I’ve written in the past about clients whose description of difficult events can retraumatize a reader. It’s wonderful to be able to transmit emotional experience – this is one of the intentions I ask my clients to clarify – but I’m not sure any reader would benefit from having a traumatic experience brought back intensely.
(Writing that just now generated the insight of why the scene of dismantling a young water buffalo in The Things They Carried (a book that I highly recommend) kept me up all night. My much older brother liked to torture creatures in front of me – and I projected that he might do that to me. Which is why that passage distressed me. Yet I appreciate that Tim O’Brien’s description has brought me to this understanding – though it required a couple of years and several references in my blogs to that scene to open me to the understanding. I think I’m pretty stable – but you never know about the capacity of your readers to weather such a storm as constructively as I did.)
I’m not sure if reading about depression, angst, and psychotic states would have a similar impact, but I notice that most books that try to convey these conditions from the inside have a hard time gaining lift-off for the reader. Chris Cleave’s Incendiary – I’m going to give away the insight because I don’t recommend it unless you are studying writing – is written from inside PTSD. Because I think his Little Bee is brilliant, I made the assiduous effort to read all the way through Incendiary’s monologue of progressive disconnection from reality. But I was two-thirds of the way through the bizarre and painful story of page-long paragraphs before I understood what he was conveying. Only then was I enthusiastic about sticking it out to see where he would take the story. (After all, it’s my job to study writing.)
It is likely that a general reader (as opposed to someone with a counseling bent) dipping into a book that explores the pitted, slimy, rough walls of the caves of difficult mental conditions will not move too far away from the light of the entrance – simply closing the book when the cave becomes too dark or claustrophobic. As with books that contain violence, the writer needs to capture the reader’s empathy for the character/s before the smashing begins. Incendiary failed at that. (I’ll add why I think it’s a great book: he’s writing about a mother in London losing her son and husband in a retaliatory bomb blast by Bin Laden. If he’d written it about a mother in Baghdad losing her men to a NATO blast, there would be little empathy for her decimating reaction. Cleave has such a powerful political conscience, but is only revealed in the depth of his writing.)
So many people loved Anne Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. It’s been several years since I tried, but I think I quit at page 17. The violence was too creepy and not enough ground had been established for me to stand on to move past it. So just now I checked “surprise me” on its Amazon page, and it opened to what seems like the closing several pages. Now I can see why people regard it so highly – many people seem to want assurance about the goodness of afterlife – but I could not pass through the constriction of violence to reach the breadth of heaven. (I’ll add that I think killing him off with an icicle happening to fall was pretty tacky.)
Establishing an engaging relationship between reader and the character/s before the episodes of violence can be envisioned as offering the thread for constructing a necklace before handing over the beads to be strung on it.
When I talk about violence needing to be grounded in empathy, I’m assuming your readers are mature adults, not the generation that has grown up on violence in the movies, music, and other media.
The photo portrays five of my muses: Cats, light, rampant vegetation, a good cuppa, and other writers. Unable to capture fresh air and space, quiet and the heartfulness of friends. These are what keep me from falling into the psychological holes endemic to humans and which open the channel to the flow of (hopefully useful) keyboard-spawned words.
What are your muses? Pop me an email: david@davidcolincarr.com or add a comment below.
Until next time, delight in the process.
Download PDF: DCC_Challenge for Writers- Conveying Depression, Angst, and Psychosis