Writing in a Trigger-Happy World
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | August 19, 2016 |
Image – iStockphoto: Antonius
Warning: This Column May Make You Angry
No, not that kind of trigger. We’re not talking gun violence today, although I encourage you to do so, every chance you get—it’s that important.
But, as it happens, I’ve just demonstrated what we are talking about: trigger warnings.
If my provocation for you today had been about gun violence, would you consider it to be my job to warn you of that?—just in case you’d suffered one of the unspeakable experiences that far too many of our fellow citizens are having in this age of gunpowder and rage?
Speaking of rage, would you say that the author Zygmunt Miłoszewski, whose Rage is out from AmazonCrossing this month in its English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, owes you a warning that its story involves domestic abuse? Miłoszewski forcefully engages his readers in examinations of various social ills in his books. Another of his novels, for example, revolves around anti-semitism. Want a trigger warning for that?
I bring this up because this week Colleen Hoover, an author with Judith Curr’s Atria Books, has written well to the question of trigger warnings.
Her It Ends With Us is out this month from Atria and, Hoover writes, “I’ve received quite a number of negative reviews in relation to the lack of a trigger warning for the subject matter…and for writing about such unhappy things.”
Personally, I might need a trigger warning for male love interests named Atlas and Ryle, but that’s just me being me, what an ass I am, imagine suggesting that the romance genre has a thing for fanciful character names, I’ll just shut up about all that, you’re welcome.
But seriously. Hoover is making such a valid point, one we all need to consider.
She’s made the choice on It Ends With Us to add this line to her sales page in deepest, darkest Amazonia (where the consumer-reviewers run wild and the drumbeats are so ominous): “This book contains graphic scenes and very sensitive subject matter.”
Should she have to do this?
Hoover, in My Thoughts On Trigger Warnings, writes:
As a fellow reader with my fair share of past experiences, I understand that there are issues some people do not want to read about. But as a writer, there are many things I don’t want revealed in the blurbs of my books.
And David Vandagriff picks up the point at The Passive Voice, ably coming to her side:
PG has enough experience in life to know that the number of ideas or concepts that will upset someone somewhere approaches infinity…When ebooks can be distributed around the world within a few hours, it is almost certain that a writer in one culture is capable of disturbing a reader in another culture with no intent to do so. Indeed, it may be impossible to discuss some topics without upsetting readers somewhere in the world.
Of course, his input triggers 113 comments. Hoover’s piece triggers 79 comments.
Congratulations, we now need trigger warnings about trigger warnings.
The surrealism of this Summer of Darkness already Trumps any trigger warnings that might once have been needed for bug-phobic readers about Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Here’s my provocation for you:
How can we ask authors to ply the spectacular range and radiance of human experience if they’re expected to provide trigger warnings about any and all potentially upsetting elements of their work?
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
Is That Story Loaded?
Oh, gosh, do you feel triggered by my trigger? Would you like Writer Unboxed to provide a safe space where you could observe gently changing flowery landscapes for a few minutes, perhaps with some really good spa music, the kind that includes that drippy sound—the pristine dew! arriving to wash away all fears!
Image – iStockphoto: Sage 78
Maybe you’d prefer two more weeks of NBC’s grotesquely sentimentalist coverage of the Rio Olympic Games—not enough Kleenexes in the world—each fabulous athlete reduced to a quaking child with stories of how her or his parents drove them to gymnastics and swimming practice every single day. (As opposed to what, having the six-year-olds drive themselves?)
Does genuine sports coverage really have something to do with triggering a sob-fest every time an American medals? The good programmers of NBC seem to think so. Let’s see that warning.
You might be surprised how real this is for some. Here are a few lines from one comment at Vandagriff’s site:
Not all readers read to experience an emotional response. Positive ones, yes, but if a book makes me cry because a character I love gets killed or something like that, that is a bad reading experience for me. I don’t pleasure-read to experience that. I feel angry and maybe even betrayed and I kinda want to punch the author in the face and throw away all her books.
But, of course, I can wipe this smile of smug derision right off my own face if I consider a “self-harming” teen who’s in a delicate recovery stage and stumbles into a tale that suddenly starts exploring the topic.
On the other hand, I read one of Vandagriff’s respondents writing, “Too many people seem intent on child-proofing the world rather than world-proofing the child (or themselves).” And I’m saying, right, bring on more triggers.
It’s one of those issues, isn’t it? You stand on one foot. You stand on the other foot.
But it relates, for me, I’ve discovered, to my own dislike of “disease of the week” approaches to literature and other media.
When we wander down the wrong paths of political correctness, it’s frequently in search of infrastructure, framework, protectionist guardrails we’ve come to believe that society owes us. Entitlement sizzles on the grills of Labor Day so loudly.
And how can we let the populist fondness for a safety-netted existence create this kind of censorship of literature? Did Hawthorne have to warn of triggers in The Scarlet Letter? Do we need to rush back and slap some big, honking scarlet warning on that thing? CONTAINS MATERIAL RELATED TO ADULTERY!
What do you think? Do you feel compelled to offer trigger warnings for things your readers may not care to encounter? Should everyone? Are you feeling triggered? Ready, set…
[coffee title=”Wish you could buy Porter a glass of Campari?” icon=”glass”]Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can![/coffee]
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Hey Porter – I guess I was a bit oblivious to this. I would think that the one place we should feel free to fully express ourselves as a society is in our art – and particularly in fiction intended for adults.
Again, I wonder if adult fantasy is sort of self-sheltering to this. I’ve written here before about the figurative distance that fantasy gains. Is death and mayhem and violence less palpable, or somehow more abstract, if the literary world the author creates is obviously fanciful rather than one based on the here and now? Not sure, but it seems so.
I mean, can you imagine the number of triggers George RR Martin would have to forewarn readers about? And not just death, but maiming, rape, incest, torture, and the list goes on. And would the deaths of those characters that he led readers to believe would live have been as shocking with such a warning? In any case, I’m glad I wasn’t warned. About any of it. If I’d been offended or upset by it, I’d simply have stopped reading him.
Interesting provocation, as usual, Bro. Thank you for being here every month, Porter!
Hey, Vaughn,
I definitely think that fantasy gets past this controversy must more easily than most literature. The understanding of a faux world is a great help, even for the “easily triggered” souls in the readership.
However, I think your example of the many-R’d Mr. Martin is maybe not the best. There have been huge outcries relative to the show, of course (which is to varying degrees George’s work, of course). The first triggered reaction I remember goes all the way back to a certain kid being pushed out of a certain window, right? As recently as the “killing” of Jon Snow and countless complaints about victimization of female characters.
I think it works this way: once work as big as Game of You Know What comes into play with production power as big as HBO’s and audiences as large as large as that series’ crowd is, the material is transmuted into a far more easily assailed commodity. It has left the realm of literary fantasy and it has been pulled down to the level of American Idol, Naked People on Islands, and political rallies (is there anything else left?).
Thus, I’ll go along with you on the idea that literary fantasy may get a bit of a pass on the usual range of trigger complaints. The Obligatory Man in the Cowl Holding the Sword on the cover will telegraph that here be dragons and that someone is to be eaten. That’s your trigger warning right there.
But once even that material crosses into the backyard boomerang range of commercial television and film, nothing is forgiven, the trigger-happyists will be out ready to cry foul as fast as you can say “Winterfell!”
The moral: Stay in that lovely cave of bookly fantasy, it might be the safest place left. :)
Thanks, sir,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Vaughn–everything you say here is worth reflecting on: do stories removed in terms of time and space–and by a fanciful take on the laws of physics (dragons, et al)–insulate readers/viewers against the shocks associated with painful/sordid subject matter?
Maybe so. But after watching one episode of “The Walking Dead,” I concluded that the show’s gimmick was to insulate viewers from their own sadism. By insisting that characters who are obviously played by human actors are not human, just so-called zombies, it becomes possible for the viewer to watch beheadings, butcherings, bludgeonings, gore parties, etc., without feeling there’s something wrong in enjoying such “entertainment.”
But as Porter would say, that’s just me.
Barry – I’ve been disappointed by the depths to which some of the speculative genre’s small screen versions have sunk (although I’m not a Walking Dead fan, and have never seen it – likely never will see one). My disappointment extends to GoT. (Vikings also comes to mind.) I am a fantasy literature fan first and foremost, but I do enjoy much of what is translated to both the large and small screens (and there can be no denying the boost such offerings bring to my chosen genre’s popularity).
I think part of my occasional disappointment is rooted in the differences between the two. In a book, an antagonist can be sadistic or a torturer, and descriptions of their atrocities vary, but rarely are we subjected to such lengthy and glorified squirm-fests as television’s producers think to foist upon us. I suppose, like anything, television is a business. Perhaps in a more targeted way than ever before. And business is good.
Thanks for raising the point. Here’s to the power of the remote control. However incremental its market effect, we can still spare ourselves.
Thanks to you too, Porter, for an interesting and important conversation.
Hey, Vaughn,
Agreeing with you all the way, I think these questions also take us into a really difficult point at which we need to ask the audience why it supports the kind of screen treatments we see.
Per Barry’s comment, we need to have a discussion with our audiences about “their own sadism.”
Personally, I avoid most horror programming because the day of the “psychological horror” seems long past and instead what we’re into is a special-effects fest of how many ways we can pull somebody’s arm off or separate them from their fingers or disembowel them.
I’ve never had the slightest interest in studying even an artificially rendered moment of this kind. And yet so many people seem to love this.
I freely concede that I don’t have the gene for watching gore — real or Hollywood. I’m not squeamish around blood and things, I simply can’t understand what’s entertaining about seeing grotesque human or animal violence and I refuse to support it. Somebody losing his head in a film? Why would I want to see that? Zombies? I think they’re ridiculously prurient excuses for the demanding work of actual horror, particularly when people try to haul in all sorts of literary excuses for them and vampires and other inane creatures of populist bloodlust.
“Actual horror?” I can point you to it. Ray Bradbury. A short story called “The Crowd” in his short story collection, “The October Country” https://amzn.to/2bqn3jU — in the story, every time there’s an auto accident, a rather special crowd of ostensibly concerned citizens forms at the scene. The whole collection lives (as other great efforts of the time like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits) in the world of psychological terror.
What we have to think is that today’s mass audience doesn’t have the subtlety to appreciate anything short of grand guignol. They need to see atrocity to get it. I think that’s sad, and even when wrapped in the “safety” of fantasy, I try to avoid putting a penny into material of this kind.
