: Re: Giving a character trauma but not "diagnosing" her? In my post-apocalyptic novel, my MC Eris is severely traumatized by the death of her family at her own hands. Because of this, she has

@Connie138

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In my opinion: you should let the condition speak for itself. I agree with Alexander when he says that people who hold authors' feet to the fire are overblowing things, as a lot of these people would probably feel safer about themselves if whatever condition they have could easily be tied to a character who was diagnosed with the same thing.

If you want one example of a character who has a real condition that's never overtly stated in the narrative, look at Minnow from Nick Anderson's Planet Ripple: she's a character who is mostly socially inept and whose brain functions much different from other people -- and is berated at the beginning of the story partly as a result of this. What isn't directly mentioned is that Minnow has ASD; this is something the author himself has talked about when the topic of his book comes up, but at no point does any character say "yeah, she has autism." And honestly -- even if the author hadn't said in interviews that the character had autism, most readers likely would have been able to piece that for themselves, anyway.

I honestly think it's more dangerous to directly say that Eris has PTSD than not -- because if you don't do all the research, go against what's expected of PTSD, or just forget something about the condition AFTER your narrative makes her condition clear to the audience, you are more likely to draw controversy from people in the mindset of "hey, not all PTSD people are like that! Are you trying to paint a stereotype of us?"

Like I said: let the condition speak for itself. Diagnoses are a modern thing, but literature has lived before and will continue to live after modernism.

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