(This post is the first part to a special series about abuse, that I’m doing to commemorate the release of a very special music album! More info about it at the end of the post.)
Abuse is a very serious topic. It can be dark. It can include content that we don’t want to include in our stories.
But it’s also a reality. Thousands of people as young as toddlers are abused each year.
However, that doesn’t mean we need to show explicit scenes in our writing! On the contrary, we can keep our writing appropriate for our target audience (and not write anything we’re uncomfortable with), and we can show abuse accurately in order to use it in our stories and raise awareness.
This series will cover abuse from multiple perspectives – the victim, the victim’s family, the victim’s friends, and the abuser themselves. This post is part 1 – the victim. (The other posts will be released every few weeks or so.)
Now, when we’re writing abuse, research is key. This is a situation that has happened to real people (maybe even you), and we want to make sure that we write it accurately. This is so we don’t offend people, and so we can lend credibility to our writing.
We also need to take abuse seriously. If you choose to put a character in an abusive situation, think about it. How far are you willing to go? Are you comfortable with writing a character who’s experienced this? How much do you want to show?
I’ll be covering some of that in this post, but it overall boils down to personal preference and setting your own boundaries. But in this post, I’ll outline how abuse affects the victim, and how we should portray that in our story!
How Abuse Affects The Victim
What is Abuse?
First of all, we need to define what abuse is.
There are four main types of abuse: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect.
Physical abuse is “any deliberate force or action that results or could result in a person being injured.” This could mean anything like bruises, beating, burning, or biting. Using objects such as a belt or stick as punishment is also considered physical abuse.
Emotional abuse attacks a person’s self-esteem and emotional development. This can include ignorance, rejection, or bullying and threats to destroy/hurt things that the person cares about (such as pets or keepsakes).
Sexual abuse is something I’m not going to go into too much detail on, but it’s when someone experiences or witnesses that kind of stuff without giving permission for the other person to do so.
Neglect is more specific to child abuse, but it’s when a parent or caregiver (who is responsible for the child) does not provide the child with their basic needs to keep them healthy. This includes clothing, shelter, and food. And when the parent/caregiver does not take the child to the doctor when they need health care, this is also considered neglect.
What Are Some Common Side Effects?
The side effects of abuse will vary with each person. I’m going to list all the common side effects and symptoms here, but your character does not (and probably should not) have all of these. In fact, you should probably pick two or three for each character, depending on how big the symptoms are. For example, you might not want to have a character suffering from a drug addiction, an alcohol addiction, an eating disorder, repeated “sudden” outbursts, amnesia, and a suffering attention span. I’m not saying that a person couldn’t be suffering from all of these (because they can), but for story purposes, it’s a lot to keep track of and it could confuse your reader. Pick one or two “major” ones (like addictions/flashbacks/eating disorders) and have some more “minor” symptoms (anxiety/dissociation/amnesia/etc). Major and minor does not mean that major symptoms are “more important,” so to speak! I’m just using these terms because “major” symptoms are connected to the external world, while “minor” symptoms are related to the mind.
Without further ado, here are some common side effects that can happen to the victim of abuse.
Trust issues. After experiencing a traumatic event such as abuse, it’s very common for the victim to not want to go anywhere near something similar to the event (for example, if they were driving and got into a car crash, it would be very difficult for them to drive for a while after that). In the case of abuse, the victim might be wary of forming any new friendships or relationships. They’re afraid that everyone’s there to hurt them and so they close themselves off, isolating themselves and barring themselves from any potential relationships – and even maybe ending previous ones.
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, aka C-PTSD. I’ll probably write an entire post on PTSD and C-PTSD simply because it’s so multifaceted and I’ve already done a bunch of research on it. But for now, we’ll just focus on it in minimal detail. C-PTSD differs from PTSD in that it stems from a recurring traumatic event (like abuse), while PTSD is from one event.
Some symptoms of C-PTSD include:
Flashbacks. The victim experiences a trigger (a sound/person/object/etc that reminds them of the event) and then their mind starts reliving the event. They believe that they’re in the abusive situation again.
Anxiety/an overwhelming feeling of fear or dread.
Nightmares. Please don’t include nightmares as the only C-PTSD symptom. Just please. Also, nightmares are not an exact replay of the traumatic memory. They can be nonsensical nightmares, they can be twisted views of the traumatic memory, or they can include people such as the abuse perpetrator. They can be quite varied.
Alcohol/drug addictions
Depression
Avoidance/isolation
Poor attention span. The person can easily be distracted.
Dissociation. This can be a condition on its own, but it’s also a symptom of C-PTSD. Often this happens while the person is talking or thinking about the trauma, and then they’ll lose themselves in the memory and zone out.
Eating disorders
Amnesia. This is really interesting, actually. Often the person affected by C-PTSD may not remember events that occurred around the trauma (so they’d have trouble remembering what happened right before and right after). In some cases, though, the person can get amnesia for the traumatic event itself.