Good tangential convo, thanks.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Ha! Barry,
From one indefatigable “That’s just me” type to another, great observation. I think a lot can be done to distance a viewer (or reader) from his or her better self with “fantasy”-based elements — I’m not criticizing the genre, just this kind of use of it — and desensitizing us.
I recall a sense of this in Ex Machina in which androids are made evident as such to us in a way that makes violence against them, and even by them, more “acceptable” in the viewing of the film.
Thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
The only safe place you ever had was in the womb, well, most of us, and then it’s the real world. Life is what happens on the way to what you planned.
Safe places have no place in adult literature, kids picture books maybe, but that isn’t true anymore. Come to think of it, never was, I was frightened by Grimm …
Say on, Ted,
Agree with you about Grimm, too. I think that stuff scarred me for life. I need spa music quickly! :)
Thanks much,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I am SO GLAD you wrote about this. I, too, have gotten the “if I had known . . .” flak.
It’s the mashing up of genres. Many people still EXPECT women’s fiction to be happy and sunny.
SIGH.
Hi, Kelly,
Thanks much for the kind words, and yes, you “guys”— why does it sound too sexist to call women “gals”? lol — really take the brunt of this, I think.
The strength of the romance delegation has created this expectation of formulaic dependability in many parts of the women’s readership — an unfair set of restrictions, to say the least, with no regard for artistry or an author’s right to promulgate whatever messages and viewpoints he or she desires.
At times, this has been the basis of so much of the hostility at Goodreads, as you know, I’m sure — too many readers there think of themselves as somehow empowered to punish authors whose work doesn’t follow a set of supposed guidelines (some of which once were actually printed on pink paper and mailed to writers by Harlequin, I’ve seen them).
Even in a buyer’s market like the one we have today, I can’t think that an author’s going to be happy kowtowing to this sense of entitlement on the parts of many readers.
So stick to your guns and write what you need to write. All the best at calling your own trigger-happy shots! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I love this post!! Whatever happened to the notion of simply closing the book if you don’t like the contents? Or changing the channel? Or getting a new job if you hate the one you’re in? When did we start expecting the world to re-shape itself according to our needs? When did we get so wimpy?? The comment about “child-proofing the world rather than world-proofing the child” says it all for me. This world is full of both violence and beauty. If writers shy away from looking at that, in my estimation, we’re through. We need to rattle the bars of the cage and point to things and say, “look. This is real. This is happening. Pay attention.” The individual can pick and choose what to look at and what to put back on the shelf. But in truth, the world is wild and unruly and raw. For those who want the pre-packaged, gluten-free Happy Meal, I suggest the spaceship in the movie Wall-E. Okay, I think I’m ranting. But you triggered me, Porter. I could kiss you on the cheek!
Hi, Susan!
Sorry for the delay here, my Friday got very hairy (and long).
Thanks for the kiss on the cheek, I’ll take it, virtually is just fine. :)
And exactly, exactly, exactly. I’m reminded of a rather funny moment in court ruling we reported on in India of all things recently at Publishing Perspectives. https://bit.ly/2bE3dSg
The high court’s statement included this: “The choice to read is always with the reader. If you do not like a book, throw it away.”
Isn’t that lovely? The wisdom of Mumbai, where obviously the old adage about throwing a book across the room is still honored as it should be. :)
I’ll take the gluten, too, and thanks for the super comment! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Great topic.
Let’s start not with trauma triggers, but triggers to make one feel good. The Olympic coverage over and over sends us reaching for tissues. It’s manipulative. It masks the uglier realities of sports at that level. Pain. Obsession. Rigged rules. Commercialism.
Does anyone complain about the dishonesty of feel-good-trigger storytelling? No. Feel bad triggers, though, are bad. Children have the protection of parental warnings on movies, music and games. Now adults want to be guarded like children. Plenty of complaining about that.
My point here is that storytelling is inherently slanted. It is dishonest–for a purpose. Make us feel good or make us feel bad…the point of stories is to make us feel.
So, if you don’t want to feel anything, don’t consume stories. Stories are going to play with your emotions. Get over it. Or get into it.
Now, what about those people who truly have adverse and uncontrollable and debilitating responses to reminders of trauma. As an adoptive dad, I understand that. It’s my daily reality. Everything from news coverage to strangers’ thoughtless remarks can have out-sized effects on my kids. It’s wearisome.
On the other hand, I cannot protect my kids from every trauma trigger nor should I. Their lifelong challenge is to learn to cope in a world with rough edges. Terrible things happened to them and as a civilization we bear responsibility.
But they have responsibility too. They must become self-aware. They must learn coping skills and courage. My job is to shelter them but not to coddle them. Our family is their safe place but it’s not a fortress.
Thus, Porter, to those who want trigger warnings on novels, I say this: You are a grown up. When you consume entertainment, you know what you’re getting into. Read reviews. Be aware. Of your own triggers and the manipulation you are about to undergo. It’s called storytelling.
Have courage. Cope. That’s what we all do.
Beautifully said, Don. Thank you.
Agree completely, Don,
You’re getting at my own conclusion about this “trigger warning” insistence, and I especially appreciate the context in which you’re doing it — with children whose backgrounds have serious traumatic elements that require a lot of examination and response. These are lucky children to have such a father as you.
On your reference to the manipulative coverage of the Olympics that NBC afflicts us with, I have a related qualm in that it’s so xenophobic. The other countries’ athletes and struggles at the Games serve as nothing but background to the embarrassing, relentless, ugly focus NBC puts on the American athletes.
This is not our athletes’ fault, by any means, nor is it the fault of the nation as a whole.
This is the fault of a commercial entertainment medium that has decided to play on American patriotism to jack up its own ratings through an entirely artificial narrative: The Americans Descend on Rio to Triumph, Accompanied by Their Endlessly Bawling Relatives.
There was one sequence of diving competition (men’s) in which the focus was so ruthlessly on the American divers that it appeared there were no competitors at all. Other countries? What other countries? The Americans appeared to accomplish five dives virtually unopposed for the gold medal. It was laughably stupid, as rendered by NBC’s producers. The other divers on the podium? Hm, that’s odd, we’d never seen those guys. You mean they competed as well? This is shameful programming.
But until American viewers tell NBC (by refusing to watch such nationalistic excess) that they want to see the rest of the world and understand who we are in the context of a planetary reality, NBC will continue to grind out this preposterous picture of valiant American kids and their weeping, overweight families, a picture of the USA for which I apologize every chance I get to friend from other countries.
NBC is poisoning what the rest of the world believes is our national self-image. To the degree it’s right, we should be ashamed of ourselves. To the larger degree that it’s wrong, it should lose its contract with the IOC. It’s time for another broadcaster to have this franchise.
That aria done, lol, let me turn back to your wonderful understanding of the vulgarity, and even danger, of these trigger warnings on books.
You end up by placing the responsibility on the reader. For which I thank you. In the buyer’s market we’ve created by raising the Wall of Content — the media industries’ shared mad obsession with over-production — we’ve created a coddled viewer/reader/listener who feels entitled to be shielded from anything he or she doesn’t like.
I stand with you in saying no, it’s the job of that viewer/reader/listener to use reviews and samples and news articles about work to determine whether it’s content he or she wants to consume. Shoppers who will research their next toaster for days don’t want to spend two minutes researching their next book? That problem is theirs, and they need to own it.
This gets us to a point I’d like to come back to at some time and focus on more clearly, maybe next month: The responsible reader. Who he is, how she approaches the work, why we want him and her to take responsibility for the Wall of Content along with us. It’s the audience’s appetite, after all, that has set in motion this choke-the-market overkill of content production.
When do we just stop for a few minutes, pause in our constant self-examination (and breast beating, yes, we, too, have our performances), and turn back to face the reader?
The minister’s son in me still reveres one of the greatest lines from the mythology of the Jesus scriptures: “Heal yourselves.” Funny. There’s no trigger warning on the Bible, as I recall. :)
Thanks, Don, always a right-thinking pleasure.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
“Shoppers who will research their next toaster for days don’t want to spend two minutes researching their next book?”
“Funny. There’s no trigger warning on the Bible, as I recall.”
There you go. Be smart. Look out for yourself. What’s wrong with that?
Hear, hear! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I am all for shoving public pendulums the other way. At the delicious risk of being branded a Triggerista, I refuse to coddle readers. A subtitle of “Fuck That Shit” should do the trick.
Triggerista!
I love it, Deb. Thanks for a delightful comment.
“Fuck That Shit,” indeed. :)
Keep shoving those pendulums.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
As a sensitive reader, I’m grateful for trigger warnings. I read simply for the joy of being entertained and educated. If I want to deal with “real life” I can always turn on the news (which I don’t watch. I hear enough bad news just by living.)
But I’d never suggest an author not write what he/she wants to write. I just want to know in advance before I purchase a book I will put down after fifteen pages.
I wonder if we can be “educated” if we avoid reading that’s not pleasant?
I’m an adult and I choose my education. If I wanted to learn how to raise horses, I could read about it. If I wanted to learn about violence, I can read about it. But I don’t want to learn how to raise horses and I don’t want to learn about violence. My choice.
If you don’t like the content i.e book, movie, news, blogpost then put it away. Artists can’t be expected to warn specifically YOU about something YOU don’t want to see, because they don’t know what YOU don’t like it. YOU don’t have to finish something YOU don’t like. Period.
AMEN!
With the proliferation of self-publishing avenues, most books no longer have the advantage of a publishing team who understands cover art and what should or should not be in the book description. Some self-publishing authors let the Amazon reviews flow up on the page instead of producing a book description. A trigger warning is needed in these cases.
Others have already said if the cover art and description are of quality, trigger warnings are not needed – I agree with that. Publishers provided much better communication about the nuances of the book than do many of the self-publishers. I had an idea if I would encounter a rape in the story before I paid for the book and clearly understood if the rape was the story or just a means of moving the story.
I love to explore the self-published books, but am doing it much less because on the whole, their descriptions are mostly unreliable and a disproportinate amount have some form of rape. I would be happy if the trigger warning was reduced to “Book has an intelligent description vetted by a knowledgeable writer, yes or no”. I hope that the self-publishing community can address their skill gap but I cannot afford to continue to buy books that present themselves deceptively. Like the commenter above, I choose how I am educated. And if an author doesn’t have enough respect for readers or skill to produce the artifacts of cover and description well, they ought to carry a trigger warning.
I’m tired of shelling out money for “artist’s” efforts that are inadequately packaged. Nobody owes those “artists” anything, a seller does “owe” a customer.
