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Fiction and "triggers"
Mar. 22nd, 2014 01:37 pmWhen I first uploaded the fiction side of my Web site, I was a bit cranky about many things, including the notion of "triggers", and basically wrote an advisory note that I didn't believe in posting warnings about such things and that if you were worried, you shouldn't bother reading my stories. "There's plenty of other fiction out there," I observed.
Yeah, like I said: cranky, and thus stupid.
A "trigger", in case you're not familiar with the term, is a subject or description that causes (i.e., triggers) an unpleasant emotional response in the reader... sometimes a severe one. Yes, the person may just be someone who's hypersensitive and should grow a thicker skin. If swords bother you, don't read a swords and sorcery story; it won't end well. But sometimes people have suffered real traumas (rape, the murder of a loved one, abandonment by one or both parents) that leave scars that don't fade. It's not exactly the kind of thing you can just "man up" about and ignore. Think post-traumatic stress disorder and you'll get the idea. Triggers can be some serious shit.
Belatedly, I got a clue and changed my advisory note. It still says that I don't think anything on my fiction site is likely to stress most people, but telling people to look elsewhere if they want trigger warnings isn't exactly a winning strategy to get people to read my fiction. (You think? Clearly I didn't, way back when.) The problem, of course, is that it's not much of an exaggeration to suggest that there are nearly as many triggers as there are people. That would lead to advisory notes that are longer than some of the stories. What is the concerned but impatient and cranky author to do?
As it turns out, the concerned author does the blindingly obvious thing. My advisory now reads "if you want to read something but aren't sure about triggers, contact me to ask about it". It's not like the world is beating a path to my door to read my stories, but should that happy event ever come to pass, at least there'll be a way for people to engage in a dialogue with me.
Yeah, like I said: cranky, and thus stupid.
A "trigger", in case you're not familiar with the term, is a subject or description that causes (i.e., triggers) an unpleasant emotional response in the reader... sometimes a severe one. Yes, the person may just be someone who's hypersensitive and should grow a thicker skin. If swords bother you, don't read a swords and sorcery story; it won't end well. But sometimes people have suffered real traumas (rape, the murder of a loved one, abandonment by one or both parents) that leave scars that don't fade. It's not exactly the kind of thing you can just "man up" about and ignore. Think post-traumatic stress disorder and you'll get the idea. Triggers can be some serious shit.
Belatedly, I got a clue and changed my advisory note. It still says that I don't think anything on my fiction site is likely to stress most people, but telling people to look elsewhere if they want trigger warnings isn't exactly a winning strategy to get people to read my fiction. (You think? Clearly I didn't, way back when.) The problem, of course, is that it's not much of an exaggeration to suggest that there are nearly as many triggers as there are people. That would lead to advisory notes that are longer than some of the stories. What is the concerned but impatient and cranky author to do?
As it turns out, the concerned author does the blindingly obvious thing. My advisory now reads "if you want to read something but aren't sure about triggers, contact me to ask about it". It's not like the world is beating a path to my door to read my stories, but should that happy event ever come to pass, at least there'll be a way for people to engage in a dialogue with me.