A Writer’s Responsibility
On Tor’s website, you’ll find a brilliant series of articles on the portrayal of PTSD in fiction. If you’ve got the time, I highly recommend giving them a read before diving into this piece, but in brief, they argue that stories tend to handle PTSD (and mental health issues in general) pretty terribly. Often, characters will simply power through experiences which should leave them psychologically crippled (”Dresden Files,” I’m looking straight at you!), or deal with the trauma in a single, restorative scene, going back to their old selves immediately after. In other words, the trauma is often used as a simple plot device, which…well, let’s just say it should raise some serious questions for us as writers.