Exactly, Kelsey.
This is the whole basis for the famous lines (infamous, maybe) about “throwing a book across the room.” :)
Every reader’s right — and responsibility.
Thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well, I think you’re missing something Kelsey. Maybe I don’t wish to spend my time or money on something I wouldn’t enjoy. Isn’t THAT my prerogative? Maybe I’d like some appropriate tools to make a decision by.
You speak as if life exists in discreet categories. Life is messy and doesn’t conform to your wishes. Raising horses, I know from experience, can be a hair-raising, horrible, disgusting, heart-breaking, wonderful, awesome, incredibly inspiring occupation.
Nobody owes you anything.
Thanks, Scott,
Life is, indeed, a lot of horsing around and rarely tidy, tame, nor predictable. :) Point well made.
Best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Alice –
Just want to say – don’t let them get you down. I have many of the same thoughts about this as you do (see my reply way down).
Hi, Jean,
Thanks for the question. This is where I always try to remind myself that we rarely change any minds. (You have only to look at this year’s election cycle to see this.)
I’m not sure we can actually “educate” readers who want to be sheltered that exposing themselves to the surprise of literature’s range is possible. We may have to settle for simply refusing to coddle that by giving such readers no trigger warnings — at the least, making them do their own research about something if they want to know what it is.
Perhaps I’m too gloomy on this point, though. Being a longtime critic, I’ve simply come to terms with the fact that you rarely make someone see something another way. (And I never believe these citizens who tell the media they have no idea who they’ll vote for, lol.)
Thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Alice,
I appreciate your reading my article and adding a comment.
I also appreciate your point that writers should write what they want to write.
Somewhere between that understanding of a writer’s need to have her or his own head and your perceived need to be warned about what’s in the writer’s work, of course, is the tricky area here.
As you can see from some of the comments that follow yours, there’s not much agreement among writers with you. (Writer Unboxed is a writers’ blog site but readers are always welcome.) And in a practical sense, Colleen Hoover’s initial post on this issue of trigger warnings was good: Much of storytelling craft involves surprise, stories that go a direction you hadn’t seen coming as a reader, stories that veer into something a reader may not know or might not have experienced.
Authors tend to see the surprise element as a critically important tool, and they see their freedom to inject that surprise with any subject matter or treatment they choose as sacred.
This puts them into opposition to your desire for trigger warnings. And with nothing but respect for you, I have to side with them.
As I was writing to Don Maass above, I think I’ll return to this in a look at “the responsible reader” next time. It might be good for all of us to think about that concept.
On the face of it, from what you’ve shared with us, I’d say that your sensitivity is your own responsibility and that the kinds of warnings you might like run contrary to much good storytelling and to the rightful operation of our authors.
But please understand that I thank you for weighing in with your thoughts on this: you’re a type of reader (and I notice that you’re a reviewer) we need to hear from in this debate so that we understand your thoughts, as contrary as they might be to our own.
All the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I could argue both sides of this question, Porter. Theoretically I am completely in the world-proof-the-child camp–so much so that I took my boys (then six and four) to a western that promised to show the effect of gunshots in full grisly detail. (They lasted about 15 minutes and then told me that they understood and could we move to the next theatre over and see Star Wars again?)
And as a reader, I’m wary of warnings on the cover. I don’t want too much revealed before I start a novel. In fact some back covers should come with a spoiler alert–now that’s a trigger I like. ;-)
However, I remember too well a time when I was trying to deal with a severe trauma (one that’s rare IRL and in fiction), and stumbling across that exact situation in the opening chapters of a novel that I thought was about something else. I was devastated.
Still, I think it’s the reader’s responsibility, not the writer’s. If you know there are things that will bother you to read about, then you have to do the research before you read or suffer the consequences.
At the same time, if we writers don’t want to disappoint our readers, we should look carefully at our cover art and book description. Their purpose is to give potential readers an idea of what’s inside to help them decide if they will like it. We don’t have to provide trigger warnings about anything that might upset people, but there’s a reason why Dennis Lehane’s books don’t have kittens and teapots on the cover.
Spoiler alerts are trigger *warnings* I like.
I agree with you a hundred percent, Barbara. It’s not the writer’s job to forewarn the audience. That’s what reviews are for. I always check reviews before buying a book because someone, inevitably, will mention an instance of rape or something else I may not want to read.
And I think it’s psychologically damaging to shelter people who have been through a trauma. I’m pretty sure there’s been a study or two done that say people who have been through a trauma need to face it and not hide from all mention of it.
A friend of my just said in a different location: “Having worked in treatment of mental health, if anyone is saying to put up with triggers (actual triggers, not uncomfortable content) to get used to them, that’s extremely dangerous. In treatment, it’s called exposure therapy, and it’s only a good idea controlled by the individual in question OR with oversight by a psychologist. And it’s not as simple as ‘just expose yourself to shit,’ it involves short term exposure to increasingly difficult stimuli PERSONALIZED by the patient.”
Hi, Chris,
Thanks for your note. I just want to assure you that no one here is doubting the seriousness or complexity of trauma and its therapy.
Our interest here at Writer Unboxed is on authors and their operation in a marketplace that’s frequently asked to provide more revealing content warnings than may be sensible for the product.
And it’s my personal opinion that the idea of us being able or rightfully predisposed to protect all sensitivities with forewarning is part of an overweaning stage we’re going through as a society right now of being overly protective in a rush to presumed entitlement.
But there’s absolutely no lack of sympathy or concern for trauma victims, nor do I think that any of us who have no background in the professions of treatment is willing to say, “Just expose yourself to shit.”
I appreciate your concern.
Thanks so much,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thanks, Suzanna!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thanks for this good comment, Barbara.
No problem with your view of it at all. Nor is there a need to dismiss people’s various traumas as not important or somehow not worthy of compassion. Of course they are.
But as you say, looking to the writers and other content producers of the world to somehow adequately declare all potential upsets—let alone trying to protect the surprise/discovery factor in their work—is impractical and carries that sense of entitlement, as well, even when well-intended.
Thanks for the good and personally informed input!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, I’m reading Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” right now. And here I thought it was probably a book about spring break, maybe in Ft. Lauderdale. Sheesh.
Tom, I am teaching this particular novel to high school seniors soon. Maybe the trigger warning should state that it offers a bleak and nihilistic view that fails to “lift people up” and provide hope (as E.B. White says writers should do). Not really–I don’t believe in trigger warnings. Though I would never choose to read fiction of this type for my personal entertainment, I see its value in a classroom setting.
Porter: Thank you for a thought-provoking piece. It seems to me that the very notion of trigger warnings can have a distinctly chilling effect on writers’ imaginations–and could start to close us all off in little boxes.
SK, I know what you mean. I don’t read McCarthy for the finger sandwiches. (Though he might have actual finger sandwiches in his work.) I read it for the gorgeousness of the craft—I think he’s a genius. But he does serve sour apples at the Sunday picnic.
Thanks, SK,
You’re getting at the hidden element of censorship in the problem of trigger warnings—whether conscious or not, an author’s going to at least feel pressure to write one way or another if prevailed on to make some kind of declaration of content and its nature, I agree.
Good insight, and thanks for it,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
See, Tom?
You can’t even find a good laugh riot anymore. It’s all going to the dogs. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Then on the other hand a Tipper Gore style warning for parents might help sell books. Do you know what that warning did for Slayer’s career?
You’re right, Bernadette, go for it. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
When did the “right to not be upset or uncomfortable” become a national value?
When being a perpetual victim gained more cache than actually accomplishing things.
Well answered.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well asked.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Here we go again. Art under attack. We’ve had censorship, banning, and burning, and now we have the slippery slope that is the warning. Yet, I’m not unsympathetic to traumatized individuals desperate to avoid certain topics and recognize this is a complex topic.
Personally, I’ve suffered experiences no one, especially a child, should have to suffer, but I shudder when freedom of speech is curtailed. “Warning” implies the artist has done something wrong. Too, where do you draw the line? How can you possibly avoid every conceivable trauma? Sure, gun violence and rape are obvious. What about relentless parental fighting? What about neglect? What about indifference? What about hit-and-runs? Cancer? I suffer from Chronic Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis. Is that going on the list? It was sure turned my life on its head six years ago. How about when I had a severe reaction to a medication?
Oh my gosh, what about history? Biographies? What happened to Lincoln? Oh, it was bad, but we can’t talk about it here.
My suggestion is leave the warnings to online support groups readers can visit. “Watched a loved one die of cancer? Here are the books to avoid.” Leave the artist out of it.
Hi, Christina,
Many thanks for these thoughts, and what an interesting point you come to at the end.
I really like the idea of of support organizations evaluating books and providing guidance to their membership. This could be a terrific service, a new dimension of research for people with trigger worries to have material vetted for their own specific needs and sensitivities.
If anything, a good organization could do this for film, TV, everything, not just books.
And this would then put the onus on people who understand specific sensitivities best, rather than asking authors to self-censor or declaim all manner of issue-related material.
Good going, thanks for this!
-p.
@Porter_Anderson
I vote a resounding “No” to the idea of trigger warnings. Once we’re adults it’s time to put on our big girl pants. If we’re bothered by a book, close it and open another one.
Jean,
I’m going to let you wear the big girl pants in this family, LOL, but they look great on you and thanks for the note, you’re on the money in my book. :)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I also vote no to trigger warnings. So many good comments here–close the book, move on, consider all the great literature that might have fallen by the wayside if various groups had their say and tried to ban them. Which is still going on with some school boards in the USA! Oh and by the way, Porter, since when do you capitalize the word “trump” when used as a verb? I like the allusion.
Thanks, Beth,
It’s a great point, the fact that a lot of terrific material can be scuttled in the face of hostility (perhaps masquerading as trauma-alarm, not even genuine discomfort).
As for how that “still” is going on in some school-board scenarios, I don’t think it will ever stop. Efforts at forceful censorship aren’t something the wider society seems to grow out of, and — as we’re seeing in this election cycle — cultural values don’t evolve at an even rate throughout the population, far from it. In many cultures this season, not just in the States, we’re seeing resurgences of nationalistic belligerence we’d like to have thought the world was past.
