How to Tell the Truth in Your Book

Today I’m going to be discussing telling the truth in narrative writing. Now, when I’m referring here to “telling the truth,” I’m not talking about internal consistency within a book’s universe, and I’m not talking about giving a message or commentary within the book—although these are both very valid topics. What I’m going to be talking about today, however, is the thing that’s most often brought up in conversations about the ethics of writing, and that’s having your narrative itself tell the truth.

(If you’d like to view this post in video format, click here. It’s part of our “Advice from an Editor” series on YouTube.)

​Truth-telling falls into two different but interrelated categories. The first is appropriately addressing a particular topic or subject matter within the book. The second is telling the truth in the narrative in such a way as reveals to the reader a universal truth about philosophy or humanity or simply how the world works.

Let’s start with the first of these: telling the truth in regard to a certain subject matter. When people typically bring this up is, of course, with the difficult subject matters. Now, I’m not going to be graphic at any point here. But when people are talking about this, they’re usually talking about how writers portray topics like abuse, rape, and torture. I’m going to be using as my example how torture is portrayed within books.

When subject matters like this are portrayed, there are two major ways in which the narrative can fail to tell the truth. One is by sugarcoating what’s going on, and the other is by making it gratuitous.

For the sugarcoating, there’s a book I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and I really enjoyed. It’s middle-grade fantasy, adventure, plenty of fun action . . . and then there’s this chapter. A little more than halfway through, our secondary protagonist is kidnapped by the villain and he’s tortured. And it’s treated like it’s no big deal. He was like, “Yeah, nothing to tell you. Let the torture begin.” And he started screaming. But he was fine. He had no psychological aftermath—nothing like that. No big deal. And the message, the falsehood behind this method of portrayal is simply that: “It’s no big deal.” It’s all part of the fun. You don’t have to think about it deeply. And this is torture we’re talking about. Yeah, no wonder people talk about this in the ethics of writing.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a book written by an author who wrote other books that I really respected and enjoyed and thought were great writing, and then I started reading this and . . . oh, it was so gratuitous! Author: “Okay, two people are having a conversation in the background; here, let me put some extremely graphic descriptions of torture in.” And later, “Oh, look, we have a torture scene. Let’s go through it in excruciating—I do mean excruciating—detail.” And I realized [pauses with disgusted expression] the author is expecting me to enjoy this. The author is expecting me to enjoy torture and to treat torture like something fun and something to be enjoyed and something that’s no big deal. And not, you know, the most horrific, dehumanizing, humiliating experience that one human being could ever inflict upon another. . . .

That’s not ethical. And the reason people say it’s not ethical is because what you put into your brain is what’s going to be in your brain. Now, I’m not one of those people who are like, “Aha, you play violent video games; therefore, you’ll become a serial killer.” But we feed our brains, and books are a way that we feed our brains, a way that we learn about life and about other people; they’re how we build empathy a lot of the time. And so, yes, how you portray these subjects matters.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s never appropriate to portray torture in a book. I’m not saying it’s never appropriate to portray it either with or without graphic descriptions. And in fact, if you’d like to read more about writing violence, and how to do so appropriately and tastefully, I’ve written a blog post on it, which you can read here. But suffice it to say, for this post, write it as it is. And if you feel—as I think the writer of the sugarcoated one did—uncomfortable writing it and you’re not sure it’s appropriate for your audience, leave it out. You don’t have to put it in. It’s better to leave it out than to do a disservice to your reader. That’s the first part of telling the truth in narrative.

The second, slightly more cheerful, part is using narrative truth to reveal to the reader a greater truth about the universe, humanity, and life in general. I should specify that by “reveal,” I’m not talking about giving a message, I’m not talking about social commentary, because these are elements of rhetoric. These are you trying to convince the reader of something. That’s not what revealing truth is. Revealing truth to someone is taking a truth that they already know subconsciously, implicitly, and bringing it forward in such a way that it becomes useful to them.

My favorite example of this—because it’s impacted me personally and on more than one occasion—is Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. In Fire and Hemlock, there’s a set of parallel scenes: In the first scene, our protagonist, Polly, is confronting the villain. She knows what she needs to do, but the villain socially pressures her into being ashamed, and Polly’s so embarrassed that she just wants it to be over, and so she doesn’t do what she knows she has to do. Later she realizes what has happened, and after she does, it starts to happen again. The villain tries to embarrass Polly a second time out of doing what Polly knows she needs to do, and Polly recognizes what’s going on—she’s still embarrassed; I mean, it’s awkward—but she recognizes what’s going on and says, “Even though I’m embarrassed, I need to do what’s right,” and she does it.

I said earlier that reading stories is one of the big ways we learn and empathize. Well, here’s how it happened with me: I was in a group of people . . . I knew I was in the right; I knew that I ought to stand firm, but they started peer-pressuring me and trying to embarrass me and shame me into shutting up, keeping my head down, and to stop rocking the boat. At first, that’s what I was going to do, because embarrassment is, well, really embarrassing. And then I remembered Fire and Hemlock, and I remembered Polly’s situation, Polly’s conclusion, and by remembering that, I recognized what was going on in my situation, and I thought, “Heck, no! I’m not going to be embarrassed out of doing what’s right.” And I wasn’t. I did what I believed to be right. And that was such a gift to be given, to be shown the situation.

This is by no means the only time I’ve learned something like this from truth in writing. Jane Austen is known to be a student of human nature, and she paints characters who make you think, “I know that person!” Well, I do know “that person,” and I didn’t really understand that person until I saw Austen’s depiction of that person in her book. And I was like, “I get it. And now I know how to react and how to respond.”

In the first instance of truth-telling, it’s about treating a difficult subject matter with dignity and correctly, to not minimize it and not make it gratuitous. And that does help understanding. The second way to tell the truth can be a great gift to your reader . . . and great writing.

I know that whenever I discuss difficult topics like the ethics of writing, there will be a lot of opinions out there, and I would encourage you to—respectfully—put them in the comments section and start discussion.

For more writing tips, check out our Advice from an Editor YouTube series, or this set of blog posts.

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Deborah J. Natelson

​​Deborah lives with a fluffy member of fauna named Flora, and two pretty black kitties. She is the author of Bargaining Power, a smart, twisty fantasy thriller; The Midnight Files, a serialized, action-packed dark fantasy on Kindle Vella; and various other books. Her author website is www.deborahjnatelson.com.