stockholm syndrome for MC

Does the MC have to be a young female?

And in Stockholm Syndrome, the empathy doesn't flow one way. It's a relationship between the captor and the victim.

I think you will need to be very careful about the power balance. A lot of people will dislike a story where a strong young woman is reduced to weakness and only becomes strong again through her relationship with a man. Especially a man that mistreats her.

If you have concerns that such an angle might be too weak, you might try having her develop her own strong reasons for wanting to help them.

Since you intend for her character to strengthen in time anyway, you can start showing that by how she tries to act by her own volition despite her position, if it's not absolutely important that this only happens much later. It's your main character. She should probably be the one making the story happen and not being abused or manipulated into doing it, even if she doesn't feel like that's what's happening.

Depends entirely on how important the Stockholm syndrome angle is and what the rest of the plot demands.

If the main thing you're going for is empathy for her captors so that her eventually joining them makes sense, you can work out a lot of situations in which you can show it slowly and naturally growing as they build trust for each other and the MC begins to understand just exactly what things are like on their side.

I had a friend who got REALLY offended at Becca Fitzpatrick's new book (Black Ice) which deals entirely with Stockholm Syndrome and posted a scathing critique of it on Goodreads. She had a good argument for being offended, I think, in that she felt it romanticized kidnapping and glorified dysfunctional relationships. It also dis-empowers females in a way by making them entirely subservient to the whims of their captor, ie implying that they are a commodity to be owned.

lindz said:

For my idea it was more character is captured and comes to empathize with the political views of an oppressed society, eventually wanting to fight with them.

I get the feeling that even that might be a bit too much. Was curious on reactions to the subject though. This is a good place to test ideas.

Click to expand...

This is a lot different than what was being talked about earlier, and it's fine. Your character is basically the soldier in Dances With Wolves, or the one in Avatar. Those are movies but they basically follow that trope.

Passive heroines are disliked because they are BORING. Passive heroes are disliked for the exact same reason, but for some reason, people seem much more inclined to write female characters who sit around and do nothing but watch other people do stuff than male characters who sit around and do nothing.

Plot is the MC struggling to achieve some goal. Sometimes that goal is action-oriented, as in, well, action novels. Sometimes the goal is emotional or internal, as in many literary novels. But there is some kind of goal.

A kidnapped character does not have to be passive--she can resist in many ways, both mentally and physically. She can also, yes, adopt new goals as the novel goes on.

It's just important that she actually have goals and that the novel focus on her goals, not her captors' goals--otherwise, they become the main characters.

little_e said:

Passive heroines are disliked because they are BORING.

Click to expand...

Getting through the passive aspect seems to be the key as far as writing a story about SS that people want to read. How am I supposed to care if the limp noodle survives (and never grows past their limp noodliness), whether it's Stockholm Syndrome or shopping sales racks in Stockholm?
And as with anything dealing with trauma, think long and hard (and do research) before accidentally plopping another shade of stereotype on the table. If you want to male captor/female victim, ignore the gender at first. Let a relationship develop between two humans before fleshing it out into a male/female thing.
It's tough to really get the reader in the head of the protag, in a situation most people have seen done badly a thousand times and they think they already know how it's going to go. But if you write it well, really get them in the protag's head, it can go exactly like they thought it would and they'll love you for it anyway.
One story that deals with a tough subject, but I love and think does it well, is "They Take You" by Kyle Minor: http://www.plotswithguns.com/3Minor.htm

lindz said:

I've been toying with a concept in which the story starts out with the MC being captured. Using the Stockholm syndrome angle, the girl empathizes with her captors, eventually joining them.

I worry that in YA this is considered weak and would not be well received. YA tends to like strong role models and though the plan is for the character to become this, it would start as something else.

Curious on your thoughts.

Click to expand...

I think that the bolded is what's crucial here. It's true that many people would be miffed to read about a YA character who spends the entire novel bonding with her captors in a Stockholm Syndrome-esque manner. I know YA can go dark, and maybe I don't have enough knowledge about YA itself to make such a claim anyway, but I thiiiiiink you might really run into trouble there.

But either way-- if she changes throughout the story, that's the important part regardless, Stockholm Syndrome or not. Growth is one of the most fascinating parts of any character. I think you should be fine if you display her growth into "something else" (someone who becomes independent of her captors mentally and/or physically, I'm assuming?)

Take all this with a few grains of salt; I haven't read a YA novel in a long time.

If your MC comes to sympathize with the views of the oppressed part of the society does it HAVE TO be a Stockholm syndrome angle? I mean, sure it kind of is, but maybe put a different less sensitive subject kind of spin on it?

