Young Writers Society

I've decided to start a realistic YA book. The main character (Sunny) is a biracial amputee with an evil older sister (Pennington, his only family); some side characters are their racist neighbor (Danielle); two middle-school-aged advocates (Riley and Anna) who aren't taken seriously because they're so young; and two sapphic college students (Mae and Sarah) who end up becoming girlfriends and overcoming homophobia. There's also a plotline about a social worker named Betty, who tries to help Sunny escape his sister, but keeps dropping the case at the last minute due to cowardice/fear for her reputation (Pennington is well-respected in the community).

My issues with this:
1. I've published some works, so I have a small to medium readership....but most of my fans are very conservative Christians. They'd think this was too "social justice" related. Especially with the inclusion of Mae and Sarah....how do I stay true to my idea, while not losing readers?
2. A simpler problem, but am I taking on too many stories at once?
3. Any ideas for an ending? Should it be happy, sad, or somewhere in between?

Hey, BeTheChange! Interesting idea you have there! Hmm, let me see...

First of all, I don't find a solid plot for this, since you only mention Pennington as being the evil sister without telling us how she treats Sunny. Does it have something to do with the fact that Sunny is a boy and yet have a girl's name (I assume so because from what I've read, only girls are named Sunny)? Is Sunny girlish, or deemed weak? Also, saying Pennington as evil already puts her in the villain trope? Do you have any way to make it so that she is three-dimensional with her own reasons of treating Sunny badly?

The same goes to Danielle, who can't be all a racist person. I find that people in general are more gray than white/black, in the sense that they have some likeable and dislikeabe traits, the difference being which traits dominate.

As for your question:

1. Write it for yourself first. Thinking what others might think of your story will put aside some of the honesty you want to put into words, turning it to be superficial or exclusively catering to people's taste. You have to stay true to yourself, but in a way that doesn't paint the people who have opposite opinions as pure evil. I think being sensitive to each of your characters can help making them sympathetic, believable ones and aids your readers to understand this is the depiction of real life/what it could've been without making it political.

2. Well, I don't think they would be too much if you maintain them as sub-plots. The story can't revolve around the protagonist only, after all. You only need to put in the sub-plots enough so that they don't take away the main plot - employ them as minimum as you can. To be safe, keep them two or three in a novel.

3. Your choice! It can go either way, so decide which one do you think is best for the story. As you write it, your decision might change depending on how the story leads itself. You're making the first draft, anyway, so alter it in future drafts if you think there's a better ending for it.

I hope this helps, and good luck!

Thank you!
I'm still debating on the plot and Pennington's motivation...
she deems him weak, but mainly because he's missing an arm. Also, she feels annoyed that she has to provide for him after their parents' death--she believes that it's interfering with her desire/goal to become a police officer.

So I guess she's not 100% evil, just kind of vindictive and bitter.

Here's the best advice I've ever seen regarding representation if you are not of the group being represented:

Write about that group. Don't write what it's like to be part of that group.

Translation:

Have an amputee character. Have a gay character. Have a character whose skin tone doesn't match yours. Have them experience things as a result of their amputation, because of their orientation, because of their skin colour. But don't build the whole plot around this experience, because it's not your story to tell.

Is this rule broken all the time? You bet. One of my favourite books breaks this rule pretty spectacularly, although it was heavily primary-sourced researched in order to be accurate and respectful. And if you're going to break this rule, you owe it to the people you're representing to do that.

Sensitivity readers exist. They are very important to have, because they let you know of really toxic tropes that perpetuate a lot of harm in your writing. Blogs like writing with color and script lgbt are designed to help you tackle these sorts of questions and representation issues. Read their archives, then use them yourself if your question hasn't been answered.

When it comes to avoiding losing readers, you can't. Some people are just going to be bigoted and refuse to listen, and will dislike any inch of inclusion. Let them, you don't need them. If you want to have a story tailored to them, that's something else entirely, but it's not going to be for the people you are writing about— and that means alienating the people who would see themselves in the characters.

I'd say you are taking on too many stories at once simply because this looks like a lot of identity stories fragmented up. If these are all part of your identity— that's fine! Write as much as you want about yourself. But if you're writing about them because you want to save the world, stop for a sec and read this.

As for ending, be very aware of tropes such as Bury Your Gays, Tragic Lesbians (there was a time when it was contractually forbidden for same sex romances to end happily), and the general shafting of disabled individuals. I can tell you right now that the abusive older sister who hates her disabled younger brother is a very dangerous trope and feeds into the general cultural attitude disabled people are burdens not worth taking care of.

Hope this helps.

...I was with you until the last paragraph.
I’m sorry if my idea is deemed “dangerous”, but I’m disabled (in a different way), and I’ve been abused for it. So, to me, it isn’t dangerous to have a reflection of real life...

@BeTheChange I think Rosey meant more along the lines of "don't always validate the characters who hate disabled people and make their opinions right all the time"

Obviously you can show bigotry, and while it's right to make your main character wrong some of the time, it's plain abusive to any disabled community to make his sister right if she thinks "disabled people are a burden" - she can be right about the state of the economy, or about some philosophical message, but if she says "disabled people are awful" and that opinion is validated in the text, that's where it really enters in.

Is just plain having this character harmful? It depends on if the story you want to tell is totally centered around Sunny's disability or not. It depends on how you want readers to come away from the book in general.

I'd argue that sometimes it IS dangerous to have a reflection of real life, if you're writing a story that isn't supposed to be a deep reflection of society and life with a disability. I'm autistic, but I don't seek out books with abused autistic characters - and if I get the hint there is one, I'll put a book down. It makes me severely uncomfortable, not in the least because it replaces their identity - real, rich, soulful identities - with a single word.

Abused. Abused as a child. Abused by his family. Abused and abandoned.

You're going to alienate people no matter what. But consider the type of story you're telling, settle on a plot, and decide whether or not it's completely necessary.

Personally, I don't like it and wouldn't read it the way it is now. But I'm one person, and I'm not you.

Just something to think about.

Of COURSE I wouldn't validate that view in the text. She's a VILLAIN, and her viewpoint is HORRIBLE!

I apologize for how I came across. I really should've been a bit more careful with my wording.

Disclaimer: I'm disabled and have been abused for it, too.

My point is there are a lot of those stories. It's good she's a villain with that attitude! It's a generally good thing to show those views as negative.

But there are a lot of them. Yes it's a reflection on real life, yes it's terrible, but sometimes you end up just... not giving disabled characters an escape, y'know?

If you want to insert that in because you want to work through your own pain, I'm not going to stop you. Writing often is meant to work through our own pain. I've been there. I've written out my abuse over and over and over until the narrative stops hurting me. And for making you feel that you can't write about real life, I apologize.

I was trying to point out that a lot of disabled people are tired of that trope, or at least, of that trope having an unhappy ending. Unfortunately for writers like you, a lot of people do validate that opinion in text. The autistic community right now is dealing with two "Autism Mom" narratives that are highly praised but generally paint autistic kids as terrible. And even with the disclaimers that she's a bad person, I'm prone to repeating notes about how you do have to be careful with people being abusive towards disabled people.

Giving the disabled character an unhappy ending is the dangerous part.

Again, I am sorry for not being more careful.