Inside the Story Series # 5: The Hardest Chapters to Write - When Fiction Comes Too Close to Memory

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This essay is the fifth in my new Inside the Story series, where I share the creative decisions, real-life influences, and writing philosophy behind my novels.

The Chapters That Resist You

Many people believe dramatic scenes are always the hardest to write. Because they carry so much emotion and context, they can be difficult to put into words. If a scene contains violence, danger, or death, it takes extra skill to write. Confrontations and suspense involve many moving parts and complex plot revelations.

There is some truth to that. But technical difficulty differs from emotional difficulty.

A scene may be straightforward on the page yet still leave the writer staring at the cursor, reluctant or even unable to write. Some chapters are difficult because the writer doesn't know what should happen next. Others are difficult because the writer knows exactly what must happen but doesn't want to go there.

The Scene Was Not Technically Complicated

One scene in What Remains After was especially difficult for me to write. Without giving too much away, it involves the protagonist, Beth, revealing something traumatic to an adult in authority, desperately hoping and then believing she has been heard and that this person will help.

Then the adult betrays her.

On the surface, the scene and its sequence are simple. Emotionally, it captures a total collapse of hope mingled with fear, vulnerability, disbelief, shame, abandonment, and the realization that speaking the truth may have made things worse.

The plot is straightforward. But the emotional and mental impact on both the reader and me as the writer isn't. The scene is traumatic and leaves an imprint on the mind and heart. And it was close enough to my own experiences to be incredibly difficult to convey, even in fiction.

Why Telling Is an Act of Courage

In this scene in What Remains After, Beth must overcome a great deal of fear. She fears not being believed and even being punished for telling the truth. She also faces the possibility that by telling, she might break up her family, hurt the people she loves, or face even worse retaliatory abuse. She may wonder whether what she is experiencing is even "bad enough" to tell someone about. She carries the deep-rooted shame her abusers have heaped upon her.

In Beth's case, as in the real-life experiences of many abused children and vulnerable adults, telling is not a casual transfer of information. It is an act of enormous trust. The person doing the telling places their safety in another person's hands.

As a Christian, I believe there is a particular responsibility to take the voices of the vulnerable seriously. Jesus consistently noticed people others overlooked, especially those without power or status. I think people of many faiths and creeds share that concern. This belief has shaped how I think about the adults around Beth and the choices they make when she finally speaks.

The Betrayal Is Bigger Than One Adult's Failure

When a trusted adult refuses to believe or help, minimizes a disclosure, protects the offender, or sends a child back into danger, the betrayal does more than leave the immediate problem unresolved. It can teach the child dangerous lessons.

A child may come to believe that no one will help, that adults protect one another, that speaking up was a mistake, or even that the abuse was somehow their fault. Silence may begin to feel safer than honesty, and their pain less important than someone else's reputation.

Those beliefs can follow a child for years, even into adulthood.

Betrayal is a moment, but its consequences can shape a lifetime.

When Fiction Draws from Emotional Truth

This chapter from What Remains After is based partly on something I experienced as a child.

Beth's circumstances are fictionalized; she is not me. The people, details, and outcome in the book are not a direct retelling. What I carried into the story was the emotional truth of trying to trust an adult and discovering that the trust was misplaced.

I knew the emotional terrain I put Beth through.

Writing From Personal Experience Without Writing a Memoir

Novelists often work from fragments they glean from real life. An emotion, a memory, a question, or a bodily sensation may inspire what they create in their fiction. A moment of silence, a sentence someone once said, or the fear of not being believed might motivate a scene or chapter. They then reshape those fragments through imagination.

When I wrote this passage about Beth and the adult she trusted with her secret, I was not recreating my past exactly. Instead, I was asking: What would this betrayal mean for Beth? How would it affect her willingness to trust again? What choices would she make afterward? What would remain with her years later? What would it take for her to heal?

This is the difference between autobiographical fiction and fiction rooted in lived emotional experience.

The Temptation to Soften the Scene

Part of me wanted the adult to respond better to Beth. I wanted her to believe Beth and rescue her sooner. I wanted to lessen the consequences of betrayal and spare Beth the humiliation and shame. I wanted justice to win out.

But giving in to those desires at this stage of Beth's story would have made the story less truthful.

Sometimes a writer's compassion for a character tempts them to protect that character from the very events the novel must confront. I wanted to save Beth from the chapter. But saving her too soon would have meant refusing to tell the truth about children who are not saved when they first ask for help.

Why I Chose Not to Look Away

This painful scene in What Remains After needed to stay. Not to shock readers or exploit suffering. Not to punish Beth. It had to remain to acknowledge a reality: sometimes children do tell. Sometimes adults still fail them.

People often ask why a child did not speak, when a better question may be:

What happened when the child tried?

Adults sometimes imagine that disclosure solves the problem. But disclosure is only the beginning. What happens next depends on whether someone takes the time to listen, believe, report, follow through, and remain present.

My faith makes it difficult for me to write honestly about suffering while pretending not to see it. I'm sometimes asked, "Why do you write about trauma and tragedy so much?"

I answer, "Because it's there."

Scripture repeatedly calls attention to the vulnerable, the forgotten, and the powerless. If my fiction is to reflect my faith honestly, I can't offer easy answers to suffering. Nor can I look away.

The Responsibility of Writing Trauma in Fiction

When writing about painful things, I wanted to avoid graphic detail for its own sake, which can turn trauma into entertainment. I didn't want to use suffering merely to raise the stakes or make Beth's pain exist only to motivate other characters, reducing her to what happened to her rather than seeing her as a whole person.

