#chemistreat

Writing about traumatic events in your own people’s history

Self care, self care, self care. Pretend that you are your own child and be a strict and loving parent with yourself–it’s very possible you will run into things in the course of your research that upset or even trigger you, and you shouldn’t force yourself to gulp down more than you can handle at once. So be prepared with snacks or pictures of kittens or friends you can talk to to decompress after you dive in. And it’s not disrespectful to our dead to be able to only handle this in small chunks.

Be picky about your sources. Survivor memoirs are a good place to start. You will have to get those recs from someone else because it’s been twenty years since I read anything like that, except for brief excerpts online. Hoping other Jewish posters will respond in the notes with specific recs. Also, remember to try to find narratives from the individual country you’re writing about–the violence started in different ways in different places, and also there were varying levels of assimilation before everything went sideways.

I think there’s an oral history project (from Steven Spielberg, maybe?) to record survivor testimony, so that’s a place to start. Don’t quote someone’s story 100% verbatim, though – that feels vaguely disrespectful a thing to do without having a way to ask permission. Just figure out a reasonable storyline that fit realistically into the real ones.

You can stop in the middle and cry. This is not weakness.

You can stop in the middle and say kaddish for strangers. It doesn’t “count” unless you randomly have nine Jewish roommates you can go pester for a minyan, but it might make you feel better so that you can keep going, and YOUR survival is important because OUR survival is important.

This is ambitious but you’d be joining a long hallowed list of Jewish authors who have looked back on this. If this is where your writing heart takes you, I wish you luck.

(Other folks from traumatized ethnic backgrounds, feel free to share relevant tips – it’s possible that my post could be interpreted more broadly to apply to other situations.)

omg!! that’s beautiful ;;

del just wants to have some fun too 

2D and noodle would always marathon their favourite horror movies… like from phase 1 it just kind of became a thing they did together, just the two of them. ends in a lot of sore backs in the morning from falling asleep on the couch and pointing at zombies and calling them murdoc

murdoc loves cortez a lot like he’s embarrassing about it? he coos over his per raven constantly and calls it all manner of petnames. cortez sits on his shoulder all the time and theyre very happy together

russ is really loves baking and one of his favourite things to do to pass the time is watch those instagram videos of people decorating cakes and stuff? noodle tells him to post his own videos but he doesnt know if he’s good enough

  where did the idea for your opossum boys come...

dude that’s so cool, i love the idea! I have two oc’s from a story im too freaking lazy to write but if u wanna hear about it im all talk,,

I don’t know if I’m the best person to answer this but I’ll try!!!

Well usually how callbacks work is that you go in and they give you “sides” from the show. They can be monologues to read from, scenes to do with a partner, or songs to sing. I like being familiar with the music and plot before hand but you can’t (legally) get access to the score or script before you’re in it so I don’t think they can expect you to already know the music/script. Sometimes they’ll give you some background before you read the side but don’t expect that. Usually they give you the scene/mono side and maybe a couple minutes to go over it and then you read. Or they give you music and go through it with you a bit and then you sing it. 

This depends on the point of view. If it’s first person, I’d recommend changing chapters: one chapter in Character A’s POV, the next in Character B, etc. It doesn’t always have to be even–you can have two in a row of the same POV, for example–if you need to stay in one person’s mindset for longer, if you think it’s important that we see their thoughts and feelings, etc. But make sure you are marking the chapters with the person’s name or some other indicator so we know which character to focus on at the time. 

If it’s in third person, I’d recommend the same, but using a close third person narrative. For example, Harry Potter uses ‘he’ not ‘I’ to tell the story, but we always get Harry’s thoughts and feelings through that narrative and no one else’s (except the few opening chapters in a villain’s point of view). The story is, in a sense, “locked in” on his mind. 

The Game of Thrones Books, or A Song of Ice and Fire series or the Inkheart series (for children) are two great examples of third person narratives that have several main characters but go back and forth between point of views depending on the chapter. For first person examples, I’d recommend Will Grayson, Will Grayson. 

What’s important, no matter what, is to stick with the point of view religiously. Even if both characters are in the chapter together, when you are writing from the perspective of Character A, stay with Character A. This means Character B can talk, but in this particular chapter, they are not the main character, and we cannot know their thoughts and feelings. If you’d like them to reflect on a scene the two characters share, wait until their chapter and have them think back on it. 

You also don’t want to repeat scenes–for example have the same events happen in two chapters, one from Character A’s perspective and one from Character B–unless it is absolutely necessary. Try to continue the plot moving forward, just alternate view points.