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#WritersCoffeeClub 3/6: Should books include a content warning?

I'm a great enthusiast of content warnings, and feel that at least one my published works would have benefitted from having one.

I'm going to push for them in future fiction publications, having got into the habit of using them when making small narrative games, although the practice is far less normalised in publishing than in interactive media.

That said, in most cases, being clear about what the work is is sufficient.

I know what I'm signing up for when I read body horror, for instance.

But I'd still prefer to have a heads up if I should be expecting graphic scenes of sexual abuse or the torture of children, for example.

This isn't much of a problem for me these days, but has been before and some scenes still are. A general hint allows me to be not pick up the book when in a vulnerable frame of mind.

Equally, some of my work carries warnings for self-harm and drug use because those can be triggers that a person with that history may wish to avoid at certain points. (Or seek out at others, because humans are complicated little animals.)

Of course, warnings can only be general. The Fifth Season and Perdido Street Station both include traumatic scenes that are part of the emotional core of their stories. Revealing details in advance may arguably gut them of their power for some readers, but a general content warning would not.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, while generally a decent read for me, would have seriously benefited from a CW, as I went in unwarned and early on hit on intensely male-gazey rape scene that exists as part of a revenge/liberation setup. While it's also part of the narrative core of its story... it's not one I liked or could relate to at all.

It's widely claimed that Stieg Larsson was inspired to create the character of Lisbeth Salander because he was present at the gang-rape of a girl he knew and did nothing to intervene, which would certainly explain a lot of how that scene feels. It's a rape scene that feels like it's very much not coming from the perspective of someone who's been raped.

On a related note regarding that book, I'm also extremely over animal death as a cheap metaphor (hi, modern crime fiction, often pairing it with exaggeratedly detailed rape scenes for a one-two), but I don't expect to ever get satisfaction on that front.

My ability to deal with this stuff depends partly on my head at the time and partly on how they're handled by by the author.

Content warnings help me manage the former, and putting the damn book down deals with the latter.

Anyway, if, like me, you sometimes care more about being forewarned than being spoiled, here are some useful sites:

Does The Dog Die
https://www.doesthedogdie.com/

Book Trigger Warnings
https://booktriggerwarnings.com/