For the edification of the reader

[swan_tower]

The recent brouhahah over Stephen Fry saying asinine things about trigger warnings has given me an idea.

I’m going to add something to my website. I don’t know yet how I’ll arrange it in terms of code and presentation, but I’m going to provide content warnings for my fiction. Because I’ve had parents email me asking whether my book would be suitable for their kid (my inevitable answer: depends on the kid, and I don’t know yours, but the book contains XYZ), and readers asking whether my book contains a particular type of thing because they just don’t feel able to deal with that right now. So why not make that information publicly available? Yes, spoilers — but nobody will force you to read the content warnings. They’re there for the people who want them, and everybody else can go their merry way, exactly as they’re doing right now.

It will take me a while to write all this up (because I want to include my short fiction, not just my novels), and like I said, I need to figure out where I’ll put it on my site and how to code it (if you’re there to check the warnings for Work A, you won’t necessarily see all the warnings for Works B-Z). But apart from the labor involved, I see no reason not to provide this information. Also, I figure it would be good to ask: what kinds of things do you think it would help to see warnings for? I’m thinking major common ones, rather than trying to pin down every little thing — triggers can be very idiosyncratic. I’m also thinking of the kinds of things parents worry about, which aren’t so much triggering as inappropriate for kids at certain ages. So far I have:

• Violence
  • Non-graphic violence
  • Graphic violence
  • Sexual violence
  • Murder
  • Major character death
• Profanity
  • Mild profanity (i.e. “damn,” “hell,” etc)
  • Strong profanity (i.e. “fuck”)
• Mild sexual content (i.e. reference to sex, but no direct depiction)
• Drug use (not including tobacco, but including alcoholism)
• Mental illness (PTSD, depression, etc)
• Psychological abuse
• Harm to children
• Harm to animals

I’m not including things that haven’t actually shown up in my fiction, e.g. graphic sexual content [edit: also domestic abuse, torture, parental death], and obviously people’s boundaries for things like “non-graphic violence” vs. “graphic violence” differ. But if you can think of anything major I’ve left out, do let me know. (I’m also probably going to include special notes where necessary, e.g. “In Ashes Lie covers a period of plague in London, and gets quite grim and detailed about that event.” Because I don’t generally think I need to warn for illness, but I feel that’s one of the most horrific things I’ve ever written, and people might want to know it’s coming.)

Basically, I can go on providing this on a one-at-a-time basis — which requires people to do things like ask me “is there sexual violence in this book?,” thus possibly disclosing their own history in a way they would rather not do — or I can just put the info out there. I think the latter is the better way to go.

EDIT: good lord, self, have you written anything that doesn’t have non-graphic violence? (Answer: yes. But not at any length above novelette.)

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[slashmarks (from livejournal.com)]

My advice is not to leave it at that; provide that and then after it a brief description of the scene it appears in. (I realize this increases the work a lot -- unfortunately this is one of the things that makes trigger warnings harder than they sound.)

Most people triggered by the big, common ones aren't triggered by any appearance, but by certain details or certain ways it comes up. (Eg. I know or have spoken to people who are only triggered by child abuse if: -it's maliciously cruel -it's for the victim's own good -the victim tries to escape and fails multiple times -it includes public humiliation as a strong element, etc.) So for most people, list-type trigger warnings aren't actually very helpful.

For a simpler suggestion, I would include a separate warning for torture from graphic violence. There's a pretty significant difference between a scene where a character is beaten up in a fight and a scene where a character is beaten while captive in terms of who is likely to be upset.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing up torture -- I've added that, domestic abuse, and parental death to the list of things I'm not warning for simply because they don't show up in my fiction. (Though I do have one story I expect to write which would have torture, at which point I would warn for that, because I agree that it's different.)

When it comes to scenes, what I've found in starting to build this list is that most of what I need to warn for in my own work is not scene-specific; things like non-graphic violence or mild/strong profanity are pervasive throughout the work, or else not there at all. In a few cases I've provided more specific notes, e.g. a character commits suicide after a fashion, as self-sacrifice for the greater good -- clarifying in that instance because a) suicide will read differently than major character death of other types and b) somebody who's triggered by characters hanging or poisoning themselves may not mind a noble martyrdom. But I've found relatively few things that feel that specific; I just don't write a whole lot of triggering stuff. (Most particularly, I don't do more than mention past sexual violence or the risk thereof; to date it has never appeared directly on the page).

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

This is really fascinating and very thoughtful of you, and now I am wondering if I should do the same (although I suspect the number of people even looking at my body of short fiction is very small).

Just cursorily thinking about it, I suspect I would end up with lots of "genocide is a theme this whole story" warnings. :]

P.S.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Would you mind if I borrowed this list of warnings as a starting point?

(Why yes, I am cat-waxing.)

Re: P.S.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'd be honored!

NO BRAIN DO NOT SAY "just add genocide" I don't care how appropriate it is in this context it just sounds wrong.

Re: P.S.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

LOL.

I will be sure to credit you as inspiring this new bout of cat-waxing! ^_^

One category that I'm probably adding to my list (I'd have to check, I can't remember what-all is in all those darn stories) although I don't know if it applies to yours is "medical grue." I wouldn't have thought of it except you mentioned the Black Death, and I was tangentially reminded of a friend of mine who can watch ultraviolent, rapey, etc. etc. anime (as far as I can tell, there is NO anime he cannot endure), but I took him to a science museum in Boston once and he noped out of a fascinating educational video on hip joint replacement surgery within two seconds (much to my disappointment, but I bet I can probably find a hip joint replacement surgery video on Youtube these days). My tolerance for, e.g. medical/surgical grue visuals is very high because I grew up in a surgeon's household, and occasionally I slip and forget that other people...not so much. The topic is also on my mind because I recently reread Nancy Holder's horror story "Crash Cart," which is more horrific because of the domestic violence stuff than the medical grue, but it's not like the medical grue stuff isn't present either.

Re: P.S.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Good point. The plague example is the only really medical grue-ish thing I think I have in my published work, but it's definitely a thing people can squick on, hard.