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megwritesA good post about how pain and trauma are not romantic, but rather boring and also painful. All you writers, listen up and take notes. Because this is important.
Good writers are going to have occasion to traumatize their characters, either on or off screen. Learning how to manage that in your writing so it doesn't breed distrust in your readers (and yes, bad portrayals of pain and trauma inevitably will break the trust of the reader) is vital.
This goes back to one of the elements of Urban Fantasy that I'm quite fed up with. Using trauma as a character flaw or quirk doesn't cut it. It rings false for me in 99% of the books I read.
I have such a hard time articulating why. I still haven't dredged up the right words to explain why it is that when I see these things on a page in front of me, I totally unplug. I can't explain what sets off the Bullshit Detector, but it's there. It's real. It affects my reading choices.
I think it amounts to a feeling of being insulted that someone expects me to believe that pain is beautiful. People who think that either have the wrong definition of beauty or the wrong definition of pain. Possibly both. And I wonder if those who say those things have experienced either.
Good writers are going to have occasion to traumatize their characters, either on or off screen. Learning how to manage that in your writing so it doesn't breed distrust in your readers (and yes, bad portrayals of pain and trauma inevitably will break the trust of the reader) is vital.
This goes back to one of the elements of Urban Fantasy that I'm quite fed up with. Using trauma as a character flaw or quirk doesn't cut it. It rings false for me in 99% of the books I read.
I have such a hard time articulating why. I still haven't dredged up the right words to explain why it is that when I see these things on a page in front of me, I totally unplug. I can't explain what sets off the Bullshit Detector, but it's there. It's real. It affects my reading choices.
I think it amounts to a feeling of being insulted that someone expects me to believe that pain is beautiful. People who think that either have the wrong definition of beauty or the wrong definition of pain. Possibly both. And I wonder if those who say those things have experienced either.
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Date: 2009-01-30 11:02 pm (UTC)When I talk about pain and trauma not being romantic, I'm talking about the exoticized, idealized version of it. I mean it in the rather Byronic sense of that word, wherein people attribute special meaning to trauma and pain that it really doesn't have.
I hope you read the post I linked to. These comments in that post (http://matociquala.livejournal.com/1557650.html?thread=31414162#t31414162) may also help you understand what I'm driving at.
What I will say about 'abandonment issues' (as an example) is that it is likely that if two people share an unresolved issue from their childhood, that issue will act as an attractor or might be from that perspective considered romantic.
I hope I don't come off unnecessarily rude or prickly, but I have to take issue with this.
Okay, let's grant you that perhaps two people - sharing a common trauma or past - may bond with each other. Trauma survivors often find each other.
It still doesn't make that trauma and pain romantic or ideal or somehow beautiful. It doesn't make it any less dull and boring after a while to both of them.
Their relationship may be romantic, their trauma is not. The trauma remains the same, and they remain damaged because of it, either together or separately.
You might try directing your thoughts and comments to the post I linked above. The people there are far more articulate and experienced in this kind of thing than I am, and I'm sure they'd respond to what you had to say.