To paraphrase the old line, there’s noting weary about the wicked.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, Great post by the way! As someone who actually read Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us during launch week, I voiced my opinion on her blog. But I wasn’t one of those people who was upset about the content, though I fully empathize with those who were. If anything, she deserved the equivalent of a “6-star” review (a 5-star didn’t seem like enough) for her brilliant handling of a highly sensitive topic so very personal to her, and the bravery with which she put it the page. As an author, I respected that very much, and as a reader I was thoroughly moved and haunted in a good way. IEWU was the first book of hers I’ve ever read. As soon as I finished, I downloaded another one. Then did a rinse and repeat two more times over the course of a week. Now with four books under my belt, I consider myself a die hard fan.
Where I think the controversy comes in is that this book was published in the ROMANCE genre. Romance readers have strict expectations. Her product description only gave the vaguest hint of a “too good to be true” situation, but in no way implied you’d be going…there. Still, based on all of her blog comments, it was apparent that anyone who is a fan of her work knows her stories deal with highly-charged emotional topics that will scoop out your insides with a melon baller, then haunt you afterwards.
All that said, a non-spoiler warning (like the one her publisher ended up slapping onto the product description) would’ve been helpful on DAY 1. Because there are people who have experienced terrible things in their lives that go beyond world-proofing our children (which I agree with), and who aren’t expecting a romance to go…there. Romance, as a genre, has a strong reader promise that involves a level of “safety” and escapism that readers come to expect over others. When you break that promise, you hear about it.
But I also agree with Ms. Hoover that she doesn’t owe the reader an explicit warning in “horsey, ducky, lamby” language to ruin the plot for everyone else who has buckled up for the ride. However, giving a general content warning without dipping to the lowest common denominator, or revealing the plot, is the right thing to do. Even then, you will never please everyone, and sometimes there will be unintended casualties.
Hi, LG,
I appreciate your comment and personal experience of Hoover’s book and experience.
I think you’re touching on something that has wider implications for romance than many realize.
Quite frequently, the question of respect for romance is raised and many who work in the genre and those who read it will say how frustrating they find it that romance isn’t better respected than it is.
And yet, a rational explication like yours of the “strict expectations” of so many romance readers makes it seem clear to many of us outside the genre why romance tends to have problems gaining wider respect. As many of us outside romance see it, there’s no reason that Hoover should be given so much trouble for choosing to write a romantic work that doesn’t toe the line of these “strict expectations.”
In fact, if they asked me—and I assure you they won’t ask me, lol—I would say to the romance audience that the real answer they’re looking for is a “happy trigger.” Put a sticker/stamp/label on the romance books that DO kowtow to the readership’s demands for fulfillment of those “strict expectations.” One such happy trigger might be “This Book Has a Happy Ending!” Another might be “Nobody Gets Hurt in This One!” Etc.
Couldn’t those who work and follow the romance idiom put the burden of these expected storylines onto those who do want to supply them to their readers? Why should those like Hoover who would like to expand the field—and in the process invite some of the respect that normally eludes the genre—take it on the chin for being more seriously directed writers?
What I’m wondering, more rhetorically than specifically of you (don’t worry, I don’t mean to make you answer for the genre, lol) is this: Why is the main action along the lines of this issue a punishment? Those who don’t like a widening of the genre’s usual outlines tend to punish those who do. As you say, you’ll never please everyone, and I would add not even with big, honking, happy endings. But when I see so much animosity aimed at an author or a body of material that doesn’t fit those “strict expectations” of a readership, I see what looks like closed minds and hearts in action. Respect for that? Really is hard to come by.
Thanks again for the very helpful, thoughtful input, it’s much appreciated.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, I’m not sure why you are bringing up lack of “respect for romance” as a point here in the context of expectations which is more of a reflection on the reader than the genre. You, of all people, know what it takes to get published, and how the market drives the genre expectations. So, blame that issue on the industry and give the authors and the genre the respect it deserves for serving the largest segment of readers of any genre. As an author who isn’t shy about adding an edge to my romances, I respect what Colleen Hoover is writing and would like to have more of it. Colleen Hoover still delivers her happy ending as is industry and market expectation.
Just because romance delivers a happy ending shouldn’t have any bearing on it not getting the respect it deserves, that’s like saying Thriller writers don’t deserve respect for delivering dead bodies or some other expectation the market and the publishing industry has set for them…Just saying. @lgoconnor1
LG,
I brought up the respect question because I think it’s perfectly germane in this discussion. No need for your approval, thanks.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
As author of Special Victims Unit, I confess, I have a cautionary statement in my “From the Author” segment on Amazon. It is probably unnecessary considering the cover (woman with a bruised eye) says it all. In fact, after reading your article, I would say that ALL of the authors have done a fine job of “warning” readers through their cover design and titles. It isn’t as if a cover designed with kittens and butterflies is likely to be about a hatchet wielding serial killer.
That said, my caution stemmed when I set out to write Christian fiction, resulted in a book considered too worldly for Christian publishers and too Christian for secular publishers. Still, it is a respectful heads-up that reads as follows:
I once told a woman as we prepared her Victim Impact Statement, “If the jury isn’t crying, I haven’t done my job. They need to feel everything you felt.” Dear reader . . . may you experience the full range of human emotions: all of the hopes and terror, passion and pain, faith and frustration as you puzzle through the mysteries and thrill to the adventures of Sunny McLane.
Hi there, Dawn,
Really appreciate your taking the time to offer this input.
I’m especially interested in your experience of finding yourself in that odd DMZ between “too Christian” and “too secular.” (My father was a Methodist minister and theologian and left me with a lifetime fascination with the impact of various effects of religious belief on people.)
Your statement about the “full range of human emotions” is interesting because—speaking only for myself, mind you—that would warn me of absolutely nothing. I don’t mean to sound critical, I simply mean that a message of that kind sounds like “I laughed, I cried, I loved this book.” Are you saying that such a passage might pass as a kind of trigger warning?
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’m tempted to agree that in art, anything goes, and authors should not be expected to write “trigger warning” on their own books. Agreed that that’s what reviews are for.
I’ve read some novels that really upset me (A Thousand Splendid Suns comes to mind–the violence toward women was so horrifying, made all the worse by the knowledge that it was based on things that actually happen), but I don’t regret reading it.
However, as someone who’s very fortunately never experienced much in the way of personal traumatic experiences, I’m uncomfortable telling people who have how they should and should not feel about fiction. As while I can certainly sympathize with people who’ve experienced trauma, I personally can’t empathize.
Hi, Mary,
I like your caution. I think it’s very worthy and we all do well to remember that we may not have experienced what some who feel they need these warnings have been through.
However, I can also float—like a trial balloon, lol—the idea that it does the artistic spirit a certain kind of trauma when it’s straitjacketed into avoiding this or that, declaring what might or might not disturb one person or another.
Shall we hold visual artists to the same thing? Shall we say that van Gogh is wrong to give us a self-portrait with a bandaged ear because it might upset someone who’s had an awful experience of self-harm?
What about music? I write about living composers of contemporary classical music (here’s my longtime #MusicForWriters series on this, in case you’re interested https://tcat.tc/22bQxEU ). Are we to say to the sublimely talented Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir that she must stop writing her achingly disturbing music because it might put a listener in touch with something of a rough memory or difficult idea?
I agree with you wholeheartedly when you write, “I’m uncomfortable telling people…how they should and should not feel about fiction.” We’re good.
But I want those people to find out for themselves. I want them to see Vincent’s canvases, I want them to hear Anna’s music, and I want them to read the books our very best writers are creating today. I want them to cope with these issues for themselves, I cannot sanction our becoming a paternalistic, warning society. (“Oh, this isn’t good for you, dear, and that might give you a bad dream.”:)
We all have buttons we would like not pushed. But we grow best and fastest when someone pushes them. And one reason that entertainment is more popular than art is that art is there to push those buttons while entertainment is its feel-good sister.
I’m sitting right with you on the point that we must not take it upon ourselves to assume we can feel the pain of others.
But I don’t want to see our artists’ need to create their most authentic work constrained by the pains of those others.
I think we go forward with as much compassion as possible, being careful to hold it out to our artists as well as to our readers.
Thanks again, your comment is a rich one.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Oh I agree that artists should make the art they want regardless of how it’s received. I’m just saying I’m uncomfortable telling people with real trauma in their past that they don’t need trigger warnings, because who am I to tell them what they do and do not need? Just trying to be sensitive as someone who comes from a relative place of privilege.
Agree, I don’t think we need to take it upon ourselves to tell trauma victims what they need. I think we can, however, be mindful and protective of what literature and its artists need. There’s a responsibility there, too.
Thanks again,
-p.
Just saw this on a FB thread, and it’s pretty relevant: “There’s a difference between a trigger warning (a trigger being a documented psychological response to stimuli for an individual with PTSD), and a content warning, and I think that a lot of people have started using content warnings for things that make them UNCOMFORTABLE, not for things that TRIGGER. I agree that content warnings diminish the shock value of particular genres. But TRIGGER WARNINGS are something different, they are necessary, and they are everyone’s responsibility.” They post TW’s for sexual violence, child sexual abuse, self-injury, death of children, torture, suicide, animal torture, genocide, and disordered eating, but not for other things.
Good distinction, Chris. Thanks for this.
Thanks! Trigger warnings are for real PTSD, and it sounds like that list contains the items that trigger a PTSD response in the largest number of people. Lots of people go overboard with trigger warning requests, so it’s good to pare it down to what it’s really supposed to be for. I was reading about it in a public tabletop game context, so could be different re: books. Personally, I think mentioning those items in the back cover blurb if present probably covers one’s bases. I’m not sure whether that’s what mental health professionals would say, though. The person on the tabletop thread does “TW: sexual assault” as a label, for instance, and they worked in mental health.
Chris, I think this has completely nailed it. There is a world of difference between catering to the easily offended sensitive flowers (harden up and/or put the book down!) and people with serious psychological conditions. ‘Put the book down’ does not work for people with PTSD, as by the time they’ve realised the scene has a triggering event in it, they’re likely to have been triggered. And that is not anything any writer should wish on a reader.
Most erotica / erotic romance publishers handle this fairly well by providing lots of relevant keywords (sub-genre, practices involved) at point-of-sale. So if the work involves dubious consent or rape, it will be specified. It’s not as spoilery as you might think, and is primarily to help people find what they *like* rather than what they want to avoid.
Others have suggested what seems like a practical way through this: a trigger statement or code for the main well-established triggers on the copyright page or somewhere else in the front material. The rest of us can ignore it and rely on the blurb.
