Empathy and Trauma and Self-Editing

 

Empathy is a big part of what writers do. Empathy is what holds us true to a character or idea. Not to be confused with ego which is what leads us to dig in our heels rather than cut that clever turn of phrase or the 8000 words of backstory we painstakingly researched and have decided IS the hill on which we shall lay down our lives.

Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that, they don’t. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy. —Nikki Giovanni

Some will never see a word published rather than compromise empathy for the characters in our work and/or the ideas that inspired them. Some manage to thread the needle and publish their story within the lines to whatever degree of success the story finds. Still others lose—or sell—their empathy in the chase for a payday or their name on a book cover. 

Empathy is also the writer’s consideration for the reader

This should come as little surprise to 99.99% of writers but I steal conversations. I think that 99.99% of other writers do the same. An over-heard conversation may simply be deep background for a conversation you craft or it may be a conversation you strip-mine and shoehorn into your WIP because you want to play that tune out in your world. I don’t judge, (often). I regularly do the former but a hostile reaction broke me, (forever) of doing the latter. 

Once upon a time, a coworker told me of a situation they witnessed, involving severe abuse and a subsequent suicide attempt. This is purposely vague. Being the intrepid writerly type that I am, I thought this would be excellent “color” for a character that read “flat” to me. 

The dudes in my crit group nodded approvingly and congratulated me on nailing the “gritty realism,” other folks in the crit group, (men and women but not “dudes”) were appalled. The as-told-to anecdote did nothing to advance the plot, did nothing to further character understanding, in short I subjected my readers to very real pain for NO GOOD PURPOSE. 

Of course, I’m not alone in my creative malpractice. 

Did anyone need the Waingro subplot in Heat? If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest against googling that reference. I was raised on the rough side of the tracks and the violence I saw on those streets informs my writing—and I didn’t need that Waingro subplot. It does nothing to advance the main plot. It tells us NOTHING we didn’t already know about Waingro—a man in desperate need of a .45-caliber craniotomy. In short, that subplot inflicts injury without benefit of progress.

The same may be said for Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides. I qualify that statement because if you’ve read Conroy more than once, you’re not likely to be ambushed by his schtick. You know you’re in for a certain amount of violence, (emotional, at the very least). Also, the violence Conroy inflicts is (mostly) in service to the story. How much of that is absolutely necessary to the story and how much really belongs in a therapy session is debatable.

By contrast, novelist Russell Banks and director Paul Schrader did a much better job in the implied abuse NOT expressly depicted in Affliction. You get a very real idea of the abuse Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) suffered without suffering the detailed trauma. 

It isn’t censorship, it's a balancing act 

Would Hannibal Lecter still be Hannibal Lecter without Sergeant Pimbry’s face? Would Bastard Out of Carolina still be highly moving fiction without the repeated instances of rape? The point is you have to tell the story in your head. The balance is giving your reader something of benefit (plot, character, arc, etc.) in return for inflicting trauma. Especially if is your personal trauma, as is the case with Conroy.

Who decides where the balance is? You do. The reader takes it from there. If you want to go full Jim Thompson, knock yourself out. It’s your story—but it’s your readers’ psyche. While possibly not enjoyable, a dark-night-of-the-soul, which leads to a new perspective can be invaluable to a reader. However, no one enjoys being assaulted. 

Needless to say, I excised that scene from my work and I approach all further work with an idea of measuring audience against objective. Even when the trauma is personal and shapes, if not fills out the world I write in, I maintain a keen self-editing razor to cut what is salacious, exploitive, or just unredeeming. In short, we must rely on empathy to save the reader and ourselves, (we are our own first readers) from the excesses of ego.

The image above, Affliction movie poster, is the property of Summit Entertainment and Lions Gate Films and is used here for illustrative/educational purposes as covered under the Fair Use Act.