As an editor, I’ve encountered a common issue that’s surprised me. Before I agree to edit a book, I like to ask the author, “Does your story contain any sensitive themes?” I originally asked this question just to help me maintain my own boundaries. However, it has incidentally helped me figure out whether an author is self-aware about the content of their book.
Many authors have told me, “No, my story has no sensitive themes,” only for me to find very heavy content when I go to read it. When I explain the situation to them, the author is often initially surprised but then agrees with my assessment of their content. It’s led me to conclude that authors regularly write dark scenes, including scenes of abuse, without realizing it. That’s an issue.
I’ve also noticed that their beta readers often flag issues without accurately describing the cause. They’ll tell authors, “This scene made me uncomfortable,” but they’re often unable to fully articulate why. Then, when I go to read the scene in question, I immediately spot the problem. The scene directly depicts abuse, but the story’s narrative framing treats the event as if it is not abuse.
This situation is shockingly common.
So, first of all, if you find yourself in this situation, don’t be too hard on yourself. Issues of abuse are layered and complex. It’s easy for our gut to tell us, “Something’s off here,” but it’s often harder to precisely identify why.
Self-awareness is a skill. You can work on sharpening it. To help you do that, let’s now look at how this specific type of self-awareness can impact your writing.
How Self-Awareness Impacts Writing Quality
As it turns out, self-awareness about the content you write has a major impact on your writing quality. I’ve observed that writers who depict scenes of abuse without realizing it often write those scenes poorly.
First, they often fail to set up accurate reader expectations earlier in the story. Without sufficient narrative setup, the appearance of scenes of abuse tends to feel sudden and disorienting.
Second, the scenes of abuse tend to clash with the rest of the book’s tone. Direct depictions of abuse are tonally very dark. If authors include such scenes unintentionally, it’s easy to create a jarring tonal clash.
Third, the scenes of abuse can easily clash with the story’s genre as well. For example, cozy mystery readers explicitly want a lighthearted read without such heavy content. Themes of abuse should also be handled quite differently in juvenile and young adult fiction than in adult fiction. Without self-awareness, authors can easily write a manuscript that clashes with their genre’s conventions and their audience’s needs.
Fourth, and most importantly, when you depict abuse unintentionally, it is very easy to write it in a way that implicitly normalizes it. The way you narratively frame an event has the power to create a message. Narrative framing can encourage readers to view certain actions and situations as normal, acceptable, strange, unusual, harmful, or repulsive.
If the story tells us a relationship is healthy but shows us toxicity, your story is at risk of normalizing toxic relationship dynamics. If the story shows us abuse in one scene and then ignores the impact of that abuse for the rest of the story, then the story implies that the impact of abuse is insignificant and unimportant. Without self-awareness, you cannot control how your narrative framing impacts your story’s messaging.
How Self-Awareness Impacts Communication & Marketing
Finally, a lack of self-awareness can also create a larger communication problem. Nowadays, readers expect their authors to be able to communicate clear, accurate content warnings. If a reader asks you, “Does your book contain any sensitive themes?” and you inaccurately say “no,” the reader will be justifiably frustrated when they come across scenes of explicit abuse.
This kind of miscommunication can break your reader’s trust. They’re unlikely to buy another one of your books, and they’re unlikely to recommend the book to others. That’s a bad situation to be in. To be kind to your readers and to market your book well, you need to be able to communicate your story’s heavy themes clearly and accurately.
So, as I’ve accidentally discovered, self-awareness about your story’s content is a critical part of writing a strong story. The rest of this post will be a detailed deep dive to help you develop that self-awareness in your own writing.
First, I’ll cover the defining characteristics of abuse generally. Then I’ll give you examples of how to apply those principles to specific situations. Next, I’ll give you definitions of specific subtypes of abuse. Finally, I’ll cover how to recognize full, genuine consent.
What Is Abuse?
Abuse can take so many different forms. Instead of going over all the different kinds of abuse out there, I want to start with a framework that can help you identify abusive dynamics broadly, even in situations that are complicated or unusual.
Here’s the definition I find most helpful:
Abuse is when someone harms another person’s well-being by intentionally violating their autonomy.
Now, that’s a mouthful. Let’s break it down.