Chris nailed it. I am one of those who has been sexually assaulted, am an abuse survivor, and have PTSD. I love that Chris brought up the differences between content warnings and trigger warnings. As someone who has actually been through these things, I’d like to have a heads up that is occurring in the book that I’m reading. Will I continue reading it? Yep, but I sure won’t be out and about and in public. I’ll be in a place that I consider to be safe and ready to talk to someone if I need to. Certain things can put me back in flashback mode. I’ve been there and it is scary. It’s terrifying. Should I be sticking on my big girl pants right then (like several of you have suggested)? I’m not trying to be argumentative here, but it needs to be understood that trigger warnings are really for people like me who may need that safe space to read these things and the like. It’s amazing how much more can be dealt with when it’s understood that it’s coming. That’s when exposure therapy is when it’s helpful. I am to the point that I now can go ahead and read and watch things without the warning, but I have been there and know what it feels like. Use your empathy rather than just calling people children and the like. It’s not helpful. It actually minimizes what those people have been through. So again, trigger warnings and content warnings are two very different things. If someone just doesn’t want to read something because it makes them uncomfortable is one thing; if someone might just have a flashback is quite another.
No. Authors should not have to put trigger warnings on their writing. Surely the cover art and the back cover blurb is descriptive enough?
That doesn’t mean I’m insensitive to how people feel. I remember seeing Spiderman a few months after 9/11 and it was just too soon for me to enjoy watching buildings explode. But I’m a big girl and I can walk away if something is too much for me to handle.
If the blurb and reviews provide a tip-off on the issues in that person’s list, I think that’s plenty, personally. The list was “sexual violence, child sexual abuse, self-injury, death of children, torture, suicide, animal torture, genocide, and disordered eating.”
I concur with Chris.
Hi, Jennifer,
I’ve had a similar reaction to action films with violence at several points close to terrorist attacks, I know exactly what you mean about your Spiderman experience. So in this, I don’t disagree with you.
In fact, I’ll tell you something about television news network practice: When there are incidents of certain tragedies—a plane crash, for example—the best newsrooms lift their ads from on-air and either postpone running them or place them (especially online) away from the pertinent news. Meaning that, which this is done correctly, you shouldn’t see an airline ad sitting right beside a crash report (or running on the air just after that part of the news is covered). In part, of course, this also meets with the needs of the advertiser. who would like not to look so crass as to be saying “fly us!” when another company has just had such a grievance and loss. But it’s also one of the more thoughtful and compassionate things that journalists in our major network settings try to do, something I’ve appreciated in working with them.
Here’s a question, though. And again, this reflects no disagreement with you, I’m just walking the issue down the street a bit farther: Aren’t films (and even breaking live news on television) different from books?
Your and my experiences in action films around terrorism—I think, that’s why I’m asking, I’m still working on this—are different from experiences with a book. As many folks (myself included) have said here, with a book, you can close it, stop reading, “throw it across the room,” lol, trash it, give it away… stop the experience. At least you can do this faster than you can get out of a crowded cinema. And I think that the representation of events in film on a large screen is so much more overwhelming and “imposed” form of entertainment (in a good way, we sit and watch and give up a little of our own heads to enjoy the film) that I think it’s a much different experience from reading, don’t you?
Or am I just wrong? (It does happen, lol.)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well, yes and no. :)
I don’t think it’s any harder to get away from a book than it is to get away from a screen. On the other hand, books are so personal — it’s just you and the words. No one else is there to dampen or heighten your experience. It’s all about how you connect with the words.
For me, that makes everything in a book feel more tangible. I feel rage, sorrow, joy, excitement on a deeper level than from a film or TV show.
To clarify my original statement, I don’t think trigger warnings should be MANDATED*. I think if authors or publishers feel they are warranted because of the content of a particular novel, I certainly don’t think they are wrong to include them.
*If we are going to move into mandated trigger warnings, it seems they would have to be part of a rating system like for TV, movies and video games. Publishers have fought that for a long time.
Porter, thanks for covering this subject. We weren’t always a nation of fainting flowers, and I’m not sure why we changed, but change we did.
My caveat to sensitive readers would be– if the cover and/ or blurb on the back of the book doesn’t have enough hints to clue you in to what you might see inside, and you’re really sensitive, take the time before you buy it to read about the book on the Web. See what other people say. If you can, read a few pages in it before purchasing it.
But whatever you do, please don’t whine and hate on the author for not warning you beforehand about its contents. We do that for children, not adults.
Cars deserve more warning labels than books, especially since a lot of folks don’t seem to understand that driving a car while texting or otherwise distracted on the phone can be deadly, and an unfortunate few don’t remember to check the back seat for pets or small children before they lock the car and leave it for hours in the hot sun. I would vote for those warning labels way before putting a “Caution – some scenes in this novel may contain material upsetting to some readers” on the cover of a new book.
Thanks much.
I’m with you all the way on the cars but I’m more interested in flat-out laws in every state against texting and calls while driving, having been hit by a young woman who was on the phone while driving. A few inches to the left and she’d have struck my door and killed me. In Atlanta, while I was at CNN.
We have too many jackasses, male and female, using phones — in any way — while driving tons of steel down the road. I’d like to see them banned from driving for five years, every time they’re spotted by a cop.
But I wouldn’t want to see trigger warnings telling me that a book contains a scene of negligent driving by texting/phoning.
I’d prefer the publishing industry to keep its hands off my traumas, I’m with you there. All the best. And please drive defensively.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter.
As per usual, your post hones in on something worth any writer or reader’s time.
In the end, these questions pit honesty and self-respect against profit. Will writers plaster “crime scene” yellow tape all over their books in order to avoid risking sales, and to protect themselves against negative reviews? Or will they write and publish books free of self-censorship?
My term for a society dependent on feel-good, soporific variations on the Power of Positive Self-deception is The Nanny Culture. Nannies guard their charges against any and all unpleasantness. It’s their job to insulate children from both physical and emotional bruises. But at some point, the nanny must move on, and the little ones manage on their own. That’s how I see this issue: adults who need literary nannies should not influence what writers write.
BTW, I share your sense of irritation over the relentless booster-club aspect of American Olympics coverage. It’s embarrassing to me. It suggests a society so insecure as to need constant bucking up. That’s why I watch the Olympics on Canadian TV. The coverage is much more attuned to non-nanny-culture viewers.
Thanks again.
Thanks for the input, Barry.
I think “the nanny culture” is certainly one term for the trend we’re talking about. I always hesitate on that one, though, because I think that the people who want to be so firmly shielded from whatever they consider unpleasant or upsetting are a good deal worse that the children a nanny tends, lol.
For me, this lies in that strange space of entitlement I mentioned in the piece, this weird assumption by so many — and oddly exacerbated by the advent of the Internet — that they’re somehow entitled to live lives undisturbed by the creative thoughts of an artist or the dissonance of a composer’s musical vocabulary or the subject matter of an author’s work.
A while ago, there was a survey done about the consumption of news in this country — it’s been too long for me to get back to which survey it was or how long ago it was done — and one of its findings was that very conservative news consumers kept saying that they wanted news “the way I like it.” This was during the rise of Fox News, the arrival of ideologically driven news, and what they were saying, of course, is that they wanted news that ratified their views of the world. Something that didn’t report what they wanted reported wasn’t OK with them. And, of course, in doing so, they’d nullified the very nature of what “news” is. News is whatever has happened, it’s not one concept’s packaging of that event to make it look or sound like something it’s not.
This impulse, though, the echo chamber of comfort in any area of life, is what so many now feel they’re entitled to. It’s what NBC feeds with its incessant focus on American athletes at the Games, as if the rest of the world didn’t show up. (And as if who wins were the point of the Olympic movement at all — that’s a patent lie but one on which many Americans are totally wrong-headed.)
Thanks again for your input, always glad to have you,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–Generous as always in giving careful thought, attention and time to those of us who write comments. One last detail about the Olympics, something I’m sure you already know: we can thank Joseph Goebbels for the hyped showbiz approach it has assumed. He talked Hitler into showcasing the Reich through this approach, and it has only become more pronounced. It can only be a matter of time before Katy Perry, Madonna or Justin Timberlake does a halftime show between events.
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” –Franz Kafka
Thanks, Judy,
Always great to be reminded of Kafka’s letter to Oskar Pollak.
This is a translation of the passage I like even better:
“Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
But what does it hurt to supply trigger warnings?
Put them at the bottom of the description (online) or tucked into an inside cover (paper) with the heading ‘trigger warnings and spoilers below’.
Then the readers who could suffer emotional harm are warned, and the readers who won’t don’t have to know about it.
And if you can’t be bothered to care about the readers who have suffered in real life what you’re writing about in fiction… well.
Hi, Rae,
I regret that you seem to want to say that authors who resist the idea of trigger warnings are people who “can’t be bothered to care about the readers.” That’s inaccurate and it’s unfair.
As I’m sure you know, it’s clear from my article and all these commenters that this is not the case. No one here has said that he or she doesn’t care about the readers.
Reasons that trigger warnings may not be what an author wants to provide are laid out on this page in many ways by many people, answering your “what does it hurt?” question before you ask it.
And so, whatever is spurring your displeasure, it’s not here.
I wish you all the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter, I don’t know if you will read this, but I want to chime in here. I definitely have been getting the feeling that anyone here who has posted any positive reaction to using trigger warnings is looked down upon.
I think that in some format, it may not be a bad idea. It would be one more tool for readers to use. You seem to emphasize READER responsibility. We’re not far apart on that. After all, even if trigger warnings are supplied there’s no guarantee a particular reader will even pay attention. But —- a reader CAN’T use a tool that’s not in the toolbox.
Hi again,
I don’t think anyone is “looked down upon” for any opinion here, at least I hope not.
I do agree with you that there’s more support in this discussion for not using trigger warnings than using them. This is partly engendered by my article at the outset, of course—I’m less in favor of them than some—but, being a site for authors, the general writerly sense that a trigger warning can challenge the author’s ability to surprise a reader and develop dramatic elements of a story is to be expected, I think.
While you’re right that the lack of a trigger warning means it’s not there as a tool for a reader, the sense I get is that most of our respondents believe that well-written promotional copy, well-designed covers, and review and other commentary on a book should help a reader research and consider whether a book is something he or she wants to read—and that that kind of “reader responsibility” is important for the integrity of the writer’s work and position vis-a-vis the reader.
Where I tend to bristle a bit (as you might have seen in my reply to Rae) is in a suggestion that placing a high value on writerly integrity and the need of the author to manage expectations as she or he sees fit is in some way a matter of not caring about the reader. That’s not the case. And while no one is being “looked down upon” for thinking that to be a factor, I’m at pains to say that’s not it at all.
