Thoughts on Content Warnings
I haven’t finished anything reviewable. I’ll have something to queue for next week, and likely for the week after…the flights are short, but I should still get something read.
But what I’m thinking about right now is content warnings. I’m actually fairly bad at them and need to get better.
There’s one specific thing I’m thinking about, though, and that’s content warnings and horror.
Not everyone likes content warnings. Some people explicitly don’t want to receive them because they feel spoilered. Honestly, I get the point. I love to go into a book blind, not knowing what it is until I open it.
But the book I’m reading right now is a short story collection of body horror. I knew it was body horror going in.
The first two stories are both dental body horror. The second one is something that ties into my own triggers. I needed a warning on this book.
“Body horror” wasn’t enough. I can do body horror as long as it’s not teeth or eyes. If it’s stuff like bleeding out of all orificies or growing tentacles or…perfectly fine. Teeth or eyes, I need a warning for.
At the same time, I fully sympathize with the idea that if you know it’s horror you should be braced for something.
Most of what I write doesn’t need it anyway. There’s some pretty explicit violence in Lost Guardians and Council of Worlds does have some talk about glen reproduction, which kinda requires a contact warning. (They produce a lot of eggs when they mate. They don’t hatch all of them. The rest are…well, they recover the nutrients. That probably warrants one for some people).
So, what do people think about content warnings and expectations? How do people want them delivered? How do you position content warnings so they can be checked by people who want them and ignored by people who don’t? Will we one day have ebooks that have optional pages? Wouldn’t work for print, though…
I usually don’t want content warnings. This time, though…I’m going to review this book for next week’s post if I manage to finish it. It’s actually pretty good. It’s not the author’s fault I’m terrified of braces in exactly the wrong way to make it good horror…
(One thought I have had is to get somebody to trawl through your reviews…I can do it myself but most can’t…to see if readers are passing on warnings to each other, and then if you rework the book you know what’s bothering people. Only works for indies, though).
Picture, btw, is Prague castle at night because it’s spooky.