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This is super interesting. I often wonder whether trauma and fiction writing go together well or not. For yonks I found it exceptionally difficult to think in terms of plot and could only think in terms of psychology, so I couldn't think of stories were things *changed* https://twitter.com/alexvtunzelmann/status/1274667466535428099
It was a really odd thing. My experience had felt more like things *happen*, often at random and that people didn't really interact on the basis of desires that led to change but in terms of desires that kep things the same. I just couldn't see the space for stories to happen in
I still struggle sometimes to plot out what has actually happened in stories that I've seen or read. I respond to the emotions of characters in interaction with each other far more than I do to the overall shape of the plat they're part of. Kind of moment to moment vigilance
For a while, I wondered if this failure to follow plot was based on a kind of lack of ability to believe that individuals could influence events, that people were passengers in their stories, not actors. But that, I think, was a very trauma based way of seeing story
I do wonder a lot about our own early experiences and how they shape both how we think stories work and how we think stories should be, and how that in turn shapes our capacity for making them. I feel like a big pile of messy knots when it comes to working out stories
