Traumatic Past vs. Traumatic Present?

Traumatic pasts aren't necessary or better than non-traumatic pasts. As long as you have an interesting character who is responding to interesting problems (old or recent), you can create a compelling story. Is it possible that your current story doesn't have enough conflict period, and that's left your beta's wanting more? If you don't torment the MC enough, or if he has too much of an easy time of things, the story is blah..

PS I also don't think that the traumatic past creates false tension. Being mentally scarred from bad stuff in the past is a very real problem for people dealing with current problems, both in fiction and IRL

I agree with Kitty.
It needs to be interesting, but not every character has had some great traumatic incident, and they don't all need to be angsty.
And to add to her question about why your betas might have asked for more angst: could it be that your character's personality, thoughts, or feelings aren't shining through? Maybe what they're really asking for is just to connect better.

traumatic does not = angsty. But angst is welcomed in YA writing because teenagers are - by nature - pretty angsty beings! "Angst" by definition means anxious, apprehensive, or insecure. Have you ever met a teenager that didn't feel that way about SOMETHING? (boys, friends, tests, teachers, parents, etc.).

So to me it sounds possible (total speculation since I haven't read your work) that your betas are just looking for a little more urgency/immediacy in your writing. Whether or not that comes from a traumatic event or "OMG will he ask me to prom?!" doesn't really matter, as long as the EMOTIONS resonate.

I don't think you need a traumatic past, but I DO think that you need a past. And I do think that you need some angst in that past. Because no one goes from zero to sixteen years old without experiencing some failure, some setbacks, some heartbreak. Having a character with a past, whether the most traumatic event in it is moving house at age six or the death of a close family member, takes an MC in particular from flat to round.

So kinda I agree with your betas. An MC's past is incredibly important because in a lot of ways, who we are is nothing more than the sum of our stories and our past. But I don't think that "a past" needs to be totally traumatic to be effective.

Bri, I would ignore that advice then. No, teens do not only want to read about people who are miserable. Fish-out-of-water stories with extraordinary stuff happening to ordinary kids is fine. I'd say Pudge in Looking For Alaska is an ordinary kid who experiences more ennui and less misery before the start of the novel, and I can't seem to remember Nora from Hush, Hush having any huge pressing problems before the novel begins. David aka Justin from Just in Case by Meg Rosoff is pretty average before the story begins.

And speaking for myself, as a teen, I'd say that I'm definitely interested in reading stories that are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations (so long as "ordinary" does not equate to boring)

BriMaresh said:

Armed with your advice, I contacted the betas to see what they were thinking, to prod further into their pretty little brains.

Apparently, it's just "not what is done in YA" and "if it were an adult book, I would say it is amazing, but teens want to read about people who are miserable."

Looking beyond this specific example, I am baffled by that idea--that books cannot be about seemingly normal people in extraordinary situations.

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I would disagree with your betas. There are plenty of YA books about teens who have no awful traumas and aren't miserable as the events of the novel begins. Books with characters who start out untraumatized that I have recently read, off the top of my head: Little Brother, Boy Meets Boy, Ash, Gossip Girl, Nation, Peeps (ok, he's a vampire, but he's a happy well-adjusted vampire), How To Ditch Your Fairy--all well-adjusted, untraumatized, happy MCs as the books begin. There are loads more.

I third the idea to ignore that advice. Kitty already gave examples, so I won't, but there are so many that I can think of.

Things have to happen to your MC, but they don't have to have drug addled parents or have witnessed a brutal murder or something in order to be interesting.

I don't think it's about the traumatic past more than just an excuse to create a dynamic character.

Say, the main character was on a boat with his parents, and it went down and he was the only one to live. We can have him slightly angsty that his parents are dead. A cheap excuse to not worry about parents interfearing in his extraordinary life. A reason for him to have an unnatural fear of water he must overcome. And a dark streak for revenge against the villan for sinking the boat.

Budda Boom, Budda Bing, we have an angsty character that a lot of teenagers will relate to, for one reason or another.

It's like killing a lotta rocks with a big rock. A really big rock.

But you definately don't have to take that approach. It's not mandatory.

The traumatic pasts can get a little cheap, though, and become a sympathy ploy if you're not careful. I don't think they're remotely necessary, even for the sake of marketing-- Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series is incredibly popular in the YA genre, and all of the main characters start out relatively happy and whole.

Personally I hate hate hate angst. I read to escape, I don't want to read about someone's traumatic childhood. And I think this whole tragic past thing is getting far to cliched, it's like the writers get out clause. It's a reason for a character being the way they are, and I feel that it's a bit of a cop out.

Angst is a good thing. To create conflict, you make your characters miserable. Being miserable normally equals angst.

With the whole "run your MC up a tree and chuck rocks at him" analogy, won't the rocks hurt more if the MC is already bruised from previous rocks?

Not all MCs have to have tragic pasts, but tragedy happens, so it's a good idea to at least give them some problems. Even when they have it relatively good, people still find things to gripe about.

Traumatic is really a judgment call, isn't it?

I mean, I have a character who's still angsty over a break up a few months ago at the start of the book. Not exactly a tragedy, but he's less involved in the present that the other character whose brother died a few years ago. One of them's a bigger deal, but they dealt with it differently.

