Young Writers Society

I really believe you should understand the emotional aspects of rape beyond fear before you write about it. The picture your painting seems empty, your rapist is painted only as a smoking, whisky drinking sadistic man without a face who somehow plucked a girl off the street for no reason but because he wanted to fuck. Rape 90% of the time does not happen like that. Here let me give you a statistic before I go further.

.Six out of 10 rapes of young women occur in their own home or a friend or relatives home, not in a dark alley.

And most often the rape is also commited by someone the victim knows, aquaintences, friends of friends, boyfriends and family members.

We know nothing about this girl beyond her sadness over her ex and her love of shoes. Not an interesting character. And other than the horrific thing happening to her, we have no reason to care about her or what she feels as a character, because all you've shown of her character is shallow simple emotions. The rape seems less like a massive terrible thing happening to a very real seeming girl and more like the writer trying to scrounge up some simple pity to pass off as characterization. It's too short to have any real substance in the characters or plot, and the scenario it self is too far fetched to so matter-of-fact-ly happen anywhere outside of trapping filled and glorifying torture porn, again referencing the stat I just gave you. I'd like you to really think about why you spent more time explaining the barbed wire than going in depth with this girls thoughts/emotions or the way she was put in this position. Not to say there are no real sadistic crazy rapists out there, but if that's what you want to write about, don't call it a story of a girl being raped, call it torture porn. The only way I would see it as anything but is if you had actual characters with real emotions leading up to this climactic emotion filled EVENT. A rape cannot be the whole of a story. Nor is this girls salvation in any way an end to her rape, it will effect her the rest of her life. There is a recovery to be had, and your stopping this story with a door crashing in?

If this girls story is truly what you want to write about, more power to you, but write it from an honest and true perspective. Do your research, make this girl an actual character and make sure your not shaming the millions of women and girls who face this horror everyday by fudging the facts, dumbing down the emotions involved or ignoring the essential part of the scars left behind.

Here a good research link about rape. I would suggest you read it all, if nothing else.

http://www.scarleteen.com/article/boyfr ... event_rape


I would also recommend doing your own research and taking a look at the many insightful books written by survivors. I can give recommendations if you wish, but I'll stop here.