So, I have a new appendix, and through writing it, I discovered the history of the girl, who she really was and why she was where she was, things that the original narrative didn’t include or need. Re-editing the main story with that knowledge really strengthened it, and I’m really happy with where it ended. But…
There is one problematic section in the story, related to a possible rape. I told you it turned dark. The girl’s story covers this only slightly, as she has her own memories and perspectives on events, and they are what matters, rather than the actual event. It puts me in a tricky area, which I try not to shy away from, that some issues (race in The Raven Sound) are so sensitive, if you’re not very careful they can distract from the story I’m trying to tell, and overwhelm it. This is one such event. Whatever happened to her, it’s her reaction to it that matters, but as it’s such an important life event for her, I needed to know what actually happened for myself, so I could better understand the reasons for her actions, and the themes I was covering.
Enter Josh’s story. While the characters in this book are entirely fictitious, they do include interpretations of a number of events which have occurred to good friends, and perspectives and misunderstanding are a central theme of the book, so I wanted to tell the story of the night between the girl and Josh from his perspective, and yet again throw in unexpected motivations and histories. Their drunken conversations (they were friends) also allowed the girl to reveal some more explicit details of her abusive father, and how she lost trust in men. I won’t go into detail here, but it was a real eye opener for me, hearing this from her (my “pantsing”), but the difference was that the girl’s own chapter had always been in my mind to include in the book. Writing ‘Josh’s chapter’ (again about 10,000 words) is more plot and character driven, for me to better understand the girl. It would be a bit too ‘meta’ to include, and too far from Will’s own story, but the revelations in this chapter helped me re-write and shape earlier passages so I could make them more internally coherent. So I’m left with an unused chapter, which I’m considering making available at a later date as a free download.
The other reason for not including, is the worry that readers might miss the point, and be totally distracted from the story I’m telling. It includes some events that people might think of as unrealistic (though these are drawn from real-life parallels), but the biggest problem, I realised, was that any detail around (and even the word) rape will take some readers into questions around blame, where the emotional after effect for this particular girl is around betrayal of trust, rather than a physical act. It actually made me tone down the detail in her own story. In Josh’s chapter, I discovered a lot about her backstory, attitudes to sex, power, aggression and trust, and these are what drive her actions in the main narrative. It might be that I’m not a good enough writer to pull off what I’d ideally like, but, while it shouldn’t be a concern for fiction, the sensitivities of current society need to be considered, or your writing could simply be ignored or blacklisted, regardless of it’s quality. It’s also a fact that for many audiences today, you would need to include a ‘trigger warning’ if the content strays into sexual abuse, and while this is the backstory I have for the character, it doesn’t need to be detailed, as my book isn’t about those events. The temptation is to re-write the history to avoid any interpretation of victim blaming which might arise with some readers, but the story being told is her memories, her thoughts and her interpretations and if you read the book, you’ll see why. Trust and misunderstanding of another is a central theme, and from Will’s perspective. As he doesn’t know (and never discovers) the history of the girl, I don’t want to include events that don’t fit his worldview. I may return to the girl’s story in the future, but for the tale as it is, needs to restrict itself to the elements important this particular story.
So, the title for these two blogposts, about when enough is enough, relates to both my writing process, knowing when additional detail adds to the story, and when it distracts, but also about the amount of backstory which I should explicitly include, and whether sometimes it can draw the reader’s attention away from the motivations of the character themselves.
That all made sense in my head 🙂
Stay safe
Kit