Writers are too nice? I disagree, sir.

I recently read a quote from David Baboulene, who suggested that writers were too nice.  "They empower the good," he says.  He goes on to suggest that we should do the opposite to get a good story .  Sorry, Mr. Baboulene, but I couldn't disagree more.  

I'm sick of seeing crime books with black covers and blood all over them, and 'dead' or 'death' in their titles.  I've come to think of these covers as cheap tricks to accentuate the bad for sales purposes.

One of my writing friends once called me the most moral person she'd ever met.  Before then I'd never thought of myself as a fighter for good.  But her words set me off on a journey of self-analysis.  And I had to admit she was right.

I don't want to delve into darkness for the sake of cheap entertainment.  Because I just don't feel that's right.  And remember that we get what we focus on.  Be careful what you wish for, the old saying goes.  After Brexit and President Trump, we've had a stark lesson in how that works.

Too many people feed themselves an an unrelenting TV diet of terrorism and death, and of "angry" people.  Yes, all those things do exist, but here's the big secret.  That darkness is only a small part of all the things that go on all over the surface of our planet every day.  

Let's look at some examples of the good.  Conservationists have recently announced that tiger numbers are rising again.  There is an elephant nursery in Nairobi that takes in tiny, frightened, orphaned elephants, raises them to adulthood, and returns them to the wild.  The love, the sheer dedication, of the people who do this work is humbling, but how often do we hear about it?  Not on the doom-laden news, that's for sure.

These inspiring stories can still provide enough conflict for fiction.  How about the fight against poachers, the threat of running out of money, or having a patron pull out of financing your wildlife reserve?  All these struggles would made good stories, but they're positive struggles.

And the characters who fight those battles are going to be good guys, backed into some very tight corners and fighting for their values.  Now that's the kind of story I want to read, Mr. Baboulene.