I have been writing a couple of stories fairly regularly for a couple of weeks and very little of it is preplanned. It's kind of just shooting from the hip and making it up and writing as I go. But I've realized that coming soon, thanks to the character arcs that I crated, will be a chapter that chapter that's going to be significantly darker and go into some rather unpleasant backstory that might trouble some people. In fact I'm actually stealing some of it straight out of some of my own, personal, real-life traumas. Basically I'm going to have elements of transphobia, alcoholism, and abusive parents come into the story. With that in mind part of my brain is screaming at me that I definitely should include a quick disclaimer at the top of the chapter letting people know that if those are things that upset them, they may want to avoid some areas. But I'm also on the older side and remember reading stories as a kid and that some of those more dangerous and offense parts also being incredibly impactful and I feel that reading some of them even made me a better person. So I feel like I should at least put it in there as a warning but there's a stubborn part of my brain that doesn't want to. So I just thought I'd throw this up as a discussion topic and see what others thought. Thanks.
I for one fully support trigger warnings in stories. It helps people decide if they want to dive into a story or not and especially if there is some shocking content, it is only polite to warn ahead.
Agreed. Not everything that might possibly be mildly uncomfortable needs a huge honking warning, but from your description it sounds like this is going quite a bit farther than that, and is a notable departure from earlier content. It's only fair to warn people about it.
It's your story so feel free to do as you wish. That said, I added a disclaimer at the beginning of my story that details what sort of stuff will and won't be included. It's best to get it out the way early I think. If people know what sort of kinks you're interested in they'll know what to expect and won't be blindsided by you obliterating the protagonist's nuts or whatever it is you're doing.
My problem there is that a lot of what I'm writing is just off the top of my head as I go along so a lot of this I had no idea was going to happen when I started. Initially I planned a cute, short story and the next thing I know the word document that I have as a backup on my PC is in 12 point font and almost 200 pages long. So now with no outline and very little direction at this point I've practically written a short novel and find myself wondering "how the hell did this happen?" But 150 pages in I decide to focus on the protagonists mother a little bit and give some history and color, so what should I do? Well, stealing the old 'write what you know' thing I stole some painful childhood trauma from my own life and tossed it in.
Yeah that's rough. Should definitely include a warning before you show the content. Sounds dark as Hell. Btw I know you like to just wing it, but it helps me stay on track if I have a rough idea of where I want the story to end. You don't need to plan absolutely everything, but a vague idea definitely helps me prevent bloat or adding in too many threads that I'll just never be able to finish. Of course if you like winging it, then keep doing you. But if you're like me and you get annoyed by too many loose ends, definitely think about the ending you want and the general "big events" you want along the line. Anyways best of luck to you with your story
