Trauma, experience, and characterization

"I tell my story over and over in my head, over and over to my readers, struggling to make sense of it …"I wrote this line almost thirty years ago in a short story -- if you're interested, the story was called "The Repentance of Nicholas", was about surviving sexual assault, and about a glimpse of the possibility of amends. It just appeared to be written about an incubus, because people find it easier to believe in the redemption of monsters than of human males, because it's harder to get angry at creatures that are not real.

I will not share this story, because an older and wiser me sees the redeemed monster as self-serving, manipulative -- not truly redeemed, perhaps a more subtle and self-justified version of who he'd originally been. The world doesn't need a false epiphany. 

I mention it here, however, because of the line I featured above -- The main character, obviously, wrote; she wrote to make sense of a traumatic memory. I used to write for that reason -- to make sense of traumatic memories, and maybe to change the ending of the stories to get closure. 

Thirty years later, I've told the stories over and over for long enough, and the trauma has faded to understanding of my situations in 360 degrees, as modern business jargon has it. My understanding informs the creation of characters not like me and situations not like mine -- the architectural genius whose career crumbles to ruin after a period of reckless brilliance; the ancient Archetype who realizes his need for control has led to the Apocalypse; the cop who has too little faith in himself that he has not noticed the rottenness of the town he serves. 

My characters are not me, but they are of me. My life experiences, traumatic and merely annoying and transcendental and mundane, splinter into purified essence of situation and reaction, and I find my characters, even the villains, enriched for it.

I hope it makes me a better writer.