Should I give trigger warnings to my editor?

Great question, and I want to talk to editors as well as authors about this.

I tell editors to have two bullet lists on their websites -- one with the genres/subgenres/tropes they enjoy working with, and one with those they will NOT touch.

Not all of them take my advice, the main reason being: “I don’t want to limit myself.”

This is not about limiting ourselves. It is about positioning ourselves. Marketing peeps will tell you that ‘niche-ing down’ is an excellent way to target your ideal audience. Your target audience should form the bulk of your clientele. Otherwise, work will not be as fun as it could be. (Notice I said ‘bulk’, meaning you are free to take on non-ideal clients until you have a stream of ideal ones.)

Recently, I had the misfortune of reading a story that I should not have touched. It even had a trigger warning that included the words ‘graphic violence’. Not being the smartest person on the block, I said to myself, “How bad could it be? It got accepted into an anthology.”

Oh, how wrong I was proven. I had to stop reading, feeling sick to my stomach. But because there was a trigger warning (that I flagrantly disregarded), this is on me.

Does everyone who writes about war, death, abuse, etc. need to give trigger warnings? This is highly controversial, but you already know I have an opinion about this. My answer is ‘Not necessarily.’ I have read depictions of abuse, war, death and other so-called dark topics by writers who treat these matters sensitively and intelligently, who approach such topics with care and gravitas.

Then there are those do not, who claim they are being ‘real’ or ‘realistic’ when all they are doing is using such topics for shock value (and possibly self-indulgence). This is only my opinion, of course, but I feel strongly that graphic violence, depravity, and explicit sex do NOT belong in mainstream fantasy and certainly not in YA fantasy. They belong in Horror. Or label it ‘Grimdark’. This is about labeling your stories correctly.

For a sensitive and subtly-powerful depiction of war, please go and read Daiva’s flash (not even 500 words). This is a great example of how to write a deeply-moving account of a dark topic WITHOUT devolving into graphic or lurid details. Incidentally, this is also a great example of a short story (as opposed to story fragments I’m seeing a lot of in anthologies and collections). A complete short story in 428 words. Let no-one say it cannot be done. With ‘Whistle in the Sky’, Daiva does it in style.

Giving our readers an emotional experience is a big part of writing fiction. Instead of aiming to shock, how about making our readers feel deeply and empathize with those they will never meet, those whose stories need to be told, not so we can gawk but so we can gain insights and, hopefully, try to do better.

Let’s do better, one story at a time.