How to get the "back again" part after horrible experience?
Ok, so I have a character, Jack, and I don't know how to get him on the "back again" path. You know, when you move past what happened? Get happier?
My character has suffered a series of traumatic, personal events. Now he has to cope with the aftermath, plus new responsibilities, guilt he places on himself, blame placed on him by others, and he's worried about more traumas happening in the future.
I am seriously stuck, I don't know how to fix what I've done. How should I go about trying to keep him mentally stable even? How on Earth do I fix this?
Oh, and not only that but...That's not the main plot of the story. My story has many intertwined plots all in one big ball...So I can't focus ONLY on this.
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1 answer
If you want to write sensitively and authentically about personal trauma, you have pretty much two choices:
Endure it yourself. I don't recommend choosing to undergo this.
Talk to other people who have endured trauma, or possibly people who counsel trauma victims.
Creating a real, rounded character who has suffered and then learned to adapt and grow past the pain requires lengthy, detailed observation of the human spirit. If you can't do this from the inside, you must do it from the outside, and if you can't do it at all, write something else.
Please don't write a story about someone who suffers terrible things and then brushes it off and all is well at the end. It reads as cheap and phony and offends people who really have suffered.
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