by A.C. Williams @ACW_Author
Twenty-five years ago, I watched the first tower fall on live television. I was a thousand miles away from home at college in Florida, and I remember the horror and sorrow that swept over the campus.
In the early days after the September 11 attacks, there was so much uncertainty and anxiety. No one really knew much about what had happened. No one knew what the right response was. These were the days before smartphones, when people still read actual newspapers. Everyone lived in fear because no one knew if another attack would come or not.
Two and a half decades removed from that horrible day, it still hurts, and when I sit to remember it, the horror returns—almost tangible it’s so strong. And I didn’t even lose anyone in the Towers. I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who did.
But what happens afterward? What do you do after you experience the horror? Where do you go when you survive something that many others didn’t? How do you keep pressing forward when everything in you wants to stop trying?
Maybe I should ask that question in a different way: After loss and grief and sorrow affects your life, where do you look to find hope?
Horrible things happen every day. You could all probably list at least five objectively awful things that have taken place in the world just this week. But it’s only until those horrible things touch us personally that we understand truly how broken our world is—and how broken we as human beings are.
Why We Need Happy Endings by @ACW_Author on @BRMCWC #Writing #Writinglife #BRMCWC Share on XFor those who know Jesus, we have hope that all these horrible things aren’t the end. We know by faith that even though not all things are good, God is big enough to make something beautiful out of them anyway. But how do you reflect that in fiction?
Storytellers are always looking for a way to make a story engaging. We want to find the right words, the right combination of plot elements, the right characteristics of a protagonist to resonate with an audience, and sometimes that leads us to dark places. You can’t have story without conflict, so it stands to reason that the greater the conflict, the greater the story will be.
Is that true? Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’m qualified to make that determination. What I do know is that a lot of the popular Christian fiction I’ve read in past years features characters who walk through horrific circumstances. Assault. Torture. Abandonment. Abuse. Betrayal. Sometimes all in the same novel. Christian authors may not use the “bad words” that general market authors favor, but in many instances we aren’t shying away from the type of content that needs trigger warnings.
What we tend to gloss over, unfortunately, is the necessary healing time required after personally dealing with any of those traumatic events. We skip those parts. After all, if we have enough faith, we should be able to conquer any trauma without much difficulty. Right?
No. Not right.
Healing and recovery take time. Restoration takes time. Reconciliation takes even more time. And none of those things are fun to write about. They certainly don’t move the plot along, so it’s just easy to skip them, except that skipping those parts makes the trauma feel inauthentic.
If you are going to write a story where a character is assaulted, don’t make the story about the assault. Don’t make the story about the loss and grief and betrayal and damage that was done and how your protagonist claws her way back to the daylight. Yes, that sounds very dramatic and maybe even compelling when you present it that way, but ask yourself: Who is that story for? Do you want someone who experienced a brutal assault to read it and be encouraged? I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but that’s not the content someone recovering from that kind of trauma wants to read.
Your story must be more than the trauma. It must be more than the conflict, because people need to see that there is more to life than pain and loss and grief. If we have learned anything about the collective history of sorrow and sadness in humanity, let it be this: We need happy endings.
If your story cannot have a genuine, authentic happy ending, I’m not sure you can say it reflects Christ. Jesus is the ultimate happy ending. He is the reason we tell stories, and He is the only reason we can tell stories with endings. Because of Him, we have a happy ending; we just haven’t lived it yet.
Does that mean you can’t write a story about someone who was assaulted? No, that’s not the case at all. What it means is that if you have a character who is assaulted in your novel, that character’s story must be about MORE than the assault, MORE than the trauma, MORE than the pain. Your story must be about hope that endures, faith that grows stronger, and love that doesn’t fail. That is the message a broken, hurting world needs to hear. That is the only message the world needs from us.
Happy endings don’t just happen, though. They require intentional structure and careful consideration. They must be forged in scenes that challenge our emotions as storytellers and our skills as craftsmen. A true happy ending doesn’t gloss over the tough stuff. It holds those broken, jagged shards up to the light until everything untrue burns away, and all we’re left with is what Jesus has done to save us.
Writing a story that features a character exposed to trauma is fine, but make sure you commit to representing that trauma truthfully, genuinely, and authentically. Otherwise you will alienate the very audience you are hoping to reach.
A.C. Williams is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. Author of more than 20 books, she keeps her fiction readers laughing with wildly imaginative adventures about samurai superheroes, clumsy church secretaries, and goofy malfunctioning androids; her non-fiction readers just laugh at her and the hysterical life experiences she’s survived. If that’s your cup of tea (or coffee), join the fun at www.amycwilliams.com.