Any right-minded author cares about his or her readers.
Any decent person would like not to inadvertently put someone who has a background of trauma into a bad moment.
Any literarily sensitive author knows that she or he wants to be careful of people’s feelings but also needs to protect his or her story’s effectiveness and ask the reader-consumer to take on the responsibility of researching a book, just as we ask car buyers to research autos.
On the wider level, there’s even a movement at some campuses now to plainly spell out the fact that students will not be protected from “upsetting” topics or political views they’d like not to see discussed by faculty or visiting speakers, and that “safe spaces” will not be provided for those who claim to have been unduly disturbed by such subject matter. This—although it’s hard to believe—has been an issue that the academy has wrestled with for some time before coming to this sensible point.
To my mind, none of this says that anyone is to be looked down upon. It says that we’re talking about a fine line—and an important one—for both writers and readers to consider and that no snap, easy, blanket solution is applicable.
As you might know, my role here at Writer Unboxed is as a provocateur—I deliberately look for such hot-button issues as this because I (and the column’s management) believe that it’s beneficial to all of us to examine such things together. I’m frequently struck by how many folks believe they see some sort of judgmental element (inevitably negative, by the way) in one position or another, and in practically any arena of debate. This is part of Internet discourse today. Few folks are able to leave emotional attachment to their arguments behind. (I’m not talking about you right now, just about the general response to these articles.) And that normally plays out as some sort of misperception of critical, even hostile reception.
In one case during this discussion so far, I was rather short with a respondent who returned to suggest that some part of my commentary back to her had been wrong for the context. It was right for the context and—again—this was an example of the emotionally charged and rather entitled hauteur that tends to arrive in these discussions, a predictable part, as I say, of trying to discuss things on the net.
But no, there is at least no conscious or purposeful effort to look down on anyone for a position. That’s hardly to say that the bulk of commentary won’t go one way or another. The hard part is remembering that we can disagree with each other without degradation of each other. The USA was founded on disagreement, and yet we are more afraid of it—and we read more hostile intent into it—than perhaps at any time since the McCarthy era. This is part of what’s fueling our rather disastrously ad hominem political climate this year. And it’s disappointing.
All sincere commenters are appreciated here, including you, of course, even though all viewpoints won’t be equally happily received. Thanks again.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter –
Thanks for a thoughtful reply. However, I do disagree with you that those of us who have posted anything positive about trigger warning seem to be looked down upon. Did you really read those replies to Alice? There was one I actually thought was borderline rude – not yours, but one of the others.
Then what to make of this: ” In fact, if they asked me—and I assure you they won’t ask me, lol—I would say to the romance audience that the real answer they’re looking for is a “happy trigger.” Put a sticker/stamp/label on the romance books that DO kowtow to the readership’s demands for fulfillment of those “strict expectations.” One such happy trigger might be “This Book Has a Happy Ending!” Another might be “Nobody Gets Hurt in This One!” ” Maybe you didn’t mean it so, but it came across as pretty condescending to me. (and I’ll confess those are trigger warning I’d like!)
You certainly are correct that this whole trigger warning/safe spaces issue is a hot-button. I’m a retired prof., so I really feel both sides of what academia is going through. On the one hand, a non-threatening environment is certainly more conducive to learning; but on the other hand, true democracy and academic freedom need open topics and discussions. At least in math, one usually could just keep the focus on the subject and the controversial stuff didn’t really come into it. :-)
I wouldn’t suggest that authors don’t care about readers; I would be sure that would NOT be the case as the object of writing it to get people to READ your work. And one thing that might be something to think about —– authors probably want to get their work read by the readers who will really best enjoy and appreciate it. So I just wouldn’t dismiss them totally out of hand. And a system that works for one reader may not work for another;. For example, one reader might have limited internet access; another reader might not have a physical bookstore (that would sell the book he or she is interested in) in any proximity. So I think having more than one tool readers can use might not be so bad
Great subject, and tough call. If one is relatively wound free, or has worked through the worst of the trauma of their past, the need for trigger warnings seems unnecessary. But for people who are still struggling to work through and move past terrible things they have experienced, happening upon a “close to home” situation in a book with little warning is a terrible experience.
Should everything have a trigger warning? Of course not–that’s silly. But some stuff probably should. The question is, how do we know when and when not to provide warning? And, is the way to do this in a forward, on the cover, or by simply through the writing itself, and subtle clues of what may be coming, and letting readers decide if they want to read on?
We’ve run into this situation at our blog, where each Saturday we cover a character’s emotional wound in detail. Here’s a snapshot of some of our topics:
Accidentally Killing Someone
A Family Member’s Suicide
A Home Invasion
A Parent’s Abandonment
A Sibling’s Betrayal
Being Held Captive
Being Mugged
Being Publicly Humiliated
Being Raised by Neglectful Parents
Being Unfairly Blamed For The Death of Another
Childhood Sexual Abuse
So, as you can imagine, there are some serious triggers here. The reality is that when we pull from real life, it creates compelling and full-blooded characters. Emotional wounds are painful, but real. In fiction, they need to be explored, and the content is very helpful to people who want to get their characters personality, fears, behaviors, and motivations correct with one of these traumas at their core.
We have a content warning on each post. The title makes it clear what one is going to read about. Between the two, I feel we’re being transparent. What’s interesting is that we’ll often get a message from someone who has experienced the wound we’ve profiled, and they thank us for handling it the way we do, and often weigh in on our take regarding the wound. So this tells me that sometimes it isn’t about the trauma itself, but how it is handled, and how readers are prepared for it.
But, blogging about something so triggering is one thing. We plan on turning this thesaurus into a book like our others, and I guess that is where we’ll truly see from a wider audience if this is something that readers will willingly expose themselves to, knowing what they might be in for.
We know from the reaction to this series of posts that writers will find this helpful, but this will be a book filled with triggers. It will require some heavy thinking about how to handle this in a respectful way yet still retain the essence of the traumas so that others can write their characters effectively.
Hi, Angela,
Thanks for your input here.
Sounds as if you’re dealing with the question of triggers in a very responsible way for the form you’re talking about. A nonfiction blog (about writing, as I understand it) that treats one or more traumatic contexts each time is a great place to warn people who might find such a discussion difficult. And I’m sure that in the book’s collection of these things, you’ll have the same sensible approach in place.
The book, however, like the posts you’re doing, will be nonfiction, a writing guide, right?
I think the situation and the issue are different once we introduce the topic into fiction, where, as you say, it might arrive for a reader unexpectedly. It’s there that a writer (like Colleen Hoover) finds it better not to give away the emotional or psychological factors her characters (and readers) are going to encounter, and for good reason of natural dramatic surprise and verisimilitude.
In the case of your nonfiction instructional book, your approach makes perfect sense. And a person who doesn’t want to read about working with characters who encounter childhood sexual abuse or a home invasion or a family member’s suicide will know that the given part of the book on one of those issues just isn’t for them. I’d say just warn them: “If you have trouble with suicide, this isn’t the chapter for you.” After all, in that case you’re writing primarily to writers—or at least to people who want to consider how characters are made. If they’ve understood your book correctly, they’ll know that they’re there to learn how to deal with characterizations of traumas they choose to confront and possibly use in their books.
In fiction, the issue, as you say, and as we see here, is a lot more complex, isn’t it?
Thanks again for you input,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Plenty of eloquent response on this important topic! Congratulations, Porter, for so skillfully tacking between Scylla and Charybdis (hey, no trigger warnings in the Bronze Age, that’s when listeners had to man up- oh wait, they were all men already, scratch that).
In epic fantasy I think we’re especially prone to the precocious teen who reads adult tales as early as middle school. There’s no use trying to laugh that one off, parenting varies so widely and I think a good faith effort is needed (though obviously you can’t bend yourself over backwards on this). In person, I tell interested buyers “in my tales, it seems like there’s always one scene where the bad guys prove how bad they are. But they don’t get away with it.” Some version of that, or even a quick note that it’s “suitable for high schoolers and up”, is an important gesture.
Hey, Will,
Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated. And I don’t think many will argue with age-appropriate designations, although we could all argue for years about which such designations work and are right and are adhered to, etc. (YA vs. NA, alone, can get you into hours of controversy.)
I think the concept of a trigger warning is more specific, in that it tends to be driven by a sensitivity more than by a cultural concept of maturity and appropriate content. For example, if you look at Angela Ackerman’s good comment here, you can see an actual list of traumas that might be considered for warnings in various content settings. And if we think from that stance, then “there’s a scene in which bad guys show us how bad they are” or whatever, that’s not going to do a thing to alert someone who might be traumatically reactive to those bad guys’ gang-rape of a woman, if that’s what they do, or their dismemberment of a guy they don’t like, if that’s what they do. In short, I think that trigger-warning supporters would say that “there will be some badness here” isn’t specific enough to protect readers who feel they should be protected by prior knowledge of specific content.
Seems to me a bit different, though that’s arguable, too, I’m sure. All things in publishing are. :)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Beth Havey’s comment suggested that attempts to ban books because of triggering or uncomfortable content are limited to school boards. I wish that were true.
A lot of my friends are literature professors, and the question of whether or not a course syllabus should include trigger warnings for the books assigned bites at least one of them every new term. Lots and lots and LOTS of college students (and their helicopter parents) don’t want poor little Timmy and Sue to read “those kinds of books.”
As an author and former academic, I cringe to hear that. And then I rage. Literature, in my opinion, has but one purpose: To make us step outside of ourselves and experience the world through someone else’s perspective. In other words, to teach us how to empathize with others. We can’t do that if we don’t have our own perspectives and values challenged from time to time. (Which was the entire purpose of college, I thought. But, I digress.)
That’s not to say that every book we read has to challenge us. Like many people, I have my “comfort-food” books, which I read when I want a fun escape for a few hours. And that’s a perfectly valid method of reading, but it shouldn’t be the only reading an adult does.
Frankly, I think many other posters have the right idea. A little personal responsibility when choosing a title is needed. If you find a book’s subject too troubling, don’t finish it. But don’t penalize the author for not warning you about the challenge.
As for things like Scarlet Letter, the principal “risk” there is that kids are introduced to subjects too soon and get… um, bored. Completely turned off to literature not just because they’re not ready for the subject matter but because the style is not one they can often appreciate. Yet we keep doing it- hey Holden’s a teen, this is a sure-fire hit with high schoolers, etc.
