Okay, this might sound silly but I think it’s a great way to talk about a character’s trauma and it’s delivery in a story. I’ve found that trauma comes up in a lot of works, and rightfully so. Backstory makes our characters deep and if they had a sunshine life without any difficulties they might not be interesting to follow. Thus enters Trauma: shit that went down in our characters past. It could still traumatize them, or they could have overcome it. It is a source of strength, weakness, and interest in who our characters are. Trauma is juicy and does a great job of showing us how awesome our character is now or how much they still have to tackle. It informs on the character and can create a deep and empathetic bond between reader and character.
But sometimes trauma is just there. Sometimes it’s simple and just dropped on the table without any effort or mystery. Sometimes it isn’t revealed so much as shoved down your gullet.
And that’s why we have the Trauma Sandwich.
What is the Trauma Sandwich?
It’s an analogy, an example, a placeholder, and a bit of a joke, for knowing when and how to share a character’s trauma. I like to think of it as a literal sandwich. Again, maybe a little weird, but bear with me.
Complexity and Attention to Detail
Say you have two sandwiches in front of you. 1) Apple, Brie and ham grilled on a panini. 2) Bologna. Yes, they’re both sandwiches but which makes you salivate more? Sure, personal taste will account for some of your decision but the complexity and effort put into that pannini makes it a fuller experience. The elements are balanced against one another to achieve a goal beyond just sating hunger.
Trauma is the same. When a character has gone through a traumatic situation you don’t just drop it on the table to get it over with. I mean, you can, but an opportunity is missed. Building a scene, pairing emotions and senses that heighten the experience for the character via memory shows the reader the extent of the trauma’s lingering effect. Be it a little or a lot. If the trauma isn’t important enough to get the full grilled panini experience then it shouldn’t be there at all.
Frequency
So you’ve got your two sandwiches. One, the Panini, is going to take time to make. You’ve got to have the right ingredients, you’re dedicating to grilling it and watching so it doesn’t burn. It’s a bit of a production in the realm of sandwiches. You do it once, maybe twice, and you’re good. Bologna? Two minutes. Tops. You open a pack, slather on mustard, slap in some meat and you’re done. Ingredients are bought in bulk so sure, it’s easier, cheaper, and you can make a lot of it but doesn’t mean you’ll want a lot. Or that you’ll still want it once you’ve had it ten, twenty, or a hundred times.
When depicting trauma or referencing it within your work you don’t want to beat people over the head with your Trauma Sandwich. Repeating it over and over again lessens the effect and impact of what happened. Echoing back to remind us that elements of it still exist is important, but we don’t need the whole sandwich every time. And if it’s good, a real production of a meal, we’ll remember it with little subtle hints. We don’t need constant blatant reminders that something bad happened.
Active Trauma vs Reflecting on Trauma
First off Active trauma vs Reflecting on Trauma. One is actively happening, ie you are making a sandwich now. The other is reflecting; you made a sandwich in the morning. Obvious right? Well, delivering details on a traumatic event needs to be approached differently based on an active event or remembering a past trauma.
Now, back to our sandwich.
You might not want to describe, in obscene detail, how you made your tuna sandwich. From which can opener you used to open it to the smell of the tuna water that filled your kitchen. The thing to note in that this sandwich preparation is in the past. If we were there making the sandwich with you, the scents, the sounds, the awkward tension of watching someone crank the can opener slowly, fearful the water might slip out and stain your sweater with the scent of fish — that’s engaging. If it weren’t a sandwich. Summarising then even after the fact with the same agonising and complete detail? Not so much on the effective front.
Pulling singular elements for our character to relive have a great effect on reciting the entire experience. When reciting it tends to come off as telling what happened not showing. Yes, the infamous “show don’t tell”. That singular element though, the scent of fish or the sound of a can opener crank squeaking, are are powerful when isolated because despite everything that happened the character remembers these physical and emotional ties that take them back. If you then want a flashback scene about making that damn tuna salad sandwich, that’s awesome. But then we are actively engaging in the trauma vs reflecting.
Mystery
Let’s say you’re going to work and you’re bringing your sandwich. It’s your lunch for the day. We may know you bring it with you, that it’s in your lunch bag, but we don’t need to see it and know every detail about your lunch at 9am on a Tuesday. You don’t throw your meat and cheese at someone because you want them to know you’ve got lunch. You wouldn’t pull out your bologna sandwich and walk cubicle to cubicle showing it. Or scream “WITNESS MY TUNA SALAD!” and proceed to open the bread, shove the tuna in their face while crying.
There’s needs to be mystery around the sandwich. There are times when you logically see a sandwich: making it and putting it in the bag, taking it out at lunch, or if you have to root through your backpack to find something and we get a glimpse, as the person beside you, of the sandwich you are going to have later. We may not know it’s tuna, but we know there’s bread. Or there are crumbs after having eaten the sandwich that linger on your sweater. The wrapper that remains. Maybe if you forget about the sandwich for too long, it starts to stink in your work fridge. People in the office know it’s yours but no one can tell what kind of sandwich it was. No one’s addressing it, even after its scent leaches from the appliance. Until that one brave soul, probably the office administrator, confronts you and insists you reach in, grab that mouldy sandwich, and toss it in the trash.
There’s mystery around that sandwich just as there should be for trauma. A reader doesn’t want to know the whole story in one paragraph. Why bother reading on after that? We want the experience. We want to share and discover when we read. Mystery around something that shapes your character can build that anticipation to turn the page. It can allow a reader to connect to something similar in their past and lead them to fill in blanks with their imagination until you show them the truth of your character’s trauma. Do not miss the opportunity to shape trauma into a reveal or to subtly cloak it in mystery. It doesn’t need to be a twist or shatter the way a reader sees the world you’re creating, but it does need to be interesting and important.
Like I said earlier, if your character’s trauma isn’t important enough to earn this kind of attention, you should ask yourself if it needs to be there. Think of the sandwich.
Now, with all that said, this doesn’t mean the trauma plays a focal role in your novel. A lot of these Trauma Sandwich rules can be achieved with a little thought, a few paragraphs, and careful placement within your novel. It doesn’t have to be everything but it should be important to you as an author if it’s important to the character.
Let’s be honest, we all have a little trauma sandwich in our bags but that doesn’t mean it’s our only or most important story we tell.
LMG Wilson 