Trigger Warnings

[SamScribble]

I think it would be legitimate for a reader to ask you to go back to the drawing board and resolve the discrepancies either by putting the story in a different period or dealing with the plot point in a non-anachronistic way.

Just remind me again: how much is this reader paying?

 

[SimonDoom]

Just remind me again: how much is this reader paying?

A reader doesn't have to pay a penny to be entitled to his/her opinion. The amount of money changing hands changes nothing.

 

[RetroFan]

I wonder if it would have been better if such a comment was placed at the end of the story. When it is at the beginning, people will pay attention to it, look forward to being annoyed, while, otherwise perhaps very few would have noticed. A comment at the end could very well be accepted as "Meh, who cares", or "Ah, at least he knew..."

To those wondering why one would do such a thing, related, but not the same:
I'm currently working on a story in which I describe places I've visited twenty years ago. I expect things to have changed, I know things have changed, but I also know that even while using the Internet I will never be able to get the full and correct picture of today. For example, while I remember the bumpy, painful traveling, I know that roads have drastically improved since that time, gravel roads have been replaced by asphalt, cities have grown, modernized, but I'll never know what it looks like today. On the other hand, my memory certainly isn't sufficient to describe all the required details of the places I've visited twenty years ago, only for one or two days. I've decided to hide behind the 'fiction' label, and mix my experiences from twenty years ago, combined with the info from the Lonely Planet (even older) with the things I can find on Internet, and pretend it is set in a fluid timezone where gravel roads exist together with 'Shape Of You' from Ed Sheeran.

I have written plenty of stories set in places I have never been and long before I was born, and my advice is to avoid giving too many details about things such as a landmarks unless you are absolutely sure of things. If you get it wrong, this is where your story comes undone through anachronisms. For example I wrote a story set in New York in 1988. I have never been to New York, and I most certainly did not go to New York in 1988. In the story one of the characters works at the World Trade Center in the North Tower. Obviously the World Trade Center was there in 1988 so no anachronism, and I could include it with confidence. But if I wrote a story set in New York in 1961 and the World Trade Center is there, this is immediately incorrect, as the Twin Towers were not constructed until the early 1970s and my story comes unstuck pretty quickly.

 

[Hypoxia]

I have written plenty of stories set in places I have never been and long before I was born, and my advice is to avoid giving too many details about things such as a landmarks unless you are absolutely sure of things. If you get it wrong, this is where your story comes undone through anachronisms.

Almost as bad: I was briefly somewhere long ago and vaguely remember stuff about it... that ain't there now. I didn't notice the race track replaced by a shopping mall. My bad.

OTOH brilliant writers like Kafka and Brecht wrote of Amerikas they knew only from newspapers, so just made shit up wholesale. I could do the same of Australia, based on ON THE BEACH and CROCODILE DUNDEE, along with the kangaroo-scrotum coin purse a sister brought me. Go there? No need.

Set your story in a Pink Panther landscape and few will notice.

 

[SamScribble]

Set your story in a Pink Panther landscape and few will notice.

Damn it, Hypoxia. You've just given away my next story idea.

 

[Hypoxia]

Damn it, Hypoxia. You've just given away my next story idea.

Try for an Alley Oop world then.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Almost as bad: I was briefly somewhere long ago and vaguely remember stuff about it... that ain't there now. I didn't notice the race track replaced by a shopping mall. My bad.

OTOH brilliant writers like Kafka and Brecht wrote of Amerikas they knew only from newspapers, so just made shit up wholesale. I could do the same of Australia, based on ON THE BEACH and CROCODILE DUNDEE, along with the kangaroo-scrotum coin purse a sister brought me. Go there? No need.

Set your story in a Pink Panther landscape and few will notice.

I read one book a while back that prominently featured the New Orleans subway system. Good luck with that. And it was a US-based publisher, too.

 

[CuteSlaveLisa]

I read one book a while back that prominently featured the New Orleans subway system. Good luck with that. And it was a US-based publisher, too.

Shhhhhhhhhh. We just don't tell feriners 'bout it.

Love and Kisses

Lisa Ann

 

[8letters]

In a recent story, set in the 1980’s, I put in the prologue an explanation to the effect I know cellphones, as we know them, didn’t exist in the 1980’s but I needed it for the plot and I wanted to pre-empt anyone saying it was wrong. As soon as it was published there was a comment that it was a good story and they only had one problem. There were no cellphones in the 1980’s! As a result of which they had marked the story down.

There are also the readers who, no matter what warnings you put in, will still read the story and be (deliberately) offended.

How many people read your story? And just one reader was bothered enough by your use of cellphones to comment on it?

People frequently comment on trivialities that stand out to them. I published my story, "My Lingerie-Loving Sister Moves In" at the start of the baseball playoffs, and in the story I had the Astros losing in the World Series to the Dodgers. It was a trivial detail in a six page story that was really, really well-received. And yet, it was something that numerous commenters mentioned because they were Astros fans.

 

[rutger5]

I prefer to use the exact meaning of a word, when possible, so I agree that a content advisory isn’t identical with a trigger warning. However a trigger warning is a type of content advisory, with the proviso that it may cause a reaction from someone suffering from PTSD.

I also agree that in some cases people overuse the term trigger warning in trying to prove that the younger generations are filled with delicate snowflakes. Still in my limited experience I’ve seen a lot more of the younger generations misuse the word in a non-sarcastic manner, claiming that they are triggered when hearing speech or ideas that they don’t agree with and that hearing such things makes them feel threatened and the like. Older generations have always claimed that the youth are destroying civilization or are going to hell in a hand-basket, nothing new there. But at least in the America I grew up in there was a widespread belief that you countered hateful speech and bad ideas with better ideas and free speech, not safe places where never a discouraging word is heard.

But as far as whether something at Lit needs a trigger warning or a content advisory, to me at least, could be better handled by allowing more tags and placing them BEFORE the story. That isn’t that hard. Other sites do it. (This doesn’t prevent people from doing the same things they now do in LW, like hate reading and hate commenting but if the tags are up front it is clear to see the complainers are trolling rather than being shocked at what they read.) I know sometimes Manu comments on forum threads so he is aware of this but for whatever reason this easy solution is ignored. The cynic in me suspects that management enjoys the type of comment wars that LW encourages, or maybe believes it helps drive traffic or clicks. But I could give them links to another old, cobbled together site with a rickety internet platform that has the tags up front if they wanted to see that it’s possible.
Reason I said to allow for more tags is that for example I have stories that have murders take place in them that have no sexual element (no snuff garbage) but I believe I’ve read that Lit doesn’t allow murder as a tag. I understand not wanting to appeal to those that treat murder as a sexual fetish but allowing a writer to use a murder tag also allows them to warn a reader about it if that isn’t their cup of tea.

I’d also say to those writers that are against any type of content warning in principle because they are adults and they treat their readers as such that I understand where you are coming from. But most physical books, either in the dust jacket or the back blurb of a paperback, do describe what the book is about and any reader with a working brain can decipher if there would be content they wouldn’t be comfortable with for the most part. Still I believe that choice should be left to the author, unless a particular site has a policy that says otherwise.

Last point and this is specifically about actual trigger warnings. I get warning about strobe lights because in some cases that can cause an actual physical reaction like seizures in some people and it would be rotten to set off some M-80s behind someone that suffers from what used to be called shell shock. But if hearing or reading words like murder or rape or fire or explosion is enough to actually trigger an episode in someone then they have bigger problems than a lack of trigger warnings. Because there is nowhere in this modern age that you can go and escape hearing about bad things unless you are in total media isolation and the people around you refrain from mentioning the news.