I have a handful of irons in the fire on the story front and while I'm waiting to hear back from a few people in regards to one story, I thought I'd look at another draft.
Now re-told near the start is an off camera rape of a girl. she was given a cocktail of drugs and has no memory of the event and almost no physical scars to prove the event. However the main characters know it happened due to unimpeachable proof that I won't go right into now.
The major problem I have is that even without direct 'scars' it is still a traumatic and changing event. I need to walk a balanced line treating this seriously. I don't want to minimise the event and not respect the seriousness of it. But I also need to show that it by circumstance not caused considerable trauma to the lead female character who looks to her father for support and comfort.
now there are later issues that come to light but she was definitely assaulted against her will, but as I said no 'scars' or at the least and this is the bit I need help with. Such oblique issue with what happened to her that for 'most' of the story it doesn't effect her. Now I'm not saying there is 'no' effect but it is nebulous and I need help with making my 'idea' work in words.
It's a serious issue and I don't want to use 'handwavium' to magic it away in a way that will hurt the later story. I've only written 6k words, expecting at least 50k before I'm finished. So I'd call it a medium length story, it might go all the way to 100k but I don't know if I have enough ideas to go past that count. There is a pregnancy and compensation as a result. There will also be a court case that the family has to go through and a few other twists and turns of course.
I guess what I'm asking if someone, preferably a female someone has any ideas to make this all work in my embryonic story. I'm not actually writing right now due to a pair of unrelated injuries that make typing difficult for much if any period past a few minutes. A bit of too and fro here is all I can manage till the middle of January when I've hopefully healed a little more.
I leave this in your capable hands for now.
Till later F.