Just chiming in in agreement with some of the previous posters.

Make sure the girl has her own goals. She can be strong, even as her loyalty changes. Most captivity novels show this as the captive trying to run away, over and over, or keeping secrets and her own little plan away from her captor, while still slowly turning to him. And he's kind to her, because deep down, he's a good guy caught up in a bad situation.

That's the trope. It's a successful trope, but it's a trope. (See Stolen by Lucy Christopher for the most recent popular YA version of this -- warning, it's written in first person, in second person. Not sure what that means? You will be...).

There's a whole series of tropes about kidnapping and Stockholm and handsome captors with steel-blue eyes.

Do you want yours to be that way? Do you want fiery independent girl helping the rebels who captured her because clearly, their cause is in the right? Do you want helpless girl grow into her own under the watchful tutelage of her handsome and more experienced kidnapper? Do you want woefully misunderstood kidnapper who only took the girl to save puppies and children everywhere?

What makes yours different?

My WIP is about Stockholm Syndrome in captivity; about a girl, about a man. It's a far cry from youth adult, and it's not a fluffy romance in the end. But I wrote it because it called to me, because it begged to be written.

And because I was held in captivity for four years as a teen. Every book I read after that dealt with captivity or with Stockholm Syndrome made me want to scream -- the weak girls, the somehow handsome-and-nice men. The romantic endings (or the separated-but-longing-for-him endings). The way the girls turned without a fight. They lost themselves in the MMC.

I wrote a book about a girl who stays strong the entire way through, even when she's on her knees on the concrete, out of choices and out of hope.

A girl who turns into a weapon. Who was a weapon all along. And the man who turns her.

I wrote a novel about Stockholm Syndrome, but it's not a romance. It's a psych thriller, and it's chilling and it's beautiful at the same time. My beta readers consistently come back with the same word: intense.

Don't get me wrong - I love your normal Stockholm Syndrome romance as much as the next reader. They're just all awfully similar. I read all of them that seemed remotely comparable to where I was going with The Dark. And I made damned sure my girl wasn't weak.

So for yours, you can have a strong girl who changes and becomes stronger and different by the end. Or you can start with a weak girl who becomes a strong one -- that's a little easier to do in YA (it's a more accepting market of that ideology), but you still need her to be interesting and relatable for your audience. If she's all "save me, oh handsome boy"... well, don't do that. As Emily May shared on Goodreads, a quote from Black Ice:

“I tapped my cup to his, grateful to have found Shaun, because for a minute there, I'd thought I was going to have to save myself. Instead, I'd wandered into the protective care of a sexy older man.”

Click to expand...

What even is that? How to Murder Feminism in Two Sentences or Less? ~ Emily May

Don't murder feminism. Grin.

I would truly be happy to bounce ideas and resources back and forth with you. I'm a little too well-read in the subject of Stockholm Syndrome, and can make specific book recommendations depending on your angle. That includes some AW threads that have been particularly helpful (such as the Romance Heroine's Goals one over in QLH).

Like with anything else, or anything sensitive in nature, just be sure to treat the topic with respect. There's that whole "write what you know" quote, which has recently been flipped around here on AW to "know what you write." Make sure you know what you're writing about, so you can do it well. So you can make it an excellent read, and one that doesn't make people like me roll their eyes (that's twofold: me, who likes to read captivity romances as much as the next guy, and me, the captivity survivor who did not have a handsome good-at-heart kidnapper as a love interest).

Good luck.

~ Anna

P.S. There's a gap in the YA market for a well-done captivity romance novel, by the way. Stolen is the only recent one and it's... well, it's it's own kind of special. I didn't dislike it, but I'm not sure I liked it either. I was left kinda shrugging my shoulders at the end. There's a lack of satisfying YA novels that are recent and share a message worth sharing.

And that message shouldn't be about the protective care of a handsome older man. Grin.

I agree with "thedark" in that you should always be respect of the subject you're tackling in your story. In this case, it is Stockholm Syndrome. Be meticulous in your research of this disorder so you're better able to write a thoughtful story instead of a disrespectful one. Give your MC strong reasons for her behavior. Answer the question of WHY would she join her captors? Make sure those reasons are believable. There's a difference between "weak" and vulnerable. Your character can be vulnerable without coming off as completely helpless. But be sure that she has redeemable qualities. Like maybe she has a profound inner strength, the determination to never give in no matter how dire her circumstances. Understand that young girls will be reading this kind of story, or they might, so keep them in mind. What message do you want to send to them?
Hope I helped=)