Write What Haunts You: The Urgency of Unsettling Fiction
Author Patrick O’Dowd discusses why it’s important to write what haunts you, as well as the urgency (and importance) of unsettling fiction.
When I first began writing A Campus on Fire in 2021, I wasn’t setting out to capture the national mood. I didn’t have a manifesto. What I had was a sense of unease. It started small, like the hum of a fluorescent light you can’t quite locate—and then it grew. A conversation here, a headline there. A student suicide on a college campus. A writing workshop that feels a little too insular. A charismatic young man with incendiary views gaining a following under the guise of “free speech.” What began as a knot in my stomach grew into a novel.
It’s easy to say, “Write what you know.” But often, I think the more important advice is: Write what unsettles you.
For me, fiction has always been about entering the places that feel off-limits. It’s not about sympathizing with dangerous ideas, but about rendering them with enough complexity to feel real. When I wrote A Campus on Fire, I wanted to avoid cartoonish evil. That way lies bland writing. I aimed to craft antagonists who were believable—flawed, manipulative, cruel—but grounded in the world we live in. At the same time, I wanted my protagonists to unsettle, to push against easy virtue. That friction is where fiction lives. In a polarized era, where everyone is flattened into either ally or enemy, I think one of the most radical things a novelist can do is tell the truth about people—even the ones we wish weren’t real.
For me, it’s never just a political exercise—it’s a craft decision. I want characters who surprise me, disturb me, make me squirm. If they don't, I have to ask myself: Why write them? And more importantly, why would anyone want to read them?
Recently, I had the chance to return to my alma mater and speak with a group of young writers. They asked sharp, thoughtful questions—about writing difficult and controversial characters, about who gets to tell which stories, about how to write outside your own experience with care. Their questions stayed with me. They reminded me that this kind of reflection isn’t abstract. It’s urgent. And it’s ongoing.
The spark for A Campus on Fire came during the pandemic, but the fuel was already there: Disinformation spreading faster than the virus itself, campus protests boiling over, and a deepening generational rift not just in politics but in how we process truth. I was thinking about institutions—how brittle they are, how easily trust erodes. I was thinking about the stories we tell ourselves to feel safe, and how quickly they fall apart under pressure.
From this, I created Tess Azar, a student journalist who believes truth will save her, and dropped her into a campus where everyone’s truth is different, weaponized, and slippery. I surrounded her with professors, activists, and students who all believe they’re doing the right thing, even as the consequences of their actions become more dire. I gave her a mystery to solve, but no clear hero to root for, no satisfying closure, and no promise of justice.
Why? Because that’s the world I saw outside my window.
There’s a risk in writing books like this. I assume some readers may find certain characters hard to stomach. Some may be angered by scenes that feel too real or wish for a greater sense of resolution. I understand that. But my goal wasn’t comfort. My goal was reflection. Honest, brutal reflection.
I don’t believe writers should be moralizers, and I’m suspicious of fiction that tries too hard to be virtuous. But I do believe every writer has a responsibility to tell the truth as they see it—and to acknowledge the complexity of that truth. Sometimes that means making readers uncomfortable. Sometimes it means making yourself uncomfortable.
Writing A Campus on Fire meant revisiting times in my life when I didn’t speak up. When I was complicit. When I laughed off a cruel joke or stayed quiet to keep the peace. It meant admitting how easily we trade in principle for convenience, how often we go along to get along. That’s not easy work, but it’s honest work. And I think honesty is what readers need most right now.
That kind of honesty doesn’t happen by accident. For me, it began with getting sober. I had to look in the mirror and confront not just the things I wanted to change, but the person I didn’t want to be anymore. Sobriety gave me more than clarity—it gave me the practice of reflection, of facing uncomfortable truths without flinching or excuse. Once you’ve learned how to inspect your life, you start to see the world more clearly. And that makes you a better writer. Or at least, a more honest one.
One of the most common questions I get from emerging writers is: How do you know if you’re writing something worth saying? My answer is this: If it scares you to write it, you’re probably on the right track.
Fear is a compass. Discomfort is a prompt. If your story isn’t challenging you, it’s probably not going to challenge your reader either.
There’s no shortage of reasons not to write today. The market is uncertain. The noise is deafening. Social media offers instant gratification and instant judgment—and a chorus of voices ready to tell you what stories you can or can’t tell. But fiction operates on a deeper frequency. It cuts through the noise in a way that posts and think pieces (even this one) can’t. It lingers. It provokes. It starts conversations that last.
That’s what I hope A Campus on Fire will do. I hope it will make people talk and think outside their echo chamber. I hope it will unsettle. I hope it will raise questions—about free speech, about youth radicalization, about gender, class, and race on college campuses, about the stories we tell ourselves to justify power, about the sacrifices we make to succeed. And if it makes some readers uncomfortable along the way, I’m okay with that.
Because that’s where the work begins.
Check out Patrick O'Dowd's A Campus on Fire here:
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