3 Tips for Writing War Stories

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.

— Tim O’Brien, “How to Tell a True War Story”

“Meaningless” and “mystical” seem like contradictory adjectives for describing war, yet that odd combination is what comes to mind when reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. This collection of interconnected short stories captures the author’s experiences in the Vietnam War, with the reality of his life presented through a veneer of fiction (one of the characters is even named Tim O’Brien).

What shines through these pages is not only the violent costs of war but also O’Brien’s deep self-awareness and empathy for humanity. This has become one of my favorite works of all time — and writers of all genres can receive a masterclass in writing emotional prose from reading this book. But when specifically writing about war, you can…

1. Show Both the Ugliness and the Beauty

War invites contradiction. Soldiers in combat note feeling as close to life as they are to death, the rush of impending danger awakening the senses. This intense paradox appears in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” where a soldier’s girlfriend comes to visit him in Vietnam and becomes sucked into the war’s vibrant allure:

For Mary Anne Bell, it seemed, Vietnam had the effect of a powerful drug: that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure that comes as the needle slips in and you know you’re risking something. The endorphins start to flow, and the adrenaline, and you hold your breath and creep quietly through the moonlit nightscapes; you become intimate with danger…