New on Tor.com: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Fiction, Part 1

Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
Sweet songs are full of odours.
– Siegfried Sassoon, “The Dream”

I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Which is difficult to admit, because fiction—the medium through which people most often learn about the experiences of others—tends to imply that those who suffer from PTSD are non-existent at best, broken as par of course, and dangerous lunatics at worst. And sometimes the only depiction available in a story or series is the “worst” scenario.

It’s a little upsetting, not least because people fall back on the stereotypes presented in fiction when they know you have PTSD.

But, like anything else, occasionally fiction gets it right.

In this post I’ll discuss the caricature of PTSD in fiction; in a second post, I’ll talk more in depth about some specific examples that mostly get it right (and, in one case, pretty much all of it right).

Before I cover either, however, I ought to describe how PTSD is actually experienced. This goes rather beyond the Merriam-Webster definition or, to be frank, the times when fiction would like to show off PTSD.

[Continue reading at Tor.com...]