Why This Story Might Be Difficult and Why That Matters: Why Some Stories Refuse Easy Answers

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Some stories are difficult and require a special approach.

Why do some novels leave us emotionally unsettled? While many books offer escape and entertainment, others invite us to confront difficult truths about trauma, faith, forgiveness, and hope. In this essay, I explore why What Remains After asks readers to witness suffering rather than consume it as spectacle, and why that distinction matters.

Not Every Story Is Meant To Be Comfortable

Reading is often associated with pleasure. We read to relax, escape, and be entertained. There is nothing wrong with any of those reasons to read. Many books are written exactly for that purpose. I have to admit that I enjoy reading the occasional romantic suspense book or thriller for sheer entertainment. One of my favorite authors is Sandra Brown (I just wish she wrote a little cleaner, but I still enjoy the general storylines. Just my opinion). I love rereading Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter books, and I love me some good old-fashioned Star Trek fiction from time to time, too. 

Yet some stories ask something different of us. They invite us not to escape reality but to engage with it. My new novel, What Remains After, belongs to that second category.

Difficulty Is Not the Same as Harm

There is an important distinction between discomfort and harm. Readers often encounter grief, injustice, suffering, and moral complexity, which may make them uncomfortable. Discomfort is not necessarily an indication that something is wrong. Sometimes it signals that something important is being examined honestly.

Charles Martin’s The Keeper series caused me considerable discomfort because of the way it tackles the scourge of human trafficking. As a survivor of sexual abuse, I found some of what he wrote challenging to read and uncomfortable. But it wasn’t harming me. It revealed places in me that were still tender and in need of compassion and further healing. Not all pain is harmful. Some pain and discomfort accompany growth. The literature has long recognized this reality.

What Serious Fiction Asks of Readers

Great literature often demands participation. It asks readers to think deeply, wrestle with difficult topics, question preconceived beliefs, and empathize with others, even with themselves. In Flannery O’Connor’s work, grace appears in broken places, redemption emerges through conflict, and truth often arrives through discomfort. Marilynne Robinson explores quiet moral complexity, human contradiction, and spiritual depth. Neither writer offers simplistic answers. Instead, they invite readers to inhabit difficult realities.

Serious fiction does more than entertain. It deepens our understanding of people and the world. This is especially important when writing about trauma.

Why Trauma Requires Gravity

Some subjects cannot be treated lightly without becoming dishonest. Trauma, for example, changes people’s lives and shapes their relationships going forward. It alters how people see and understand themselves and those around them. The consequences often remain as lasting scars. My own experiences with trauma left me with significant attachment and trust issues, not to mention very low self-concept and self-esteem. It’s taken years of therapy and prayer to reach where I am in my healing, and it’s an ongoing process. 

I explored this through the character of Beth Clark in my novel What Remains After. She experiences tremendous childhood trauma, and it takes her years to begin to come to terms with it and find resolution and healing.

In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag argues that there is a difference between witnessing suffering and consuming it as a spectacle. She asks, “What happens when we look at another person’s suffering?” Although Sontag was writing primarily about war photography, her ideas extend naturally to literature and storytelling. Sontag worries that repeated exposure to this kind of suffering as spectacle can numb us. Witnessing suffering is different. It slows us down. It invites moral reflection. It asks us to remember, grieve, empathize, and consider our own responsibility. In this way, the suffering is never the point. The person is.

When writing about trauma, the goal is not to shock readers, and I do my very best not to do that in the way in which I word and present the traumatic scenes I write. The goal is to tell the truth, with readers acting as witnesses and not gawkers at a spectacle.

Minimizing harm may feel gentler, but it can also be another form of denial. Scripture models this honesty remarkably well.

The Bible Does Not Soften Human Suffering

One of Scripture’s most striking qualities is its honesty. The Bible does not hide grief, betrayal, violence, doubt, or failure. In Lamentations, we see communal suffering, loss, and devastation depicted with complete honesty. It was written in the aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians and gives voice to a people grieving the loss of their homes, loved ones, security, and sense of identity. The Bible doesn’t minimize their anguish or rush them toward easy answers. On the contrary, the book openly acknowledges sorrow, confusion, and even angry, hurt questions directed toward God. It reminds us that grief has a legitimate place in the life of faith.

