Writing Prompt Challenge
If One Word Could Speak Volumes, What Would It Be?
Get your log lines ready!
If you had to describe your work in progress with just one word, what would it be and why?
Mine would be FORGIVENESS.
- Forgiveness of people you don’t know, or who you only consider loose acquaintances.
- Forgiveness of your relatives, your closest friends, your dearest loved ones.
- And most importantly, forgiveness of yourself.
The first time someone asked me what my novel was about, I rambled (nervously and ambiguously). Ever since, I’ve struggled to perfect my “elevator speech.”
It’s a work of Women’s Fiction, and the story focuses on two main characters:
- The mother of a teenage boy who was driving home from school when he hit a bicyclist and left the scene of the accident without reporting it; and
- The boy’s classmate who lost his mother in that fatal accident.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right?
But one word? The ultimate in brevity. That’s trickier.
As the story’s plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the complexities of the main characters. The mother tries desperately to understand the circumstances surrounding the hit-and-run, and pushes hard against the truth in an effort to support and defend her son. Her maternal instinct is strong, but so is her sense of right and wrong—creating an internal conflict as the two are in complete contrast to one another.
At the same time, the truth hits her hard when she realizes something unsettling about herself — how her longstanding battle against cancer has hardened her, left her emotionally distant from her family. Now that her son needs a strong advocate, and both her husband and daughter are craving comfort and support, she suddenly understands that she may not be the obvious choice to fulfill those needs. Can they forgive her for being so self-absorbed? And will she ever forgive herself for not being present when and where she should have been?
Meanwhile, the boy left motherless across town because of his classmate’s reckless driving is grieving alongside his father, despite the fact that the two haven’t seen eye-to-eye for years. His father’s open and often hurtful expression of disappointment in his son’s life choices had always been softened through his mom’s intervention. Now that she’s gone, the father and son pair are forced to confront whether their relationship is worth salvaging and if forgiving one another is even possible.
When criminal charges are brought against the teenage driver, everyone in town is eager to place blame before vetting the facts. The once close-knit community is divided into two camps — those that see the broader tragedy in the events that transpired and hope to get past it without ruining more lives; and the others who cling to the idea that justice can only be served by putting the young man behind bars, even when the evidence later reveals that there was more to the story than the sound bites portrayed in the media.
This may sound like nothing more than a tale of two varying perspectives that are tried in a court of law and the court of public opinion. But, the underlying tension between accountability and forgiveness challenges readers to draw their own conclusions about how far they would go to defend a loved one when it involves destroying innocent people who have already endured unthinkable heartbreak, and how difficult it can be to accept blame for your own behavior. In the end, it takes an unlikely character who acts out against the madness to serve as a reminder of what’s important in life, ultimately reuniting the families and bringing the community back together.
In sum, my work in progress is a metaphor for personal responsibility, an in-depth look at how much courage it sometimes takes to let go of hurt and anger in order to move forward freely. While we live in an overly litigious society where first instincts often involve pointing a finger and engaging in the adversarial process, there are usually ways to circumvent additional pain and suffering. But those paths can’t be cleared without accepting the fact that accidents DO happen, and that even intentional acts can be worthy of forgiveness.
It’s a gentler reminder of the message conveyed in Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism (1711), “to err is human; to forgive, divine.”