Awhile
back, when I was enrolled in an online YA writing class, I transferred my
observation of the world as I saw it during my youth into my writing. For an
assignment, I submitted a story outline where evil triumphs over good. My classmates
disapproved of this conclusion. But it’s not fair that the villain
doesn’t get their comeuppance! But the protagonist’s good deeds don’t pay off! I
struggled with this feedback for awhile because I believed that my story's
conclusion depicted reality.
I don't think there's any industry, community, or age group that's completely immune to people who don’t play nice, who
bully, who are narcissistic and two-faced, who loudly assume causes for
blatant self-serving motivations. Unfortunately, sometimes I see people like this thrive. At times, I’ve also seen generous and good-natured people get mistreated or exploited.
Growing
up, I’ve read many stories where good behavior is rewarded, and I feel this
paradigm in kidlit sets up a false expectation for young readers that life will always be fair if you play by the rules. I intended to show readers that life might
not be fair, you might not get what is due to you, but you can move on….like
the way I learned to move on during times in my life when I wasn’t treated
fairly.
Still, I
let my classmates’ and teacher’s feedback sink in. So I thought for a
long time and finally decided I could try a different approach to my story.
Before arriving there, I also considered my
feelings as an adult about consequences for good and bad behavior. So while
I'm aware there are still terrible, unjust things that happen to many people
around the world, I can't deny that sometimes the universe does come
through, that things go around and come around, both the good and the bad, in
twisted, unexpected ways. Sort of on this topic...Years ago, author Nathan Bransford wrote a post called Doing the Right Thing that I found optimistic and enlightening.
Have
you ever needed some time to process feedback about your writing? What
got in the way of immediate acceptance of the feedback?
How do
you feel about stories where evil triumphs over good?
