I know that cws/tws really don't happen with books once they're published, but I want to be able to make sure that any potential beta readers don't get too triggered/upset to keep reading. Many of them will be my friends and I don't want to push them to that point if I can help it.
Herein lies a problem. One of my friend I've been talking to a lot during the whole writing process. Sometimes I bounce ideas off of him, his job keeps him up so he's around when I write late at night. I know that he's really interested in reading it and I really want him to. But last month he suddenly lost a younger sister and he's been taking it very hard. I don't know what sort of place mentally/emotionally he'll be in however many months it'll take me to be ready for beta readers, and that's only relevant because several characters have dead loved ones. One of them learns that the sister she's been hoping to find throughout the story was dead the entire time and someone important to her was lying about it. So you can see my worry.
There are no "on-screen" deaths of any good guys, the loved ones have all died in the past. And this is a book for adults, so sometimes it's going to go over difficult topics. I know there are other things that might trigger other people I know (like certain kinds of violence or description of blood). My plan originally was to ask each person what things would be too upsetting for them to read and we can decide from there if they still want to beta read. For my friends that already have a list of triggers compiled it won't be an issue to reference that, but the friend above, to my knowledge, has never requested anyone to cw things for him. I don't want to really upset him, but I also don't want him thinking that I'm walking on eggshells around him and changing how I treat him because of what happened.
So I guess my question(s) are:
Herein lies a problem. One of my friend I've been talking to a lot during the whole writing process. Sometimes I bounce ideas off of him, his job keeps him up so he's around when I write late at night. I know that he's really interested in reading it and I really want him to. But last month he suddenly lost a younger sister and he's been taking it very hard. I don't know what sort of place mentally/emotionally he'll be in however many months it'll take me to be ready for beta readers, and that's only relevant because several characters have dead loved ones. One of them learns that the sister she's been hoping to find throughout the story was dead the entire time and someone important to her was lying about it. So you can see my worry.
There are no "on-screen" deaths of any good guys, the loved ones have all died in the past. And this is a book for adults, so sometimes it's going to go over difficult topics. I know there are other things that might trigger other people I know (like certain kinds of violence or description of blood). My plan originally was to ask each person what things would be too upsetting for them to read and we can decide from there if they still want to beta read. For my friends that already have a list of triggers compiled it won't be an issue to reference that, but the friend above, to my knowledge, has never requested anyone to cw things for him. I don't want to really upset him, but I also don't want him thinking that I'm walking on eggshells around him and changing how I treat him because of what happened.
So I guess my question(s) are:
- How have you handled asking someone to beta read when they might be triggered by your content?
- How would you handle a friend wanting to read your stuff when you believe that there would be upsetting content for them?