Porter, you’ve raised a stimulating topic. I wish you would have warned me. :)
To me this is one of those tough on-the-fence issues, where the artist in me wants to say, “Fuck ‘em,” but the writer who wants to sell some books feels compelled to say, “Um, this comment will contain the F word.”
I picked that example purposely, because the vast majority of the negative reviews my debut novel received were all focused on the profanity in my book – profanity that seemed so mild (and which is such a part of my day-to-day vocabulary) that it would have NEVER occurred to me that my book would be found offensive for that reason. (Incidentally, there was another reason I was VERY afraid my book would be found offensive, but that has never come up in any reviews. Go figure.)
Anyhoo, the long-winded upshot of this comment is that when I released my second book (under a pen name), I led off the Amazon product description with a warning about the language they would find inside my Mafia comedy. On one hand, it felt like a cop-out; on the other, I considered it a necessary precaution to prevent an onslaught of negative reviews from people who were for some reason surprised to find that Mafia guys occasionally resort to “colorful metaphor.” I still got some one-star reviews, but none of them were prompted by my potty-mouthed characters, so I consider this trigger warning to have been worth it.
Hey, Keith,
Sorry for not warning you, lol, and this is an interesting thing you bring up here — not least for the fact that people who feel unduly handed what they consider to be rough language will resort to “punishing” an author with a low-star review.
“Punishing” is in quotes because it’s my conceptualization of what reviewing of this kind is. And the fact that you have to try to ward off such reactions by (logically, I grant you) applying warnings to things is something I regret on your and other authors’ behalf. I’m not getting at this very well, but I think what I’m saying is that in the era of consumer review, the unsatisfied reader gains actionable power, that capability to “punish,” as I’m using the term, with a 1-star review. And I’m not sure that’s a great thing.
This is, as we’ve seen in instances in the past, the bad side of consumer review. A person who will “punish” a manufacturer for a displeasing sofa cushion color will do the same for a word disliked in a novel or maybe for the angularity of Picasso’s cubism or the dissonance of Benjamin Britten’s music.
While I see no need to consider literature above reproach, by any means, this does refer, in a way, to the idea of a kind of new commoditization of books and the writings of our authors. These works are judged as products of other kinds are. A shower curtain and a book both come in for a star-rating slap in the face if something is not to the consumer’s unpredictable preference.
Probably I’m not quite up to the “commoditization” debate this month, lol, but it is interesting, isn’t it?
And there’s a parallel here, of sorts. I’ve been commenting with Viki Noe on her example of a friend who was very badly upset by a gun scene in a film that reflected an awful moment in her own life. And in that case, I wonder if film and the written word don’t present some differences in that the “Nicholas and Alexandra” moment uses every inch of a big screen’s space to bring the terror of an awful moment to life. Books, as I reminded Viki, can be “thrown across the room,” as we say, and maybe then present a different level of potential crisis for someone even of deeply tragic vulnerabilities.
Just riffing, really, because I think we’re in uncharted territory on these things, although I’m glad to hear that your use of a disclaimer as worked well for you. Seems as if that was exactly the right thing to do in the case of your detractors.
It’s always something, isn’t it? :)
Thanks again, sir,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Spot on, as usual. DO you think this is part of our sue-happy society? Entitlement? The list could go on and on.
Thanks Porter, for writing what so many of us are thinking.
Your essay reminds me of the time we read Where the Red Fern Grows to our children who were 7 and 5 at the time. We truncated it a bit, but Max, already an independent reader, must’ve noticed and finished the book on his own. He cried and cried. And then he told Dagny. They’ve been scarred for life. But in a good way, I think. There’s life and there’s death. Mememto mori.
A couple of years later, I gave them another dog book. It lives, I told them. No more tears.
When Max was 2, he wept when I played Bach’s Air in G. I wasn’t allowed to play that for many years. Should Bach be labeled?
I don’t believe trigger warning are necessary; in fact, they can be detrimental. A reader can put a book down whenever he or she wants. I picked up a much recommended book but it had so much unnecessary profanity, I felt assaulted. It distracted from the story. I returned the book. No harm done. But consider the comments I rec’d upon reviewing a beautiful memoir: Cleo. https://vijayabodach.blogspot.com/2010/10/reading_11.html The people chose NOT to read this book because of the warning and they are poorer for it.
Thanks Porter for your provocations.
You said this so well, Vijaya. Max must be a very special boy.
I understand trigger warnings, but I’m far more into ‘Content Notes’. Just so people can decide for themselves if they’re up for dealing with it that day.
You can’t make notes for everything that might upset someone.
But, why not give it a rating like moves have? Rated R for violence, and assault.
Personally? I want warnings before I read political posts, so I can decide if I’m up for dealing with that frustration today. Or if I’d rather get work done than getting riled up, again.
In general, I think trigger warnings are a bit overdone these days. On the other hand, I would have appreciated a warning that Wally Lamb’s novel We Are Water contains graphic depictions of child abuse. I didn’t appreciate paying for the hardcover, devoting hours to reading the book, and then having to abandon it partway through. I didn’t need a trigger warning per se, but some kind of indication of what was coming would have been welcome. I think it pays to consider whether this kind of unpleasant surprise damages the readers’ good will toward the writer.
Hi Porter. Great topic, as always. It’s something I’ve thought a great deal about, but have absolutely zero answers.
Like many people here, the artist side of me says: “It’s art. Don’t fuck it up with your warnings. Censorship of any kind is wrong.” And yet…
And yet, as a survivor of domestic violence that included a goodly portion of sexual assault, I’ve more than once found myself plunged into the depths of anxiety and depression by a particularly authentic DV or rape scene in a book. And those symptoms don’t disappear the moment I close the book. It can take days, weeks, or months to recover from being unexpectedly pushed into reliving an experience that still traumatises me, almost twenty years after I escaped.
Now, I don’t for a second think that DV, violence, or rape should be banned in fiction. That would be stupid. And I don’t always shy away from reading stories that are potentially triggering — if I’m aware that a particular book may contain scenes of domestic violence, I’ll still read it. I just appreciate having the opportunity to “gird my loins” first. A warning by way of the tone of the blurb or the cover image is enough to let me know that this is a book I will need to read with care. It’s the surprise sexual violence that triggers me — the stuff that comes completely out of nowhere.
All of which takes me right back to the beginning, to the unanswered and unanswerable question. Should books have trigger warnings, or ratings? No. Absolutely not. And yet…. There have been times I wish they did.
Interesting topic. I loved one of your previous posts about reading works by diverse authors, but I admit to having very mixed feelings on this topic.
My feelings are very much like the one poster you quoted: “Not all readers read to experience an emotional response. Positive ones, yes, but if a book makes me cry because a character I love gets killed or something like that, that is a bad reading experience for me. I don’t pleasure-read to experience that. I feel angry and maybe even betrayed…” I certainly felt that way after seeing a movie where the hero died in the end and I absolutely felt cheated out of a happy ending. The movie was the adaptation of a best seller and I refuse to read anything by that author who shall remain nameless.
I really hate tragic fiction. I will absolutely read the ending of a novel I’m considering buying or borrowing and will not bite if I don’t like the ending. I can understand that authors don’t want spoilers in their online reviews at such places as Amazon.com, but have to admit I am thankful that there happened to be one about a novel I thought I wanted to read. The ending was so bad I am glad I knew in advance to avoid spending any time reading it.
That’s not to say I don’t recognize that bad thing do happen. Oh yes. And if I want to be depressed, all I need to do is look at the evening news, read news online, or there are nonfiction books that deal with strong topics (and I read mostly nonfiction).
So why do I pick on fiction? I guess that I’m just a bit different from that quoted poster in that I guess when I read fiction I really come to identify with the characters. Can’t seem to help it I guess – and don’t authors want readers to do that? I think with nonfiction, I’m better able to keep some emotional distance.
Should authors have to give trigger warnings? Maybe yes, maybe no. As a FIRM advocate for things like free speech and artistic freedom, I do think writers should be able to write — whatever. Doesn’t mean I want to read certain works. I do find those online reviews helpful in avoiding the kind of stuff I have no use for. If that doesn’t work for authors, maybe there are other ways we can explore to help readers find what they really would enjoy.
Thanks for your several comments here, all appreciated.
Question: You seem to be doing well with your process of checking endings, reading reviews, etc. And in most cases, advisory comments here are saying that these are good ways to select material you’d like.
My own or someone else’s taste for more realistic work than happy endings need not enter the discussion. If that’s what you want—happy endings, whatever the reason you prefer them—I see no reason you shouldn’t pursue them.
My point is that you seem to be doing well with this without trigger warnings, and you include your respect for the writer’s freedom.
Can we not, then, leave it to the responsibility of a good reader like you to do the research on a piece (as most of us do, after all) and make a good assessment of what next to read? After all, even trigger warnings can confuse or at times be unintentionally misleading.
Bottom line: It would appear to me that you’re performing exactly like the reader most of us want to see — doing a little research to find the content you want, without asking the industry to resort to trigger warnings. Or am I mistaken?
Thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter –
First, thanks for reading my posts and glad they were appreciated. Well, I didn’t arrive at checking endings and reading online reviews overnight. It took a bit of time for me to arrive at any type of system; never really much thought about online reviews until a few years ago when I bought a regency romance by an author who shall also remain nameless. I found it poorly written and abandoned reading it. Had I checked the online review first (I don’t know when they really started taking off, though), I probably would have saved my money. And it is true no system is going to be foolproof, anyway.
But I’m getting a suggestion here that those of us who DON’T want to read EVERYTHING are being regarded as — well, I’m not sure just what. I think we want to be able to make at least semi-informed choices. Yes, online reviews, doing things like checking endings can be part of those tools. Maybe folks could start facebook or twitter groups to share recommendations. Should trigger warnings also play a part? It’s not an entirely i8ninteresting proposition. Maybe a system of general tags, such as appear on tv shows: (you know, things like G, PG, L, V) If publishers, authors didn’t want them ON book jackets or whatever, maybe they could be made available at some site. It wouldn’t even have to be mandatory. But it might be worth considering something like that as another tool for readers.
BTW, I do write, poetry mostly, although I’m not a pro. And watch out. I am more of the “lift people up” and provide hope (as E.B. White says writers should do) school. (And he killed of Charlotte? FOR SHAME!!! I always thought that ending was horrible!).
