I've been blogging about writing more literarily, no matter the genre. They say write what you know. This advice is never so true as when you're writing about tragedy. It's important to help the reader care about your character. One way to do that is to show their heart, what they love and lose. Jane Eyre is so moving because it starts with her heart, the pain that shaped her. We love Harry Potter because we see his loss first thing and know something of his pain. Hamlet tugs at our heartstrings because Shakespeare wastes no time in showing how he lost his father, and the whole play shows him struggling with how to deal with the murder. Even in less literary works, authors excite sympathy early on, so the reader feels their pain. We love Batman, Spiderman, and Superman--in part--because these stories begin in parental loss. The problem comes when an author writes about a character's pain without any understanding the experience. There's a loss or some other difficulty, which is not realistically handled or feels like it's intended to manipulate the reader without any impact on the character. If you, as a writer, are going to feature characters dealing with trauma, you need to first seek to understand the effects such a tragedy would have in one's life.
I read a piece that started with child loss, yet this seemed to have no bearing on the rest of the book. It was just there, like speed bump on the way to an unrelated story. I've actually lost a child. That doesn't mean I know what everyone goes through who does, but it does mean I know how much such a loss impacts every day of my life. I know how much it weighs on the mind, at least, to me. If the impact in the character's life is not at least that weighty, even if it doesn't mirror my own in any way, it rings false. It feels like the author is trivializing my loss. It hurts, and I don't want to continue a book that treats me like that.
The same is true of any loss. If your character lost a parent, siblings, or another loved one, and yet they are totally emotionally disconnected from that loss, why start there? A reader who has been orphaned or lost a family member will know that such an experience would likely rock a person's world. If it doesn't, there must be a reason for it. But unless there is a very compelling reason to feature loss with no emotional impact, it's probably not a good idea. If the character is trying to avoid thinking about their pain, turns to alcohol or some other self-medicating substance, is working themselves to death to avoid dealing with loss, or is incapacitated by the pain, that can ring true to someone who has done the same or has seen someone else do the same. It's a fine line, however, between feeling it and spending the whole book whining about it. That, too, can turn off a reader.
If you're writing about tragedy you don't understand, haven't researched on a personal and real level or haven't gone through yourself, it's probably a bad idea to go there. It can do more harm than good. However, if you're writing about trauma in a real way that somehow reflects lived experience and shows the character dealing with, reeling from, healing from that pain, you're writing a book that can make a real difference in someone's life. Writing and reading about trauma, whether real or fictional, can help writers and readers heal from their pain. The writer can share their real or metaphoric voyage from pain to wholeness, and the reader who is experiencing the same kind of pain can feel understood and experience hope for their own healing. The key is to avoid trivializing someone else's trauma for the sake of a plot or character device. There must be a sense of authenticity to it.
Look or think over the way you have written about or plan to write about trauma. How much do you know about the experience of that trauma? If none, educate yourself. Find people who can share their experience. It's not enough to just read the five stages of grief. More and more experts and regular people have debunked it as unhelpful and untrue of lived experience. Research, so you know what you're dealing with, or change the story. Your readers will be thankful you did.
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