It’s tricky to define what counts as harm. In my definition of abuse, I’m focusing on well-being and autonomy.
Our network of needs is complex. Sometimes, to pursue one need, we have to let another need go neglected. So, when I talk about well-being, I’m talking about a person’s overall sense of well-being, not just one aspect of their needs in isolation from all the others. You’ll see why that distinction is important when we look at some examples.
Then, I also focus quite heavily on autonomy. Everyone has the right to control over their life—over their own body, time, energy, and choices.
One of the most defining features of abuse is the violation of personal autonomy. In an act of violence or abuse, one person forcefully takes control of another person’s body, mind, and agency. The abuser turns a person into a possession, an object they have the right to control, help, or harm as they see fit.
Yes, even something that looks like “help” can be abusive if it violates the other person’s autonomy.
How to Spot Abusive Dynamics in Complex Situations
So, if well-being is a complex web and one isolated harm is not enough to make something abusive, how are you supposed to recognize it?
The key here is that you cannot recognize abuse by the action alone—you need to see the action in its context.
To help you figure out whether an abusive dynamic is present, here are the questions to ask yourself:
- Does the action violate a person’s autonomy?
- Is the actor intentionally violating the other person’s autonomy?
- Does the action cause harm?
- Is the actor intentionally causing harm?
- Was the action avoidable?
- Was the action taken in self-defence or to prevent some other harm?
If the answer to the first five questions is “yes” and the answer to the last question is “no,” then you probably have a clear-cut case of abuse on your hands. If your answers are more mixed, then the situation is more complicated.
Generally speaking, we don’t hold people morally accountable for unintended consequences. Accidentally dropping and breaking something is different than intentionally destroying someone else’s property. So, identifying intent can help us figure out if someone has been “wronged” in a moral and legal sense.
In cases of harm and autonomy violation without intent, the moral and legal implications get more complicated. Fiction often works to help us explore and better understand complicated and difficult situations like these. So, again, it’s totally fine if your fiction includes this kind of content.
As an author, your job isn’t to communicate moral messages—it’s to write resonant art and then communicate your story’s content to readers. Even if your story explores morally complicated expressions of abusive dynamics, it’s still exploring themes of abuse. That’s what you should communicate to readers.
Examples of How Context Changes an Action’s Impact
Let’s take a look at a specific action: tackling someone to the ground. Is that abuse?
It depends on the context. Let’s look at some examples. Before you read my response to a situation, try to figure it out yourself first. You can use the above questions to guide your answers. Then see how your answer compares to mine and whether you agree with my assessment.
Situation One: The Accident
Abigail trips. She tries to regain her balance, but she falls anyway and accidentally knocks Charlie down with her. In the process, Charlie lands awkwardly and sprains their ankle. Is that abuse?
No. Even though Charlie did not agree to be tackled and got hurt, Abigail did not intend to knock Charlie down and was unable to avoid it. So, accidents like this aren’t considered abuse.
Situation Two: The Stranger
Charlie is walking through the park when a stranger tackles them to the ground, intending to steal their wallet. Is that abuse?
Yes. Charlie did not consent, and the stranger intends to cause Charlie harm.
Situation Three: The Jiu-Jitsu Class
Abigail and Charlie decide to join a jiu-jitsu class and spar together. During a roll, Abigail tackles Charlie to the ground and puts them in an ankle lock. As soon as Charlie starts to feel uncomfortable, they tap Abigail’s leg, and Abigail immediately lets Charlie go. The next morning, Charlie finds a bruise on their leg from Abigail’s grapple. Is that abuse?
No. Both Abigail and Charlie agreed to spar together. Charlie communicated when they needed the roll to stop, and Abigail respected Charlie’s autonomy by letting go. Though Abigail caused the harm of the bruise, it was not intentional.
Most importantly, Charlie knew the risks and still chose to spar. Charlie freely decided that the benefit of learning self-defence was worth the risk of injury. As a result, even though Abigail did hurt Charlie, Charlie’s overall sense of well-being is still intact.
When someone provides free informed consent, the harm they experience is generally not considered or experienced as abusive.
Let’s now look at the same situation again but change a few details.
