: Re: How to deal appropriately with an inappropriate sexual relationship Part of the character arc for my main character from Can I conceal an antihero's insanity - and should I? is that she

@Sue2132873

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Tell it in narration.

You have plenty of opportunity to show this character's social pathology in her adult life. And plenty of material to do it with. This establishes her personality and the lengths she's willing to go to get what she wants.

The purpose of including these events in her childhood are to show that her personality was well established before she reached adulthood (and perhaps to explain where she got the money to do what she needed to do then).

The length and level of detail of her teen life that you gave in your question is about right for the book. It's more than enough to squick out the reader (I'm gonna do my best to put that all out of my head after pouring my thoughts into an answer). And it serves its purpose.

Anything more than that would be overkill. You don't want to delve too deeply into this stuff. In the real world, 14 year old girls don't become prostitutes on their own initiative, for fun and funding, and false rape allegations are a lot rarer than people think. If you paint her past in broader strokes, you allow the reader to suspend disbelief, get the information they need to know, and move on to the current timeline of the book.

How do you include it in the narrative?

You have several tools available to you:

Flashback (which can be full-on with dialogue, as a story within a story, or just quick bits).
Her telling someone (with her own twisted understanding).
Someone else telling another character (or throwing it in your main character's face).
The narrator matter-of-fact informing the reader, just like a narrator informing a reader that she decided to wear blue that day.

My suggestion is to avoid a full-on flashback, but to choose a method that will be short and matter-of-fact. You want the reader to know "this is what she did" and not have to live it with her.

If you show other parts of her childhood in "real time" as part of the plot, you can still gloss over this important part so the reader doesn't dwell on it too much. If you want to delve into this chapter of her life, you can. But it isn't necessary and it would turn many readers off.

You can do this in 1-2 paragraphs then never mention it again. Or you can allude to it later (or earlier). Or throw in a line here and there to build a bigger picture. I assume there are other parts of her childhood where she did horrible things and you might want to toss in bits from those as well, peppered through the book (or done very sparsely).

The details of how you do this are up to you. My advice is to minimize the time you spend on these events. The tiny bits you've already told here are more than enough. If you show sex scenes (or scenes of her lying in court, etc), it will be too much and will make it more difficult for the reader to connect with the rest of the book.

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