Yet even amid such profound lament, a quiet thread of hope remains. Though overwhelmed by despair, the writer declares, “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” (Lamentations 3:21-22, ESV). The book of Lamentations reminds us that God does not ask us to deny our suffering but invites us to bring it honestly to Him while still trusting His faithfulness.

Scripture preserves the reality of suffering without glorifying it. It tells the truth while still directing our eyes toward hope. This is the same balance I strive to achieve in my writing.

Why I Refused to Look Away

Writing What Remains After required me to make difficult decisions. There were moments when it would have been easier to soften the reality to appease the sensitivities of a literary agent or beta reader. I could have removed painful scenes or simplified the consequences to better fit a particular genre and its tropes and expectations. There was one scene where Beth experiences a traumatic event that led one literary agent to tell me she couldn’t continue reading because it was “too horrific.”

While I reviewed the scene to ensure I wasn’t glorifying violence or making a spectacle of it, I concluded that this person was simply unwilling to experience discomfort in the fiction she represented, and that there was nothing intrinsically harmful about what I had written. Changing it may have landed me a deal, but it would have diluted the story and made it less honest. So, I didn’t compromise, and I’m glad I didn’t.

Truth sometimes carries weight. Avoiding that weight does not eliminate it. That brings me to the question readers often ask.

Why Does Difficulty Matter?

Difficulty is not inherently a virtue. Some difficult books are simply difficult. The question is: What purpose does the difficulty serve?

In What Remains After, the difficulty serves truth, empathy, witness, understanding, and ultimately healing. I hope that my readers gain these things from the difficulty they encounter when reading my novel. 

Painful stories are valuable not because they hurt, but because they help us see. And seeing is often the beginning of compassion. Difficulty can deepen compassion by allowing us to inhabit lives not our own. Readers may never experience abuse, neglect, betrayal, and community failure like my character Beth does, but stories can help them understand those who have.

Compassion often begins with attention. When we refuse to look away from suffering, we become more capable of loving those who endure it. This brings me to one final thought.

Difficulty Signals Importance

Not every story is meant to be comfortable. Some truths are heavy, and some realities are painful. Some stories demand emotional effort. That effort is not punishment. It’s participation.

Difficulty does not automatically make a story meaningful. But meaningful stories are often difficult because they confront reality honestly. The most meaningful stories are not always the easiest to read. They are often the ones that stay with us long after we close the book.

About What Remains After

This essay mentions my new novel, What Remains After. The story follows Beth Clark as she confronts childhood trauma, buried truths, wounded faith, and the challenge of trusting God when life defies a predictable path.

Note: What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel set in rural Alberta that explores childhood trauma, faith, survival, truth-telling, and healing across two timelines. The novel is available now on Amazon in Canada and the United States.

Blessings,

Pauline J. Grabia

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

FAQs:

Why do some novels include difficult or painful subjects?

Some stories explore trauma, injustice, or suffering because they seek to tell the truth about the human experience. Difficult subjects, when handled responsibly, can deepen empathy and understanding rather than simply entertain.

Does reading about trauma cause harm?

Not necessarily. While readers may experience discomfort, discomfort is different from harm. Thoughtful stories can invite reflection, compassion, and personal growth without glorifying suffering.

What did Susan Sontag mean by "witnessing" suffering?

Susan Sontag distinguished between treating suffering as spectacle and bearing witness to another person's humanity. Ethical storytelling invites readers to remember, empathize, and reflect rather than simply consume another person's pain.

Why does the Bible include so much suffering?

Scripture presents human suffering honestly through books like Job, Psalms, and Lamentations. Rather than hiding grief, the Bible preserves it while pointing readers toward God's faithfulness and hope.

Why is What Remains After emotionally difficult?

The novel explores childhood trauma, forgiveness, faith, and healing with honesty. Its goal is not to shock readers but to invite them to bear witness to one woman's journey toward hope and redemption.

Reference:

1.        Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

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