Situation Four: The Spar that Doesn’t Stop
Abigail spars with Charlie again and puts Charlie into another ankle lock. This time, when Charlie taps Abigail’s leg, she doesn’t let go. Charlie’s ankle starts to actively hurt. Is that abuse?
This is a case where it depends: why isn’t Abigail letting go?
Abigail’s Reason: Charlie’s tap was so light that Abigail didn’t feel it.
In this case, Abigail is unaware that Charlie needs to stop. Therefore, the harm and autonomy violation are unavoidable. At this point, it’s still Charlie’s responsibility to communicate their needs and boundaries more clearly.
Abigail’s Reason: Abigail is mad at Charlie and is trying to hurt them in a way where she still has plausible deniability.
That is clear-cut abuse. Abigail intends to do harm and manipulate the situation to avoid responsibility. Just because Charlie initially consented to spar, it does not mean that Abigail now has permission to do whatever she wants to Charlie. The moment that Abigail felt Charlie’s tap and refused to let go, Abigail began violating Charlie’s bodily autonomy.
Situation Five: The Couple
Charlie and Abigail are a couple. As part of their intimate play, Charlie asks Abigail to grapple them hard enough to leave a bruise. Abigail does so, and Charlie finds it exciting and enjoyable. Is that abuse?
No. Abigail intended to and did cause physical harm, but Charlie freely and enthusiastically consented to it. As a result, even though Charlie was physically harmed, they maintained their sense of autonomy and control. Charlie freely decided that the pain was worth the pleasure, so their overall sense of well-being was still intact.
Situation Six: The Truck
Charlie turns to cross the street and does not see a semi-truck coming their way. With no time to alert Charlie, Abigail tackles Charlie to the ground. In the process, Abigail hurts Charlie’s shoulder but saves them from getting hit by the truck. Is that abuse?
No. Charlie did not consent to the tackle and was physically harmed, but Abigail acted to prevent even greater harm from happening. Generally, when it’s a time-sensitive crisis and the only way to protect someone requires violating their personal autonomy, we don’t consider it abuse.
However, keep in mind that this principle is only true when there truly are no other alternatives. In abusive relationships, it’s very common for the abuser to claim that their actions were not abusive because their motive was to protect.
Let’s look at this example again with a few details changed.
Situation Seven: The Confrontation After the Danger Has Passed
Abigail tackles Charlie to save them from getting hit by the truck. However, after the danger has passed, Abigail yells at Charlie. She calls them “a fucking idiot” and slaps them across the face. Charlie tells Abigail that the yelling and slapping are out of line.
Then Abigail replies, “I only did those things because I love you and I want to keep you safe. You just ran into the street, and you need to learn that running into the street is dangerous.”
Is that abuse?
Yes. Abigail’s logic here is a twisted trick. It justifies the abuse by implying that the only way to keep the other person safe is to hurt them. There are other, much more effective ways to communicate danger and teach people how to stay safe that do not involve hitting and yelling. So, Abigail’s explanation does nothing to actually justify her harming Charlie.
In fact, if Charlie accepts Abigail’s explanation as valid, then Abigail will actually be harming Charlie further. To accept Abigail’s justification, Charlie also needs to accept that when they make a mistake, they deserve pain and punishment.
That kind of belief—“I deserve pain and punishment”—massively harms people’s self-concept. It can give them intense shame and self-esteem issues that are highly disruptive to all the other aspects of their lives. It also makes them incredibly vulnerable to further abuse because, deep down, there’s a part of them that believes they deserve it.
This harm to a person’s perception and self-concept is an example of emotional abuse. It’s how people get stuck in an abusive relationship without fully realizing what’s happening to them.
It’s also a way that authors can write their characters into an abusive dynamic without realizing it. Just because a character can claim to have a sympathetic reason for violating another character’s well-being and autonomy, it does not mean they are fully justified in doing so.
So, watch for this trick carefully. It is only non-abusive to violate someone’s autonomy in the name of protecting them when there truly are no other options.
Key Takeaways
There are a couple of important things to note from the above examples.
First, the action itself cannot tell you whether abuse is happening. You need to see the action’s context to identify whether it’s abuse or not.
