until she was a teen and needing no type of therapy is bullshit.

Sure someone can still live a normal life after sexual trauma/abuse but they will still have times where they think back to their trauma.

Sexual trauma is not edgy and cool, it shouldn't be trendy like it is.

Writers forget REAL victims of sexual trauma and domestic violence exist, some exist on Wattpad and I can't imagine being a real victim and having to see rape and abuse in almost every book because writers can't be creative.

If you can use anything BUT rape, don't use rape. Unless you are going to research and portray it properly that is. Although your character can be still just as traumatized by other things too, maybe they watched their little brother die or got in a bad car accident and have fear around everything involving vehicles.

There's a billion other ways to give your character a horrific past with PTSD.

So if you're a writer who's written rape or child molestation in your story, ask yourself: Is this REALLY important? What does it add to the plot? Is it just to make the readers feel for the character? Could the story work fine without it? Does my book portray it correctly?

Oh and another thing,

In my 5 years of being on online writing platforms and reading books, I've never seen a book that has a character who goes to the police after an assault and get justice. Yeah, the justice system is janky when it comes to sexual crimes and abuse. But why promote staying silent in books? Why not promote finding strength and speaking up?

80% of sexual assaults and abuse cases go unreported. That's a big fucking problem and it's not gonna get solved unless you promote the message of reporting those crimes. Look at the LGBT community, gay marriage was basically considered demonic in first world countries but they kept pushing and pushing their message until governments understood and it encouraged thousands of others to come out as whatever sexuality they are too.

Your book has more influence and power than you think, use it to encourage people instead of encouraging the message of not speaking out. The more victims that speak out the better the justice system could become at handling this shit.