Now, the person won’t have every single one of these symptoms. It’s just like I mentioned earlier – focus on a few rather than give the character all of them.
Those are just some of the effects that can occur after a character is abused. Symptoms can range in severity depending on the age of the victim, how many times the abuse happened, and it can also just depend on the character’s personality. It’s very dependent.
How Do We Portray Abuse In Our Stories?
This is a tricky subject in that abuse is very serious and a very real problem, but we also don’t want to make our stories super dark.
So, that’s why I’m going to give a few tips on portraying abuse without getting into dark content, as well as just showing it in your story in general! (And if you do want to go the darker path, kudos to you. Just make sure it’s within your personal boundaries.)
Don’t Reveal Everything
1. If your POV character is the one in the abusive situation, either find a way to separate them from the abuser (so that you don’t have to write any abuse scenes), or make the abuse be a previous event (for example, the character’s parents abused them, so they ran away and their parents aren’t going after them. Therefore, the character is no longer being abused).
2. If the victim of abuse is a non-POV character, you don’t even have to reveal that they’ve been abused. If you show the symptoms (as described in the next tip), then readers who are aware of abuse will be able to understand the situation. Readers who might not know as much might just think that the character’s anxious. Let them draw their own conclusions about the character if the abuse isn’t an actual plot point.
3. Don’t make the abuse a plot point. Definitely use its effects on the character as a way to boost the character arc, but you don’t have to make the story about the character freeing themselves from this abusive relationship.
Show, Don’t Tell
4. Remember those side effects/symptoms I just told you about? Show those symptoms! Show them being wary around people! Show them feeling withdrawn! Show them getting images of the perpetrator in their head and feeling scared! Since you’re writing in their POV, it’s a lot easier to get the point across without specifically saying “this character has been abused.”
5. If you end up writing a scene where the victim-POV interacts with the perpetrator, show the tension. Bonus points if there’s another person with the victim because then the perpetrator will be less likely to harm the victim.
6. Trauma is a very hard thing to talk about, especially unhealed trauma. Your character isn’t going to just open up and explain all the terrible things that have been done to them, even if they’re talking to their best friend. Now, if they’re further into the path to healing, then they might be more willing to open up to someone close to them. It really depends on your character.
Your Audience
7. Keep in mind your target audience. You probably wouldn’t want to go into as much detail about the abuse effects (in fact, I’d recommend you not include it at all) if you’re writing a middle grade novel, but at a teen-level or up, you can consider how much you want to include.
Your Character
8. Finally, remember your character! So much depends on your character. People deal with abuse in different ways. Some learn aggression, some learn reservation. Some are a mix of the two. It’s important to know who your character is and how they would deal with an abusive situation.
Conclusion
There are so many facets to abuse and its effects, which is why I’m doing a four-part series. It affects different people in different ways, and the victim is only one of many people who gets affected.
Abuse is a real problem that should be taken seriously, but it’s also something that should be portrayed more realistically in writing.
To sum up the entire post, here are the key points for those of you who just skimmed through the entire thing:
There are four main types of abuse: physical, emotional, sexual, and neglect.
Abuse has many side effects, but they do not always apply to a person. It’s rare that someone gets every single symptom of C-PTSD.
And these side effects include trust issues, difficulty getting into relationships, and Complex Post-Traumatic Disorder (C-PTSD).
When portraying abuse in your writing while also making sure you’re keeping your personal boundaries straight, focus on showing, not telling. Don’t reveal everything to your reader, keep the darker parts off-page.
Talking about trauma is hard. Your character is not immediately going to open up about it.
Keep in mind your target audience when writing a character in or who was in an abusive situation.
Your character drives so much of this. Remember who your character is and how they would react to all these things.
And finally, do research. Even more research than this blog post, because I don’t know everything.
But, before we close off, there’s another way you can learn about abuse! Through music!
Over two months, I collaborated with 10 other individuals (most of whom are in high school) and we ended up finishing an album portraying the effects of child abuse!
The album’s called Torn From Youth, and it’s got 8 songs. I highly recommend that you check it out using the links below, and share it if you enjoyed it! The more awareness we raise, the better.
*obligatory disclaimer that songs 7 and 8 do have brief heavy/dark descriptions (they aren’t inappropriate or explicit, just heavy), but songs 1-6 are fine.*
Here are the links to the album on each streaming service that it’s available on!
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.ca/albums/B09RBB4RXK
And currently Apple Music is being slow, but eventually it’ll show up. Just search “torn from youth” or “torn from youth” and it should be up there!
I hope you enjoy the album, and I hope you enjoy this first part to the series on abuse. Let me know what you think!
Stay tuned next week for a post on ways to develop characters ;)
Alyssa
(P. S. Here are all my sources for abuse that I’ve got written down.)
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