Second, the presence of one harm alone is often an insufficient measure of abuse. Instead, the violation of personal autonomy is a much stronger indicator of abuse.
Third, notice that in “Situation Four: The Spar that Doesn’t Stop,” the difference between miscommunication and clear-cut abuse is invisible. To an outside observer, Abigail’s actions would look the same either way. These are the kinds of murky subtleties that can sometimes make abusive behaviour really hard to catch and even more difficult to prove.
However, there is another way that abuse can be more subtle. What if harm is happening, personal autonomy is being violated, it’s not being done intentionally, but it was all still very avoidable? In other words, what if the person did not intend to cause harm but still could or should have known better? Is that abuse? This is an area where the morality can start to get tricky.
As an author, your job is not to untangle the moral complexities at play here. Your job is just to write intentionally and communicate clearly.
So, even if the character is sympathetic and has their reasons, it does not negate the fact that an abusive dynamic exists in your story. Your story still explores themes of abuse, so that’s what you should communicate to readers who ask.
Types of Abuse
Now that we have a framework for spotting abusive dynamics in complex situations, we can start to divide abuse into more specific types. Here are the common types of abuse:
Physical Abuse
Physical Abuse: Any non-consensual act that causes another person bodily pain or harm, or otherwise violates their bodily autonomy.
Most people think of hitting as the main type of physical abuse, but there are more indirect ways to physically abuse someone as well. Physical abuse would also include drugging someone without their consent, imprisoning someone, or withholding food from them.
Emotional/Psychological Abuse
Emotional/Psychological Abuse: Any words or actions that serve to manipulate and control someone else in a way that violates their personal agency and psychological well-being.
Common emotional abuse tactics include isolating, gaslighting, stonewalling, threatening, belittling, and shaming.
I don’t have space here to define all the different expressions of emotional abuse. If you’re unfamiliar with any of the above terms, I recommend you research them further.
Financial Abuse
Financial Abuse: Taking control of someone’s finances or any of their other resources in a way that violates their personal agency and financial well-being.
Some examples include stealing a spouse’s credit card or hiding their keys so they cannot use their car.
Sexual Abuse
Sexual Abuse: Any non-consensual sexual interaction.
All abuse exists on a spectrum of severity, including sexual abuse. In legal contexts, we need clear definitions to write clear laws with clear punishments. So, sexual abuse is legally broken down into two camps of severity: sexual harassment and sexual assault.
In life outside the courtroom, I personally find these terms limiting. The situation does much more to inform the severity of harm than the technical definition of any one action. What one person finds severely harmful in one context, another may find much less severe in another. I find thinking about sexual-abuse severity as a spectrum rather than a binary to be more practical and helpful.
Still, these definitions are useful in the legal context. I’m sure there are also people who do find these definitions personally helpful as well. So, regardless of my own opinions, everyone should still know what they are.
Sexual Harassment
Generally speaking, sexual harassment is the stuff people can get away with doing in public. It’s any unwanted comment, behaviour, or interaction that’s sexual in nature but that we don’t generally consider to be direct, active sex.
Some examples include catcalling strangers, persistent flirting even after being rejected, and slapping a waitress’s butt as she walks past.
Sexual Assault
Generally speaking, sexual assault is the stuff that we consider to be direct sexual activity. This can include unwanted kissing, touching, fondling, stripping, and intercourse or any other genital stimulation.
What It Means to Consent
Though people usually refer to “consent” in cases of sexual assault, it actually applies to all forms of abuse.
Consensually giving your spouse your car keys is very different than your spouse stealing your car keys. Without consent, it’s financial abuse.
Consensually sparring with someone is very different than a stranger tackling you. Consensually asking your partner to slap you is very different than your partner randomly hitting you. Without consent, those are both examples of physical abuse.
The line between benign behaviour and abuse is usually consent.
So, what counts as consent?
There are a few ways that consent can get messy and confusing. For consent to be genuine, it needs three things: to be free, enthusiastic, and informed.
Free
If someone feels like it is unsafe to say “no,” so they say “yes” instead, it is still abuse. If someone says “yes” to one thing, it does not mean they are saying “yes” to everything. Then, people should always be free to change their minds.
