Forum: Author Hangout

By posting this, I'm trying to be considerate rather than politically correct. It's my perception that SOL and its readership has a larger than average population with mental health issues (not grinding an axe, it's a natural consequence of people stuck indoors, nothing to do etc.)

SPOILER ALERT

My novella-in-progress has a dark scene in a mental health clinic in which the protagonist is illegally detained and drugged by an unscrupulous doctor. I'm wondering what sort of warning I should provide to alert vulnerable readers that it might make for uncomfortable/upsetting reading.

I notice that Reluctant_Sir, in the first book of his excellent 'Dark Days' stories, put an explicit warning in the blurb. Was that adequate? What experiences have other authors had with this sort of issue?

AJ

I'll be honest here, I added that warning to be politically correct, something I normally avoid out of principle. I didn't want to be virtually stoned when someone found it objectionable.

I thought long and hard about adding it at all but, at the time, there were two or three threads here in the forum with people complaining about tags, squicks etc. and I decided it would be prudent.

As a result, many readers flat out told me it was enough for them to just bypass the story altogether, while others said they held off for a long time, waiting for a review or word of mouth before they would chance reading it.

The general consensus afterwards appeared to be that while it was dark and a bit gruesome, it was a necessary part of the back story.

If I were to write that preface today, I would, at least, tone it down a bit.

Picking up this thread a bit late, and being fairly knowledgeable about various mental illnesses, it isn't that authors are all introverts, as much as that the various artistic fields naturally appeal to those with mental illnesses, where rather than having to work normal 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 hours, they can work their own hours, take off whenever they need, and give vioice the the various voices in their heads (just kidding, but honestly, those with mental illness have a long and cherished history of having a unique view that others have a hard time capturing).

Since I've made no secret of my own issues, I've been on both ends of this spectrum, from being actively avoided on a day-to-day basis, to collaborating with others having their own issues in the field.

If it helps, I wrote my own version of your story, down to the eventual 'involuntary hospitalization'. In fact, my Demonic Issues series, beginning with The Demons Within generated a LOT of complaints about the plot being overly sensationalized, despite my reading ALL the relevant mental health laws where the story takes place. The court order brain surgery is anything but unusual, as it's been written in the legal statures of most U.S. states for the past two hundred years (they rarely ever get rewritten over time).

As for warnings. I had several editors drop out while I wrote those two books, as the details hit 'too close to home' for those who had relatives with their own mental health difficulties.

In my case, I didn't require the warnings. Just like my latest book, The Holes Binding Us Together with details kids dealing with childhood sexual abuse, I took a different approach. Rather than attacking the issue directly, I took a roundabout approach similar to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which take a roundabout route when addressing controversial issue, without triggering reader's preconditioned defensive responses.

In both cases, my stories were fantasies, rather than my usual science fiction. As such, the topics I discuss, childhood sexual abuse, pedophilia and the tendency of society to busy it so they never have to HEAR about it, and in the other, homelessness and mental illnesses, take the form of character background, rather than the actual plot (much like Huckleberry Finn was about a boy running away from home, rather than racism itself).

It's a useful technique, but takes a LOT more planning and forethought, as you can't approach the topics in the normal way, but rather as backstory explaining how your characters came to the story.

Again, the issues with 'warnings', is that they trigger squick reactions ("Dear God, I'd rather NOT read that") and generate the typical responses and presumptions that make it difficult for readers to hear what you're actually suggesting.

Just a suggestion, as I'm guessing you've already completed your story, are aren't looking for approach suggestions.

With my latest book, I was actively targeting the multiple generations of kids raised under the constant fears of "Stranger Danger", to help them understand how those actually affected by these situations not only handled it, but how they actively cope with in, in a comfortable distant Fantasy story, or as I subtitled it, "A Fantasy Story For Disillusioned Adults". Unfortunately, there is NO way to market such a book, and no SEO tags to target those readers. :(