Instead, I wanted to preserve Beth's dignity, interiority, agency, confusion, endurance, and inherent worth as a person created and loved by God. I wanted to show the long-term consequences of betrayal and the possibility of healing without pretending that her wounds would simply vanish.

My Christian faith also shapes how I see Beth and real-life survivors of trauma. She is never merely a victim or a vehicle for the story's darker themes. What happens to her, and to all survivors, real or fictional, matters, but it does not determine their worth.

What the Chapter Cost Me

As I wrote this chapter, my memories and emotions about what happened to me as a child sometimes caught up with me, and I had to walk away from my laptop for a while. I got headaches for no apparent reason and found myself bingeing on chips or sweets, using food to emotionally numb myself.

I revised the chapter many times and questioned whether to include the scene in the book at all. This wasn't the only scene that affected me this way. I realized I still carried stuck emotions, aspects of the trauma I thought I had dealt with but still needed to work through.

The Difference Between Exposure and Purpose

Being vulnerable while writing a story like What Remains After doesn't require revealing everything.

I could be honest while still protecting my privacy and the privacy of others involved, including their identities. I didn't need to divulge memories that aren't ready for public discussion or reveal parts of my personal story that belong only to me and those closest to me.

I believe writers can convey emotional truth without exposing every private wound to public view.

What I Hope Readers Understand

Ultimately, I hope this chapter helps people understand why children may stop speaking after a failed attempt and why apparent silence does not mean nothing happened.

Adults must take such disclosures seriously. Listening is not enough; action is also required. A child may remember an adult's response to their disclosure as clearly as the original harm. When an adult acts on what they are told, persistence matters, especially when systems fail to respond appropriately.

As I wrote in a previous essay, we are all called to be ordinary heroes for children in crisis.

Where the adult in this chapter fails Beth, later in the novel we see how two ordinary heroes, Frank and Marg Jones, behave differently. That difference makes a world of difference in Beth's life.

Betrayal Is Not the End of Beth's Story

This adult's failure in What Remains After affects Beth deeply, but it does not define her life. Her story continues to include people who come to see her pain and needs, believe her, and act to help her.

Beth's legacy is one of resilience and the courage to tell the truth. Over time, there is hope for Beth, just as there is hope for real-life survivors of trauma.

One reason I write redemptive stories is that my faith has taught me that brokenness need not have the final word. Grace doesn't erase what happened. Faith doesn't make trauma disappear. But I believe God can and does bring healing, meaning, and even beauty to places that once seemed beyond redemption.

The Chapter I Needed to Tell Truthfully

The hardest chapters in What Remains After were not the ones with the most complicated plots. They were the ones that required me to enter an emotional place I recognized.

Beth's experience is not identical to mine, but the ache beneath it was familiar: the courage it takes to speak, the hope placed in a trusted adult, and the devastation that follows when that trust is betrayed.

Writing those scenes cost me something, but leaving them out would have cost me dearly, too. It would have meant looking away from a truth that far too many children have lived.

For me, writing those scenes truthfully was an act of faith: a refusal to believe that darkness weakens when we refuse to name it, and a belief that bringing painful things into the light can be the beginning of something better.

I hope readers come away asking not why vulnerable people remain silent, but whether we have made it safe for them to speak and whether we are prepared to act when they do.

About What Remains After

Writing the hardest chapters of What Remains After reminded me why I began telling Beth Clark's story. I didn't want to write about trauma simply for its dramatic impact. I wanted to explore what remains when the danger has passed, how the consequences continue to shape a life, and where grace and hope might still be found. If you'd like to learn more about the novel that grew out of those difficult chapters, you can explore What Remains After here.

Note: What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel set in rural Alberta, exploring childhood trauma, faith, survival, truth-telling, and healing across two timelines. The novel is available now on Amazon in Canada and the United States. It’s also available online at Indigo and Barnes & Noble.

Blessings,

Pauline J. Grabia

Stories of Consequence
Fiction that faces the dark, but ends in light.

FAQs:

Why are some fictional scenes emotionally difficult to write?

The most difficult scenes aren't always the ones with complicated plots, action, or suspense. Sometimes a scene is technically simple but takes the writer into an emotional place that feels painfully familiar. For me, some of the hardest chapters in What Remains After were difficult because I knew exactly what needed to happen but didn't want to enter the emotional territory required to write them truthfully.

How can writers use personal experience in fiction without writing a memoir?

Writers can draw from the emotions, memories, questions, sensations, and experiences of real life without recreating those experiences exactly. They can reshape those fragments through imagination and give them to fictional characters in entirely different circumstances. A writer can use the emotional truth of an experience without telling every private detail of what actually happened.

What is emotional truth in fiction?

Emotional truth is the authentic human experience beneath a fictional event. In What Remains After, Beth's circumstances, the people involved, and the outcome are fictional. However, some of the emotions behind her experience, including the courage required to trust someone, the hope of being believed, and the devastation of having that trust betrayed, came from emotional territory I knew personally.

How can writers portray trauma responsibly in fiction?

For me, writing trauma responsibly means avoiding graphic detail simply for shock or entertainment and remembering that a character is more than what happened to them. When writing Beth's story, I wanted to preserve her dignity, agency, confusion, endurance, and inherent worth while honestly showing the consequences of what she experienced. I also wanted to leave room for healing without pretending her wounds would simply disappear.

Is Beth's story in What Remains After autobiographical?

No. Beth is not me, and What Remains After is not a fictionalized retelling of my childhood. Her circumstances, the people in her life, the details of what happens, and the outcome are fictional. However, parts of Beth's story draw on emotional truths I recognize from my own experience, particularly what it means to trust an adult with something painful and discover that the trust was misplaced.

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