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…