I’ve seen “trigger warnings,” for book content for adultery. As in, “Warning: The subject matter contains scenes of adultery.” While I understand dealing with such is unpleasant and life-changing, I also think that as adults, we should be able to take hope from seeing a character rise above. My real fear is seeing trigger warnings move from violence and deaths of children to a grocery list of stressors. “This book contains scenes of yelling at the kids, piles of laundry, fender benders on the way to character’s place of work, co-worker’s snide remarks, rude grocery clerks…” However, writers do have the responsibility of establishing their art, not as a safe room where everyone’s feelings are protected, but as a ride where readers trust that going will be worth the emotions.
As a person who has suffered almost no real trauma beyond the usual bumps and scrapes that come from living, I am perhaps not qualified to answer the question. Most of the time, reading the book jacket or blurb gives me an idea of where a story is going, and whether I can expect it to be all pleasant or not; it may or may not warn me that something especially gruesome or difficult is contained there, but that’s not a problem–for me. I do understand, however, how it can be for some people.
Obviously, I’m not in favor of telling authors they can’t write about certain subjects, or of telling them they can’t include scenes depicting this, that or the other thing. Warnings? Maybe. We already have warnings on movies and TV shows, so I’m not opposed to it. However, the questions become “Where do we draw the line?”–domestic violence? Child abuse? Sexual abuse? Cancer? Car accidents? Shaving cuts and stubbed toes?–and “Who gets to decide?”
As a (primarily) sweet/clean Regency romance writer, my books are pretty tame. However, I did get pegged by one reviewer who was upset when they read one of the character’s dogs died… and left me a 2 star review. So it’s anyone’s guess what could trigger someone’s angst.
Writing in contemporary romance, however, my characters use everyday language. I, like Keith Cronin, have a decided potty mouth, and when writing I occasionally drop the F-bomb. No big to me, everyone I know uses it. But, that caused me such headaches I put a content warning at the beginning of my product descriptions which in part read — Rated R for language and adult situations. NO sex, mind you, but a provocative story line. It seemed to quell the nervous nellies.
With product description, reviews, and most e-tailers offering the first few pages to read for free, most readers can get the gist of the story and if smart, will realize somewhere along the way, the story might get ugly. It’s up to THEM to put the book down or continue reading.
I’m not a big fan of ASPCA commercials on TV and whenever they come on I change the channel. That’s my choice. Same goes with books.
Thanks, Porter for another insightful post.
Thanks, Anne,
Good to have your input and I agree with you about the ASPCA commercials, too, curiously because I’m very bit on animal rights and protection from cruelty to them, not the other way around.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Provocative as always, Porter.
I think Chris really nailed it. There’s a huge difference between reading something that makes you uncomfortable and reading something that triggers PTSD. PTSD is a term that is thrown about without real understanding. But it is not imaginary, it is not trivial. It’s real.
The trigger warnings for obvious situations – sexual abuse, BDSM, graphic violence – cover most everything. There are always exceptions even within those I remember going to the movies to see Nicholas and Alexandra with friends. When the Romanovs are killed at the end the camera shot was from their perspective, of rifles pointed at them and firing. I didn’t know my girlfriend had been accidentally shot in the chest by her brother when they were kids (less than ten years earlier). She literally ran screaming out of the movie theatre. She knew the story; she just didn’t know how it would be portrayed or she would’ve stayed home.
Yes, we try to avoid pain, which I don’t think is a bad thing. Yes, we try to protect our children and loved ones from having pain inflicted upon them. Maybe we shouldn’t.
But to denigrate people like my friend as being “overly sensitive” or coddled in some way is to dismiss real trauma.
Hi, Viki,
Thanks (I think, lol) — provocation is what I do here, yes, that’s why we call it that. :)
And as I’ve assured Chris and can assure you, there’s no effort on my part here to diminish the seriousness of people’s emotional and psychological vulnerabilities. I don’t find that I used the phrase “overly sensitive.”
I do think, though, that there’s a valid question here in how authors respond to this discussion in society because, as original storytellers (by “original,” I mean that a book often comes before a film, etc.), I think writers are in a peculiar position, not only in their medium but also in their need for expressive range and freedom. Surprising a reader, even shocking a reader, has a place in some of the best storytelling. Undercutting the author’s needed effects with well-intentioned warnings is something we can talk about seriously, I believe, without demeaning the corresponding seriousness of many trauma conditions.
In the precise case you relate in which your girlfriend had the terrible reaction to the shooting scene in the film—and I know we can all feel for her, certainly—I wonder if she’d have experienced the same jolt had she read this scene in a book. Film, as we all know, has the verisimilitude, when needed, to bring horrific (or marvelous) surprises to us with its own kind of impact.
(I’ve had the unhappy experience, myself, of having to leave a film only once, because it depicted animal cruelty and I discovered that my perfect awareness that what I was seeing was staged wasn’t enough. I needed to get out of there and did.)
I’d argue that reading—the subject of this column—is different, in that one isn’t stuck in a crowded cinema confronted with a massive screen, but handling a page or small screen of text, an immediately escapable medium.
A book, as we so classically say, can be thrown across the room.
While I don’t mean to make an excuse for the written word, I’m not sure the comparison of your friend’s upset in the cinematic setting (or mine) is fully parallel to what might be expected in a reading context.
Perhaps that’s neither here nor there. The real point is to say that my own intent is not to disparage or belittle sensitivities and vulnerabilities, but to look at what those things — and society’s reactions to them in other media — mean to literature today and to the authors who write it. And I think we’ve had a great discussion about it.
Thanks for being part of it, as always.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Yes, film vs print is not a perfect analogy. I think what I was trying to say in my fumbling way was that even with the best of intentions, writers can’t avoid writing something that could trigger a PTSD-like reaction in a reader.
It simply can’t be predicted with any certainty. Making a film-rating type of disclaimer at the beginning can help, but won’t be foolproof.
I’m reminded of a play I worked on many years ago, Scheherezade. The play opened with a rape. We warned patrons and prospective patrons in every way we could. We held after-performance discussions about sexual assault laws. We offered refunds to those who couldn’t handle it. It was a provocative play that we felt was important, and the audiences agreed.
As it turned out, no one walked out because of the rape. But dozens walked out because the rapist, still in the woman’s apartment, cut off her turtle’s head. (it was a fake turtle, not to worry) They objected to animal cruelty more than rape.
Which was a whole different discussion.
Viki
Hey Porter,
I long for the days when writers just wrote and readers just read. When every single little thing didn’t hurt somebody’s feelings. When fragile little snowflakes were actually snowflakes. Perhaps we could come up with an all-encompassing trigger warning like, “This book may trigger stuff in you. Read at your own risk.” Would that work?
Maybe the real problem is that in today’s world, there just isn’t a whole lot of common sense in supply. If you pick up a murder mystery and expect flowery feel good prose, then maybe somebody else should be picking your books for you. Genres, book descriptions and categories should at least inform the potential reader of what they may expect from a book.
On the other hand, no matter what a writer writes, or how many warnings they do or do not include, somebody will be pissed about something.
Gee, now that I think of it, I feel triggered by this post. ;)
Anita Rogers, I totally agree with you. There is NO WAY that an author could possibly GUESS who will be “triggered” by what.
somebody will be pissed
Ha! Anita, thanks.
I know what you’re saying. It’s an odd era in which, apparently for all the right reasons, we seem to have become so overly concerned about respecting others’ feelings and concerns and opinions and emotional vulnerabilities.
One of the most difficult aspects of a time like this is that when you try to question such a trend—which seems, on the face of it, to be quite a good thing, helping to prevent trauma victims’ anxieties—you seem to be doing a cruel and harmful thing.
I probably have some useful background in this kind of thing as a minister’s son who spent much of my formative years questioning the church. Fortunately for me, my father was more theologian than many and actually found debate and skepticism healthy and constructive. (One of his most extraordinary sermons, in fact, was on “taking God to task,” as Daddy put it, I wish I had a copy of it. He had the nerve to propose to a very wide-eyed congregation that the faith is a two-way street and that while toeing the line of God’s (supposed) wishes was a the duty of a believer, that God, himself, then had a duty to respond with the sort of support and compassion that Protestantism in general likes to credit to the deity.)
From all this, I learned early on how far we seem to have come in our society from the respect for dissent that forms the baseline theory of the American experiment.
While the Writer Unboxed community is, on the whole, far better at avoiding the worst elements of this, even here at times my “provocations” have been met by “how dare you even ask that?” bluster and, at some points, the “cry-bullying:” (wonderful phrase) that characterizes much defensive modern rectitude.
I feel, like you do, that there must have been a time when we weren’t all on eggshells (or snowflakes) all the time, and it does seem today that we’re way over the top with this kind of concern.
Still, you have to worry that we were unwittingly insensitive in the past.
In an odd parallel, I remember saying to a friend once that it seems these days that everybody’s child has some variant on autism or other developmental challenge, while in the past there seemed far fewer of these many child-raising concerns. And it’s hard to know whether we’re putting too much emphasis on facile diagnoses or just long overdue in responding to conditions we understand better today.
We like to think we get better as time goes by. But on some days, you wonder if it’s true, don’t you? :)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
LOL Porter. Yes, some days you do wonder if it’s true. I’m not unsympathetic to those who have suffered trauma – quite the opposite in fact. But as a writer, it’s hard to look at my work as a package of processed food where I must list the ingredients so those who are allergic can avoid the contents.
I think the problem is that there is no benchmark. Even the group that labels movies have a set of criteria to follow. Writers, however, have to make a best guess about what they should or shouldn’t reveal and hope that it suffices. And typically, no matter how much you may try, there will always be someone who will fault you. a game of diminishing returns, it seems to me.
I do think too, that for whatever reason, as a society we seem to lack a healthy dose of common sense when it comes to making choices, when really it’s pretty easy to determine what something is.
That being said, it would be nice if Amazon, for example (and other book retailers), provided a place on author’s book pages where they can issue said trigger warnings. Should they feel the need.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did at some time in the not too distant future.
In the meantime, I’ll make a general warning that murder mysteries (my genre) is generally filled with all kinds of upsetting things and probably not for the faint of heart.
Thanks,
Annie
LOL, Ted – that’s true. And I’ve never been that good at mind reading. ;-D
It’s probably a little late for this, but I thought this was a good and relevant op-ed about trigger warnings for all of us to consider: https://medium.com/@erikadprice/hey-university-of-chicago-i-am-an-academic-1beda06d692e#.tizwg5h1n
Very interesting article, indeed.
Thanks, Kristan. I like this article you’ve shared with us. I also think there’s a different consideration at hand between the context in which Erika Price discusses trigger warnings (the campus setting) and the context in which an author works (creative expression and storytelling)—equally worth our consideration.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson