Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--J is for Justice (and why we need it in stories)

I’m a middle child.

You can go ahead and think of all the stereotypes about middle children having an overdeveloped sense of justice. In my case, they’re entirely true.

It’s one of the things I liked about fairy tales when I was growing up. I loved seeing brave and good heroes and heroines (especially the heroines) get rewarded. Even more, I liked seeing bad things happened to the bad people who deserved them. I wanted justice to be served, and like the boy in my favorite movie, The Princess Bride, it bothered me when it wasn’t. It bothered me because it just wasn’t fair.

“What did you read me this thing for?!”

When I was little and pointed out that my dad was being unfair about something, he replied, “Life isn’t fair.”

Well, I never expected life to be fair. I expected him to be fair. Just because life isn’t fair, that’s no excuse for people to be unfair. Heck, if anything, that’s even more reason for people—especially parents—to be fair, to make up for the injustices of life.

And I feel that’s even more true when it comes to writers and the stories we tell, particularly stories for children.

What’s the point of telling a fictional story if doesn’t right the wrongs of life? What’s the point of telling a story if it doesn’t give us something we don’t get in real life: justice?

Of course, not all classic fairy tales have just endings. The original Little Mermaid doesn’t. I hated that story when I was little. I hated how the Little Mermaid, who only wanted to love and be loved, had to pay for her bravery and devotion to the stupid prince with her life. That was so unfair!

 Of course, years later, Disney fixed it. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt that story needed to be fixed and justice needed to be served. Someone at Disney felt that way, too.

One of the things I’ve done time and again in this blog is show writers easy ways to come up with story ideas. Here’s another: if there’s something in a classic story that you don’t like—whether it’s a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, an ancient Greek myth, or a Shakespeare play—write a story inspired by it and fix the part that you don’t like.

I did that with Don Quixote when I wrote Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey. I love Don Quixote, but I hate the ending. Why does he have to give up on his dream and die? Actually, I know the reason. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in parts, and while he was still writing it, readers said that the main character needed to wake up and stop dreaming. Of course, once he gave up on his dreams, there really was no reason for him to keep living. Hence the tragic ending to what should be a comedy. When I wrote Dan Quixote and put the story of Don Quixote into a modern middle-school American setting, I fixed the part I thought was wrong and gave it the just ending it deserved.

A lot of the adaptations we see today are about righting literary wrongs.

The Wicked Witch of the West, for example, was never actually shown to be evil in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. Sure, everyone hates her, but why? The worst thing we see her do is take Toto away from the girl who killed her sister (yes, it was an accident, but still) and stole her sister’s magical shoes. Can we really blame the witch? And why is Oz so great? He manipulates a girl to kill someone for him. He basically turns Dorothy into a mercenary. Really? So I’m glad to see adaptations like Wicked, adaptations that right the wrongs.

 The same goes for the movie Maleficent. Originally the character was awful, but we never got to hear her side of the story. And Aurora? All she does is sleep, and we’re supposed to root for her? And her happy ending is that a prince kisses her while she’s asleep? Yeesh! The new movie fixes all of that, and I’m glad it does.

I also like adaptations that fix social injustices in fairy tales, the way Ella Enchanted and Disney’s latest live action Cinderella movie attempt to fix the inherent sexism of the original Cinderella fairy tale.

So if you’re looking for an easy way to write a story, just look for a story old enough to be in the public domain that has something unjust about it and make it just. Fix it. Right the wrongs.

Life might be unfair, but you don’t have to accept it. You can be a literary superhero. 

An Author Visit Program to Help Promote Self-Esteem and Combat Bullying

I need feedback on a possible author visit program that addresses bullying, and I hope you'll help. 

I'm going to be sending out flyers for my funny, middle-grade novel, Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey to schools, and at the bottom of the flyer, I want to offer an option of Skype or local in-person classroom visits. Dan Quixote deals with the power of friendship and self-esteem to overcome peer pressure and bullying, so I want to offer a program focused on that. 

This is the idea I have for the class. Each student will be given two pieces of paper. 

I will start by talking about being a geek and what it means to me. I think geeks are people who are passionate about something to the point where they don't care what other people think. I'm a geek about books, Doctor Who, The Princess Bride, technology, Eureka, Mythbusters, and lots of other things. I just love them all so much. I love books so much that I have a huge library in my apartment with probably around a thousand books. I love The Princess Bride so much that I can quote about half the movie. Some people are geeks about the TV show Glee, which makes them Gleeks. Some people are geeks about Star Trek, which makes them Trekkers. There are also theater geeks, band geeks, rock-climbing geeks, and people who are geeky about pretty much anything you can imagine. 

At the top of the first piece of paper, each student should write down something they're geeky about. I would point out that I think being a geek is a good thing, and I feel sorry for anyone who either hasn't found something they love that much or is too afraid to admit what they're geeky about. When they're done writing, I would explain that, in the book, the class queen bee bullies Dan for being a geek. On the same piece of paper, I want them to write three things a bully like the class queen bee might say to make you feel bad about the one thing you're most passionate about. 

Illustration from Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey--
Sandy discovers Dan's beloved notebook after queen bee Jade trashes it

When the kids are done with that, all of those pieces of paper will be folded and put into a box. The students would then randomly pick out one of those pieces of paper. 

I'll then say, "In my novel, Dan realizes that being a geek is a good thing, and Sandy steps in to show her support. She stands up for him. On the second piece of paper, I want you to pretend you're either Dan or Sandy, and I want you to write five things in response to the bully, focusing only on why it's good to be geeky about that one thing, not about the bully or the bullying. Just keep it positive. Pretend you're standing up for something you or your friend loves."  

I would then ask each of the students to read out their five responses. 

In the end, I would ask students how it feels to read the things they wrote and how it feels to hear these things. I would ask them to carry that feeling with them. Each one of them can be Dan or Sandy. They just have to believe in their own passions and support their friends' right to love the things they're passionate about. We're all geeks in some way, and that's a great thing, because passionate people make a difference in the world. 

So what do you think? Does it sound like a good author visit and could it help combat bullying by building self-esteem?