McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Post-traumatic writing disorder
LizW65:
Okay, so, one of my works in progress is partly from the viewpoint of a character who is currently undergoing a raging bout of delayed PTSD. He's got it all--the shakes, sleep deprivation, alcohol abuse, irritability, paranoia, memory loss, and so on. He's also started hallucinating a guy whose death he accidentally caused several years ago (one of the primary reasons for the PTSD but since he's blocked out the entire incident, he has no memory of it and thinks the guy is just somebody who recently moved in across the hall from him.) Also, he's on edge because someone burglarized his apartment a few days ago.
Now, I've been envisioning this from a very visual and cinematic POV: time slips, weird cuts, wonky, hallucinogenic Steadycam work, theramins on the soundtrack, and so on. My dilemma is how to translate this into verbal terms so that the reader will think: "Okay, this is really weird for a reason," rather than, "Whoa, where the hell was the editor?!" I guess what I'm striving for is the old "unreliable narrator" thing, so my question is: has anyone here read anything similar to this, how well does it work, and do you know of any works that have used this kind of thing? Recommendations?
FWIW, the setting is the late 1940's and PTSD has yet to be diagnosed; plus, it's set in the real, mundane world so the possibility of a paranormal (or science so advanced it might as well be paranormal) reason behind the strangeness is not even a consideration. Also, this is the second in a series, so the character is already pretty well established and any deviations should raise a few red flags with the careful reader. Any thoughts?
Enjorous:
Also include hyperawareness and flashbacks to the list of symptoms.
What was the event that he's reliving? For example, someone suffering PTSD from a car accident will present slightly differently than say a soldier who made it through a year on the front lines.
Snowleopard:
There are a series of books about an English Police Detective and during, I think, WW1, he was in charge of a military unit and had to have one of his men shot because the guy would not go out into the trenches in some stupid (and it truly was stupid) manuever dreamed up by the men at the back. Now, he constantly has this guy with him but whether it's a ghost or just his own conscience is hard to tell. I found them interesting. I think the author's last name is Todd, but am not sure.
As much as you want to write the thing weird - you can't do it so good that you lose your audience. Perhaps you need to have your protagonist have a serious PTSD episode - establish that he's not operating with a full deck. Use some small thing from that episode to establish that the "guy across the hall" is in some way connected with the PTSD. A smell or a color or a sound - just a small tell for your readers. Or is this a script?
LizW65:
Thanks--that's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. (FYI--it's prose, not a play or film, so I'm trying to translate primarily visual ideas into words.) I think the way to do it might be to start out fairly realistic and gradually bring the weird...
Snowleopard:
--- Quote from: LizW65 on October 02, 2010, 10:43:41 PM ---Thanks--that's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. (FYI--it's prose, not a play or film, so I'm trying to translate primarily visual ideas into words.) I think the way to do it might be to start out fairly realistic and gradually bring the weird...
--- End quote ---
I think that's a good way to go. If you just toss your audience in at the deep end of the weird - they're gonna be lost immediately and may not decide to stick around to see what happens.
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