That’s what it means for consent to be free: it’s unpressured, specific, and retractable.
Also, note that implicit power dynamics can be enough to create pressure, even if the person in power does not apply pressure directly.
Power Dynamics & Free Consent
For example, say an athlete is trying out for a team. As part of the tryouts, their coach tells them, “I’d like you to change into this bikini so I can fully assess your physical condition.”
The coach is in a position of power over the athlete. If the athlete says, “No, I’m uncomfortable exposing myself like that,” it could negatively impact their chances of making the team.
So, even if the coach isn’t making a direct demand, the power dynamic is still creating a great deal of pressure for the athlete to comply. As a result, this is still a situation where the athlete is not fully free to consent.
It’s also a situation where an excuse is present that could provide plausible deniability. The coach could argue, “I didn’t intend for the interaction to be sexual. I made the request solely for assessment purposes.”
This is where intent both does and does not matter. If the athlete experienced the situation as non-consensual and degrading, then the harm was still present, regardless of the coach’s intentions. If the coach’s intentions were genuinely pure, then the coach’s level of moral accountability is more complicated. However, the presence of harm is not. An abusive dynamic is still present, regardless of the coach’s intent.
Power dynamics are one of many things that can impair a person’s capacity to provide free consent.
This is also a common way that authors write unintentional scenes of abuse. Consent appears present, but it’s not actually complete and free.
Enthusiastic
When we’re in danger, we have a few threat-response styles. The commonly known ones are fight and flight. The lesser-known ones are freeze and fawn.
Freezing is what it sounds like: you lock up to avoid attracting attention and wait for the danger to pass.
Fawning is a social response to danger where you try to appease the threatening person. When you’re fawning, your own needs and desires become irrelevant. The only thing that matters is giving the threatening person everything they want so they don’t hurt you.
When people feel sexually uncomfortable or threatened, it’s very common to respond not with fight or flight but with freeze or fawn. In a freeze or fawn response, the person might:
- go silent,
- become passive,
- try to come up with polite excuses instead of directly saying “no,”
- or otherwise fail to communicate clearly.
Because freeze and fawn are such common threat responses, a simple absence of a clear “no” is not enough to prevent harm. Instead, to keep everyone safe, you need to get an enthusiastic “yes.”
That’s why it’s always a person’s responsibility to check in and make sure that their partner is okay and actively wants to be there.
Informed
Finally, the consent also needs to be informed.
For example, let’s say someone agrees to have sex. However, their partner lies about using contraception, and the person only realizes later that they had unsafe sex. That is still a case of sexual assault because the lying partner, well, lied. They actively prevented the other person from being able to provide informed consent.
Also, note that a person’s capacity matters. If someone is drunk or high, their decision-making abilities may be impaired. In that case, they’re not capable of providing informed consent. If the person is a minor, they’re considered too young to be able to provide informed consent. That’s why, in many countries, children are legally incapable of consenting to sex.
In short, for consent to be informed, the information needs to be present, and the person needs to be capable of fully understanding it.
So, what is consent? A free, enthusiastic, informed “yes.”
Summing Up
We’ve now covered abusive dynamics in detail. Here’s a summary of the key points:
- What is abuse? Abuse is when someone harms another person’s well-being by intentionally violating their autonomy.
- What are the main types of abuse? Physical, emotional/psychological, financial, and sexual.
- What is the key dynamic that can help you identify abuse? The violation of autonomy and the absence of consent.
- What is consent? A free, enthusiastic, informed “yes.”
With this information, I hope you’re now better equipped to write scenes of abuse with intention and self-awareness.
When you choose to depict scenes of abuse in your story, you can consciously ask yourself:
- How can you keep your story’s tone consistent?
- How can you set up accurate reader expectations about any later heavy content?
- How can you ensure the story is appropriate for your target audience’s age?
- How can you ensure your characters have a realistic and proportional response to the experience of abuse?
- How can you ensure your narrative framing treats scenes of abuse with an appropriate level of seriousness and care?
Then, when you’re ready to publish, you should also be able to clearly communicate whether abuse is present in your story.
This self-awareness will ultimately help you write much stronger fiction. It’ll also help you find the right audience who will appreciate and enjoy your story.
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