: Re: Writing about extreme trauma I've just written a chapter in which one of my protagonists witnesses her entire family massacred during an invasion of her home city. This is obviously an extremely

@Phylliss352

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Everyone deals with trauma in a completely different way, depending on their character.

One Monkey is quite correct in his excellent answer that the traumatic event is not the actual trauma. It's the source of the trauma, and this (along with the personality of the character) will affect the recollection of the event, and how that event has a lingering hold on their life from that moment.

The reason that your description likely sounds flat is because it's probably an accurate description of the event, yet that's not likely what the person remembers of the event.

Often, certain things can be blanked out completely, and only resurface many years later. Perhaps the protagonist looked away, and berates herself for not helping, and only remembers sounds. Perhaps she closed her eyes, and stuck her fingers in her ears to block out noise, and hummed a song her mother used to sing. Perhaps she clammed up, and didn't move, just watched, detatched, thinking about other things like the colour of the dress someone wore, the way the eyes looked, the ticking clock in the corner, a vase that broke during the event, someone's favourite piece of clothing was ripped or dirtied ...

Like Indoril Nerevar's list demonstrates, as strange as it may sound, it's often little details that people focus on, primarily because this is the way the human mind deals with traumatic events, by withdrawing from the actual event.

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