Young Writers Society

I'm writing a book about a girl who gets sexually abused by her father at a young age. The sexual abuse is crucial to the storyline, but I'm having a hard time writing about it. None of my scenes have the abuse in it, but my characters talk about it. I don't want to get into it too much, but my readers need to know that it happened. How explicit do you think I need to get?

That depends on what age group you want this marked as. If you want it to be Young Adult (YA), then it'll probably need to be vague and fade-to-black scenes, as well as not explicitly talked about. If you'd rather go for the mature adult ratings, then you can do as you please.

If you really want to connect with your readers and make a truly lasting impression, I would get as explicit as you can. Especially if you want the abuse to have a big toll on the main character. You definitely don't need to reenact the abuse (and I'm, quite frankly, glad you aren't), but you should have her talk about it. And don't be afraid to go into detail. If not the act, then the aftermath. The emotional/physical/mental toll it has on her, the effect it has on her family, etc.

Generally, just do what you want to do. If you want to get explicit, then get explicit. If you want to have a medium between explicit and non-explicit, then you can do that as well. I just think that, if you're going with a main character that has been abused in some way, then it needs to have some effect on her and it needs to be detailed and shown. However much you want to describe the assault is up to you.

EDIT: This has been moved to "Ask An Expert", where you'll get better help from our Resource Crew, as well as anyone else who drops by. ^^

Something else you can do is not describe the actual abuse very much, just the effects of it. It's a similar principle to a horror movie - often not actually showing the monster makes it more scary, especially if you don't think you are a good enough writer to pull off the horror of the actual scene.

I realize that you said you aren't going to actually show the abuse, but the same principle works for talking about it.

To elaborate on what I mean by the effects: everyone has coping strategies to "deal" with things like that, even if they often make things worse. For example, your character could decide she somehow deserves it, or that it's not a big deal. If you study psychology you can learn more about coping strategies.

A good example of this tactic can be found in Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance. (It's the second book in his Stormlight Archive and one of my favorite books ever.) One of the main characters had a traumatizing childhood. She wasn't sexually abused, but it was still terrible, and she completely blocks those memories from her mind. If her thoughts ever wander in that direction, she just goes blank, even though it's been years. It's a very striking way to show how broken she was because of this. You could utilize something similar, and then have the conversation be pretty vague while still showing the full horrifying effects.

I know this doesn't quite answer the original question, but @Iggy is right. It really depends on who you want to market it to. I just wanted to give you another option. Hope it helps!

It'd probably be awkward for the people to talk about so they probably wouldn't talk about it explicitly anyways--thus you could probably do the same, not being too explicit, naturally. I think that showing effects would be good. Certain body language at certain times maybe; I'd imagine that some people who have been sexually abused might react to certain things that remind them of it, perhaps someone's tone of voice if it reminds them of the way the abuser might say something, or whatnot. I dunno, just my 2 cents, hopefully it's worth the internet space it's posted on