How to “Go There” and Not Lose Your Readers: Writing Difficult Topics in Fiction by guest blogger Felicia Ferguson

 

Happy Friday, Seeker villagers! Carrie here, with a wonderful post from author Felicia Ferguson on writing those difficult topics in fiction. Felicia is an award-winning fiction & nonfiction writer; in fact, her novel The Choices She Made just won the silver medal in Illumination Book Awards’s General Fiction category! Welcome, Felicia :)

How to “Go There” and Not Lose Your Readers: Writing Difficult Topics in Fiction

By Felicia Ferguson

The Christian life isn’t all sunshine and roses—sometimes it can be even more challenging after we’ve decided to walk with God. How do we authors craft authentic stories of the Christian life that don’t sugarcoat the struggle, but do keep the reader turning pages and the focus on God’s love?

I believe we start by making and keeping five promises to our readers.

When a reader picks up a book, nine times out of ten they want to be entertained, to escape into another world for a while. But if you’re going to write about difficult subjects well, then I’ve discovered there are five promises which must be kept for the reader to ultimately feel satisfied by the book.

First, readers will expect an emotional journey. Difficult topics like sexual assault or mental health issues are rife with heady and heavy emotions to probe. But addressing them should not be an avenue to push an agenda. If what you’re really hoping to do is preach to them about their own bad choices and tell them you have the right answer that will fix everything, please put down your pen or step away from the keyboard. Message-driven fiction is manipulative and not authentic. No matter how you personally feel about a topic, focus on the characters and their experiences. Take readers on an emotional journey and let them decide what to take away from it. Besides, preaching is telling rather than showing, and we all know telling in fiction is not a good thing!

How do you avoid preaching but still provide emotional impact for readers? That’s where the second promise comes in. Your character will use practical methods to resolve whatever trauma/tragedy/heartbreak they’ve experienced. Whether in first or third person, writing in deep point of view is perfect for amping up emotional impact. I liken deep POV to the first-person-shooter video games where the player is completely in one character’s head. They see only what he sees, hear only what he hears. Reality is almost fully enmeshed with the virtual world.

In my book, The Choices She Made, my main character became pregnant after a sexual assault at seventeen. Thirteen years later, she begins experiencing panic attacks as circumstances revive memories she dissociated from and buried. As part of the story, she uses grounding techniques, turns to God and scripture, and leans on her family and her counselor for help to confront terrifying situations. All of these are techniques readers could use, if they needed them. In her adult timeline, I use deep first-person point of view. Readers feel what she feels and see what she sees. This experience allows readers to not only witness a model for HOW the techniques should be used but also experience using them for themselves. And in the end, they’ve not only been entertained, but they possibly learned something too.

The third promise an author needs to make and keep is being true to the character’s emotions as she faces her past woundings. If you’re going to do the hard work of researching and building an authentic trauma, heartbreak, or tragedy, then don’t shortchange the character or the reader on the emotions that result from them. If you don’t know how the character would feel, then ask someone who does. I have never been pregnant, so I asked my writers’ critique group members who have been to describe what my character would feel during different stages of her pregnancy. If your character has panic attacks, dissociations, or any other trauma-induced experiences, find out what they feel like. Fudging on or glossing over the internal sensations will irritate people who do experience them and could lead to negative reviews.

The fourth promise goes hand-in-hand with the third: you will NOT miraculously make everything better for the character nor will they out-of-the-blue decide to take an action they’ve fought for roughly 200 pages. A deus ex machina may make it easier on you as the author, but miraculous resolutions in fiction do no one any good. Readers need to see how the character moves through her healing process—or at least starts out on the road toward healing. In showing this, readers can appreciate how difficult or even scary that process can be, which creates empathy—and is a perfect take-away.

Finally, by the time they reach the end of the book, readers have invested hours and possibly days with this character. If you’ve done your job well and they’ve bonded with her, they’re going to want and, in reality, need to have hope she will heal. Leaving the reader with hope is the fifth promise to make and keep. Writing from a Christian worldview is all about hope so make sure hope is woven in. It will be not only believable, but will encourage the reader. And who couldn’t use a little encouragement these days?

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Felicia Ferguson achieved master's degrees in Healthcare Administration and Speech-Language Pathology, but has known she wanted to be a writer since the fifth grade. An award-winning fiction and non-fiction freelance writer, she writes strong female characters who work through their baggage and don’t just repack it. The Choices She Made, her first contemporary women’s novel with End Game Press, released in 2022 and recently won the silver medal in Illumination Book Awards’s General Fiction category! When Secrets Come Calling will release in 2024 also with End Game Press. When she’s not glued to her laptop, Felicia enjoys hiking, meandering with her twelve-year-old Frenchie, and looking forward to the next story.

Connect with Felicia at her website (and sign up for her quarterly newsletter), Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

What about you, dear writers? What is your takeaway from Felicia's great post? Which of her five promises resonates with you most?