Writing Traumatic Scenes — Mia Leigh Renna

Up until now, I have been writing my first draft at a fast rate. Last week I wrote over 25,000 words alone, driving me to be over 75% complete. However, it has now dawned on me that I saved the most traumatic scenes for last.

I’ve been skipping around to different sections that I felt the initiative to write about in that moment: makes sense to write scenes when you can feel the words just spilling out onto the paper. Now though, I am looking at the remaining scenes I’ve left myself with dread. Instead of dredging up the energy to write those chapters, I’ve been avoiding them by deep cleaning my house, playing with my dogs, working on side projects, wasting hours on social media in the name of networking, getting around to dying my hair, and finally spent way too long playing minesweeper when I set time for myself to sit down behind my computer screen to work.

Louie is attempting to be a good writing coach by trying to make me stop procrastinating by playing minesweeper

The other scenes I have worked on that were traumatic, I’ve written them down robotically then instantly led myself into another activity afterwards to take my mind off of things. For anyone out there that doesn’t have a dog, they are spectacular at putting you in a good mood no matter what is going on. But now I am needing a little more of a push to get me to just sit still in my seat. When searching “How to Write a Book about a Traumatic Experience” the results range from optimistically fueling your writing with your raw emotion to pessimistically advising to step away from writing when you mentally need the break. However, how do you know the difference between mentally needing a break from the material and when you’re making excuses to procrastinate because you just need to win a minesweeper game one time?

I reached out to different writers who I follow on social media and they provided me with the following advice:

Author Rashid Darden suggests to write scenes early in the day and set a time limit for yourself and stick to it. Outline the scene as much as possible in advance to distance yourself from your emotional reaction while writing. Finally, to make sure you are utilizing your therapist to help process any feelings or emotions that may arise while writing.

Author Rochelle Phillips suggests drafting the scene from a second of third person point of view first to remain separated from the scene. Using multiple drafts, the first stage can be just the bare bones of the scene, second stage can be including sensory descriptors, third stage changing the point of view back to first and adding internal dialogue, fourth stage include deeper emotions, and fifth stage polishing. Take the time you need to write, which may be a few weeks, and that is okay! Additionally, if changing the point of view is not distancing yourself enough on the first draft, you can change from present to past tense as well and edit later.

Myself taking a break from writing for a bit.

Now I will be following the advice of others and taking a step back from writing and slowing down my pace in order to continue forward with my first draft. I may not be done as early as I was hoping for, but I will have the best final product as a result!