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I agree with what everyone here has already said, and I’m not sure I can add much except to share my experience writing about the topic of abuse.

I don’t shy away from reading graphic scenes, and I fully believe they have a place in certain stories and genres. However, the stories that always impacted me the most were the ones that weren’t detailed in describing the horror itself, but the feelings the evoked in me.

I wrote and published a book about a young man who is kidnapped and sold into human trafficking. The research was difficult and there were many times I asked God why on earth He had laid such a thing on my heart to write about. I relied heavily on my husband and my writing team to keep me grounded, but I cried. A LOT.

When it came time to write the story, I did not want to give graphic details, rather, I selected one or two physical things in each scene and had the character react to them emotionally. Things like the feel of a leather cuff on his ankle, the sound of a door lock, the smell of sweat. All by themselves those evoke emotion. Once the character was rescued, the physical scars on his body and those details I used early in the story took the reader back into the emotion of the moment without ever painting a detailed description of what happened to him.

The goal of my story wasn’t to explain what human trafficking looks like, but rather how it feels to be a victim, especially when no one thinks you CAN be a victim of such things. By keeping the ultimate goal of the story in mind – which was to raise awareness of male sexual abuse and trafficking as a reality in our world – I was able to discern how much detail was necessary to get the point across without being either gratuitous or overly soft.

I certainly don’t think the story is perfect, by ANY means, but I learned some valuable story telling lessons in it.