Young Writers Society

My main character grows up in a futuristic society. His family was the ruling class, but he was starved, tortured, emotionally neglected, etc.
Some of the milder examples include being left alone all day as an infant and being called a "freak of nature". There are far worse things that go on, but I'd rather not type them here, just in case it does trigger any users.
It culminates in his father forcing him to kill a young girl (the MC refuses, but his brother whom he idolizes before this murders the girl anyway), beating him badly enough to give him a severe concussion, then leaving him, barely conscious, in the middle of a radioactive wasteland.

Of course the character is going to have PTSD after being rescued, but does anyone have tips on how to write--or NOT write--the symptoms accurately? Any other relevant advice/insight is welcome, too.
Edited to add: The character also has Asperger's syndrome, I think. (I've been implying it, but I'm ultimately undecided on that point.)

It will be a slightly different branch of PTSD called CPTSD, the C standing for complex. CPTSD occurs over a long period of multiple traumatic events where you can't escape, and includes symptoms such as extreme dissociation, a lack of sense of self, and overlaps very heavily with Borderline Personality Disorder (indeed, the two diagnoses might even be the same thing).

I have a guide on PTSD you can browse.

Food control very often leads to an eating disorder of some sort, and malnourishment/muscle atrophy will be a thing. This leads to a belief you don't deserve food, and don't deserve your needs being taken care of in general.

Expect a very poor reaction to love and an extreme amount of mistrust.

Another thing is, he will probably end up in denial that what happened was that bad, because what happens with CPTSD/abuse is you can either survive or register how bad it is. When you're still in danger, you can appear "fine" because your mind forces you to repress everything based on survival. Once you're safe, everything hits you and it's very confusing because you thought you were over it.

You also have to deal with the aftermath of the head injury, because that sort of thing can lead to major life adjustments and long periods of recovery.

I'd say the biggest emphasis for PTSD/abuse is it's not all "one little trigger and I'm back to where it happened." Sometimes it's feeling uneasy for hours after you're reminded of danger. Sometimes it's not being able to forget it, but you're still in the present. Sometimes it's going robotic at a reminder, basically returning to "pack emotions away and survive" until you feel safe again. Sometimes it's losing all love for people who triggered you, on a dime.

It's a very complex illness and you'll have to build trauma into the character. It changes you, deeply, and this guy is going to be starting from scratch building his identity.

Be careful here when writing about abused people... you, as the writer, can over-do the abuse a little too easily! In fact, this sprang to mind almost immediately. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way as a writer, lol. Once, I wrote a story about an abused girl that had pretty much experienced Everything Bad (my first mistake!), gave the story to my mother to look at (my second mistake!), and my mother gave me an odd look and said, "Why doesn't she just commit suicide?"

...whoops. Over-did it. XD

That experience taught me that I couldn't just abuse my main character continuously... I had to give her a glimmer of hope... at least somewhat, anyway! This can sometimes be in the form of a friend or something else outside of the character's control, but it could also be in a sort of inward coping strategy that the character uses. For this particular character, it was a coping strategy where she would forget the actual abuse and focus on whatever she felt was pretty using her imagination. That worked for her! But, for other characters, it could be a lot of different things as well! Like, for example, a desire for revenge or for a sense of justice that keeps him going.

Anyway, that's my two cents!

I'd just like to add a few things!

Think about the society and that aspect of the whole thing. Depending on how abuse is viewed, how the MC was brought up to think about it, will affect how they react to it and how they eventually cope with its consequences.

In my current novel, I have three MCs: One who ran away from the traumatic events, and is dealing with things resurfacing after years of repressing memories, dissociating, and distancing herself from everything related to it, including the name and skills she used. One who's still going through it but hasn't been through the worst yet, and — if plot happens as the characters imagined it — isn't going to have to go through anything worse, either. And one who grew up seeing all the abusive situations as positive and necessary, and doesn't consider himself a victim in any sense of the word whatsoever. Here, the societal aspect I mentioned before comes to play, because there's no one to tell him differently at this point in time.

With that backstory, I can tell you: it's often not easy. It's a thin, tricky line to write on, especially if you're doing it from a very close POV and your character is yet to go through the process of even recognising the trauma for what it was. You run into the dangers of ending up with an unreliable narrator on your hands (which can be a great thing, however, and a thing I'm doing and loving myself, or a terrible one if not done well), your characters reading either like a diagnosis manual or like an insult to everyone who ever actually went through it— but it's also definitely possible to do it right, and it's a very interesting challenge in purely writing-related sense. Staying open to advice and suggestions every step of the way is very important.

Also, I'd say less is more when it comes to the abuse itself. Depends a bit on the POV and such, but scattered flashbacks, reactions, thoughts, and emotions of the character/s affected can tell the reader a lot more than the description of the abuse itself. Of course, writing torture scenes is fun, in a certain charmingly sadistic way we writers are widely known for, but IMO, it's all in the consequences and the scars it leaves behind. That's where the real effect of it shows, that's when your readers can really feel for the character, and root for them to get out alive, even if they don't know all the gory little details of what the character needs to get out of.

One last thing; Aside from it not being a fault easily fixed, it's not a character trait, either, nor should the character be defined by that and that alone — I feel like this needs to be mentioned every time the topic is brought up, even though you seem to be doing what you can to be sure to portray it respectfully.

If you wanna brainstorm ideas, exchange notes, or discuss how characters handle different stuff and how to go about all this, my inbox is alway about two clicks away :]