Where is the Trauma?

Like a lot of aspiring writers, I have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on what my characters say. Recently though, inspired my infatuation with the style of ‘worldbuilding’ you can only find in metal songs, I have started to think about where they say it. Not the content of the voice, but rather, its relationship with the trauma that drives the story. Throughout the development of Echo Walkers, finding the right voice for each of the characters has been a persistent challenge. Trying to work that through has led me to the accidental masterclass of Ozzy Osbourne, Dio, and Maynard James Keenan.

Ozzy’s world is filled and almost exclusively told in the first person, present tense. “I am going off the rails on a Crazy Train”/ He is the damage, the song is the soundtrack (natch), it is happening as he is singing. I am going right now, and there is nothing you nor I can do about it. I don’t know if it was a craft choice, if it was the only perspective that made sense to him as he wrote it, if it was autobiographical, or what; but it feels instinctive and it demands that we stay inside the narrative. It asks if we as listeners, or writers have the courage to stay with him.

Dio on the other hand flips the narrative over and posits his narration outside of the suffering. The Dragon is real, the dying King has a cosmic influence. Ozzy might describe something but you can say, well, he’s going off the rails, Dio says Of Wolves at the door, and you might ask, ‘what Wolves?’. He would point and say, over there, by the door, idiot!

I think Dio’s approach hit’s a little harder because of that. The narrator can actually point to the trauma and you can’t (if you’re invested in the story) look away. Ozzy is the unreliable witness, Dio points and forces you to look.

This is where I have spent most of my time as a writer, close third person POV. Controlled distance, narrator as guide, rather than subject. It’s legitimate. But within Echo Walkers, where the trauma is the erosion of self, the echo of the ‘unreal’, the collapse of the safe observational position, hit its limits pretty quickly. I wondered if it became a hiding place. I want to elicit a sense of wonder and horror in my world, but my Walkers are all tuned into the collapse and so don’t react the way you or I would

But then, there is Maynard James Keenan. Truly graphic, unsettling, precise and instructive in his writing. Invincible is an inspiration in writing. I have read and re-read those lyrics dozens of times. Online forums talk about them being ambiguous, but I think there is a specificity to them that I want to use.

The main themes are raw and in the first person
Long in tooth and soul
Longing for another win

Then onto a clinical analysis
Warrior, struggling to remain consequential

Before crashing back to the present tense first POV
But here I am

Its a kind of controlled oscillation, a perspective shift that is meant to unbalance; emotional punctuation. The warrior name’s his own failures, weapon out, belly in, but in a self deprecating way. The chorus smashes a verdict right into his face. The structure enacts the disassociation being described. It’s awesome. It’s only made more sustained by the outro section where our hero (?) is hunting down the fountain of youth. Chasing Ponce de Léon’s phantoms / But the truth never got in my way

So, as I hone my craft, and lean into the journey as much of the outcome, I am wondering how to make the structure of what I write do the emotional work as much as the content. How to make the transition from a character speaking and being spoken about seamless, making the instability of the exchange reflect the instability of the scene, the self and the trauma.

Ozzy says I am lost
Dio says Look at the lost ones
Keenan says I am lost, the lost ones struggle, but here I am

The trauma is the story, where I put it is the craft I am trying to develop.