By Lindsay Fortin
CW: Fire
Trauma is one of those things that appears often in stories. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where a character doesn’t experience trauma, and it’s usually part of a character’s arc. You have to be mean to your characters in order for them to grow. It wouldn’t be much of a story if everything was happy and rose-tinted all the time. But writing a character with trauma is difficult. Especially if you’ve never experienced PTSD yourself. And as someone who’s experienced PTSD, I’ve noticed some depictions of trauma responses that stand out as stereotypical and inaccurate.
And just to clarify, this is partly based on my research of PTSD, as well as my own experience with it. There may be common features in everyone who suffers with PTSD, but not everyone will present in the same way or experience the same symptoms. It can present differently in different people, and this is only one limited perspective. My own experience isn’t gospel, and there are so many different ways that PTSD can impact people. If you or someone you know has experienced PTSD in a different way than I have, that is completely valid and okay!
PTSD is complicated, and not like what we see in movies. Flashbacks, nightmares, and triggers tend to be different than the way they’re usually depicted. I’ll illustrate using my own experience with PTSD. In the spring of 2014 I had a house fire. I was 15 at the time, and unfortunately I was the one cooking when it started. Luckily no one was hurt and we didn’t lose our whole house, even though what wasn’t fire damaged still needed to be stripped and rebuilt. Nearly everything we owned was smoke and heat damaged, but ultimately we were very lucky.
I can’t touch on all the different aspects of PTSD, but I’ll hit three major points that usually appear in books and other media; nightmares, flashbacks, and triggers.
To keep in mind when writing your characters:
- Not everyone will have the same reaction to trauma. Some will bounce back much more quickly than others, and look back on it as an unpleasant event that they went through. For others it will be deeply traumatic. Therefore not everyone will develop PTSD.
- Even more than that, people won’t always develop the same symptoms. Mine manifested a lot in guilt, shame, and anxiety, but for others it might manifest as irritation, emotional outbursts, questioning their beliefs and everything they know, etc…
- Think about your character and how the trauma might impact them. Do they care a lot about others? Are they naturally impulsive? Are they good at hiding their feelings? How does this traumatic event shake their world up?
Nightmares:
The way I thought nightmares with PTSD worked was that they were a vivid replay of the traumatic thing that happened. That’s not exactly how it is. It’s more about the feelings and the general themes of the event, and while it incorporates a lot of those same tangible elements, it sometimes plays them in a different way.
For example, if my traumatic event goes:
- I’m cooking.
- An oil fire starts.
- I freeze, not knowing what to do. I can’t move.
- My mom tells me to call 911 and get the dogs. I can barely hear her yell over the roar of the flames.
- I get the dogs and we get outside.
- We sit across the street waiting for the firetrucks to arrive.
You might think that my PTSD nightmare might be a repeat of this, and go:
- I’m cooking.
- An oil fire starts.
- I freeze, not knowing what to do. I can’t move.
- My mom tells me to call 911 and get the dogs. I can barely hear her yell over the roar of the flames.
- I get the dogs and we get outside.
- We sit across the street waiting for the firetrucks to arrive.
But it’s much more complex than that. The way I felt in those moments show up way more often in my dreams than some of the physical elements of the trauma. Sometimes I wake up feeling the way I did during the fire. Unsafe, homesick, guilty, panicked, and fearful for my mom and my dogs’ welfare. Sometimes I’ll only remember confusing flashes of images from the dream. Other times I will have dreams that incorporate the tangible aspects of my trauma, but it won’t always be in the exact order or place it happened. I’ve even had perfectly normal dreams in completely different settings turn into a PTSD dream unexpectedly. So rather than a direct replay of the traumatic event, I might get something more like:
I smell smoke. I’m huddled in a corner, frozen. I’m in my bedroom in my new apartment, where I moved a couple of years after the fire. It’s dark. It’s nighttime instead of daytime, completely midnight black except for the bright glowing light flickering outside my door. I know my dogs are close to the fire but I can’t get to them. I struggle against my own body, but I might as well be a statue. I can’t hear myself think over how loud the flames are. Guilt and panic threaten to eat me alive as I feel the flames get closer to my dogs and I can’t do anything. The smoke gets stronger, and I can feel the heat of the fire fill up the room.
I come across nightmare scenes in books that are a direct replay of the traumatic event, and don’t focus enough on the feelings that the character felt in that moment. If we’ve seen the character experience the traumatic event in the book already, you don’t need to repeat it. Instead, dive deeper into how their body feels, what their thought process is like, and how they interact with the world around them in that moment. It’s a great opportunity to show the character’s deepest fears, their regrets, and the inner workings of their psyche. Rather than replaying the trauma exactly as it happened, take advantage of the character building opportunity! Anything can happen in a dream. Be creative with the images, but keep the themes and emotions consistent. Explore those themes and let it actually say something about the character. Your reader will appreciate it.
Flashbacks:
This is another aspect of trauma that a lot of media gets wrong. There’s this stereotypical image of someone having a flashback that can’t distinguish between their memory and reality, and they really think they’re reliving their trauma all over again. While I’m sure that many people might experience their flashbacks like this, I’ve personally found it can be much more subtle. The one part that they get sort of right is that it does feel like you’re reliving your trauma all over again. But I’ve always been aware that I’m not physically standing in front of the fire anymore. What happens is, in my opinion, much worse. My body feels like it’s trapped in front of the fire, that I’m trapped inside of that moment. I’m aware that it’s not currently happening and that I’m physically safe, but I can’t escape it, no matter where I go. My mind will replay certain aspects of the fire and induce that bodily response, and there’s nothing that can stop it. I’m not just brought back to that moment — it lives inside of me and all around me no matter where I go. It’s like being haunted by a very, very determined ghost. Like stepping between two realities. You’re aware that in this moment you are technically safe, but you can’t convince your body and mind of that fact regardless of how hard you may try.
Flashbacks for me can even come in the form of smells. The smoke from the fire had a very distinct smell to it, and for years every time I would get stressed, or come across a trigger, or simply be sitting on the couch watching Netflix, the smell of the smoke would fill my nose and it would be difficult to get it out. I can’t smell anything else in that state. Because I can smell the smoke, it tricks my body into thinking I’m in danger again. These flashbacks can happen anywhere, and even though they’re the ones I can most easily hide from people, they’re not any less distressing. For others with PTSD I imagine that they have similar experiences with taste, touch, and hearing things from their traumatic event.
Triggers:
Triggers can be anything. It might be someone making a casual comment to you about your trauma that puts you into a downward spiral, a commercial on TV, a sight or smell, a texture, an unexpected sound, a place, a person, or even feeling the way you did during the traumatic event. A trigger can bring on a flashback, or even a panic attack.
While some of my triggers are what you’d expect: fire, fire alarms, sirens, smoke
They’re also things you might not expect: seeing more than one fire truck, candles, turning on the stove, cutting onions (which is what I was doing prior to the fire starting), heat from cooking, standing on pavement with bare feet, and even the word “fire.”
Writing a character who has been put through a traumatic event and shows the effects of that trauma can be difficult, but it can also be a really good exercise in getting inside of your character’s head. If you plan to have them experience nightmares, flashbacks, and triggers, take advantage of that opportunity to really dive deep into what drives them and how they see the world. It will help bring your character to life!
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