In INVINCIBLE SUMMER, I wouldn't say my main character has a traumatic past. I can't think of anything. But he does have a deaf younger brother. No one's angsty about this, but I imagine there was some turmoil in his family when they realized he was deaf.

Everyone has a past. If it's important to your character, use it in the story, if it's not, don't. There isn't a holy grail. Write the characters who are best to your story. You know this.

Poetoffire said:

Angst is a good thing. To create conflict, you make your characters miserable. Being miserable normally equals angst.

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not entirely sure I agree with this.

Hmm, I kind of agree with what poetoffire said. But with the addendum that not all readers LIKE angst and there are other ways to create tension and conflict. But I do believe that most complications in novels create, at the very least, a small amount of angst and if handled well it doesn't get whiny. I mean, if the character sort of remained at one totally happy emotionally well-adjusted level throughout the novel it simply wouldn't work. Because there would be little to no character arc, imo.

Great way to express it, inkspatters!

I'm not saying that your character has to stay miserable throughout the entire novel. But when the decisions get tough and the conflict escalates, your MC is going to have to be upset, and angst is a way a lot of teenagers deal with it.

Don't get me wrong; when all you have is someone wallowing in misery, it gets annoying after a while. But at least a tiny amount of angst is usually a necessary.

BriMaresh:
Am I somehow shortchanging my readers by not writing about a character so badly traumatized that their every waking moment is plagued by default settings?

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No, you're not short-changing your readers.

Does your story require a traumatised character? If not, then you don't need it.

BriMaresh:
If the character is already traumatized at the start of the novel, if they're still reeling from phsyical assault, the loss of a sibling, the death of a parent, how involved in their present are they?

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This all ties in with whether you need the trauma for your story. If your story is about a teenager who is unable to deal with the present because of a past trauma and how they come out of that, then that coming to terms exercise would be the point of the narrative.

Alternatively, it could be that the past trauma is what drives the character's actions in the present.

In my WIP, I have a central character whose mother was left severely brain damaged in a car accident 5 years before the action starts. Part of what motivates my central character's actions at a critical point is the fact that she wants to get a cure for her mum. It also motivates her personality because it's something that she's tried to hide away from other people.

BriMaresh:
Am I wrong in thinking that a Y.A. novel need not be angsty (at least at the get-go) for it to be interesting?

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No, you're not wrong.

BriMaresh:
Can't I traumatize my characters in their present, instead of their past?

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Yes you can.

BriMaresh:
Apparently, it's just "not what is done in YA" and "if it were an adult book, I would say it is amazing, but teens want to read about people who are miserable."

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Bollocks.

The Amulet of Samarkland, The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud don't have miserable characters and all were bestsellers.

It's the problem that's important, not the misery that it engenders.

Poetoffire:
To create conflict, you make your characters miserable.

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I don't see how misery automatically equates conflict. You can have a character who's a depressive who doesn't intereact with anyone but there's no conflict until something or someone comes along to challenge that character's situation.

Poetoffire:
Don't get me wrong; when all you have is someone wallowing in misery, it gets annoying after a while. But at least a tiny amount of angst is usually a necessary.

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Again, I disagree because all too often angst becomes wangst. I've read too many books where the angst and anguish has been piled up in a desperate attempt to make the MC more sympathetic and it doesn't work. Far from being sympathetic they become a serial victim.

If the angst doesn't need to be there to make the book work on a narrative or character level, then leave it out.

MM

Now, personally, I don't like a hugely traumatic past (i.e. MY WHOLE FAMILY WAS WIPED OUT WHEN I WAS THREE YEARS OLD!!!!!). For example, one of the few aspects of "The Hunger Games" I didn't like particularly was Katniss' father's death, although I know that it was important. However, I can go for angst/traumatic past IF THE TRAUMA HAS A DIRECT BEARING ON THE CURRENT STORY, eg the nature of Leah and Laine's friendship in "Lessons from a Dead Girl" or Melinda's trauma in "Speak." I think the prime way to do a traumatic past in a YA novel can be evidenced in Gail Giles' "Shattering Glass", though. I don't think it's necessary, but I think it can be done well.

My current WIP follows pretty much the opposite idea - my MC had a really nice life (albeit perhaps a little boring) up until the events of the story. That creates tension of the opposite kind, but by pretty much the same mechanism - with a character who has a traumatic past, it's often more ordinary events that cause tension, because their past experiences alter how they deal with things, whereas when you have a character with a nice past, it's the traumatic stuff that causes tension, because they're inexperienced and don't know how to deal with it. What is interesting, though, is that they have that learning element in common - they're both about working out how to function in unfamiliar situations. I've read a number of really good books that explore that by doing both at once - in fact, I'm pretty sure you will all know of at least one story that does. You have one character with a traumatic past, and one from a pleasant background, and you throw them into some kind of struggle together, and they each teach the other how to cope with whichever half of life it is they have trouble with (often by falling in love along the way).

This is a really interesting thread to me as the main character in my YA book is dealing with a traumatic past, but it doesn't "grey" her present in any way. Now, that being said, there is definitely a heightened state of delusion to her present day events but I think that's what makes the story gripping and chilling. What's tricky in YA books I think, is that the characters are often dealing with the normal "angsty" issues for this age group, so adding trauma on top of that can really make for a grenade of a situation.