Excessive Force

(This is Part 2 of the series, Twelve Pieces of Flesh where I discuss the crisis of conscience of the Christian writer–say that three times fast. I recommend reading Part 1 before continuing.)

I am not an author.

I am just a writer.

The distinction is significant, so I hope I can explain it to full justice. Authors create; they invent. They are sovereign over every event within their fictional world, every choice their characters make, every result thereof.

Writers report. They watch scenes unfurl and scribble frantically to catch every detail. They eavesdrop and interview so they can feel what their characters feel, think what they think. Then they rewrite countless times until they are certain the story on the page matches the one they have seen and touched and heard.

And, yes, this story originated in the writer’s mind. The characters aren’t living, breathing humans (or creatures for you non-realism writers). The events didn’t take place within the physical realm. But if writers do their job, the fiction they recorded is as real as what you ate for lunch today–unless, of course, you ate nothing, in which case you should go eat.

By this definition, writers are simply journalists with privileged information. And journalists can witness some gnarly stuff–war, genocide, famine, poverty, violence, trafficking, racism–the scope of the human experience. Though, most journalists tend to favor the unraveling of humanity over the stitching up (“If it bleeds, it leads.”).

A masterful journalist will do his best to record his assignment with artful skill and integrity. When the subject of his interview has shot someone, we expect him to be forthcoming. Sometimes, we expect the gory details. We expect–or at least hope for–the unbiased truth.

But at no point do we blame the journalist for the shooting.

So, why should we blame writers for their characters’ violence?

In Never Touched, I faced the task of recording multiple assault scenes–a few of them sexual in nature. Now, of course, as the writer, I had the choice of how to report these. What exact detail would be necessary to elicit empathy from the reader? How much would be gratuitous? How little would make the reader too comfortable?

Here’s where I landed: Sawyer is the poster child for the ripple effect of abuse. In other words, her story concerns the result of violence, not violence itself. So, while there are scenes of brutality in the story, for the most part, they are alluded to rather than explicitly portrayed.

Does this mean that a Christian writer should never include graphic violence in a story? No! Of course, she can. She should write what she sees, what her reader needs to know, whatever it is that completes the story.

After all, I think we can all agree that those ancient writers splattered the Bible with graphic violence (see Part 1). Why? Because that’s what they saw, that’s what their readers needed to know, that’s what completed God’s story.

I have to wonder if the abundance of violence in the Bible is why we Christians tend to excuse similar content in media more readily than explicit language or sexuality. Some of us who will see a movie rated R for violence won’t see a movie rated PG-13 for sexual content. But, if this is the case, shouldn’t Christians be able to stomach sex scenes as the Bible depicts those, too?

Never cursing, though.

Next time.