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I'm thinking about a YA dystopian novel and have planned it quite thoroughly. However, when I look back, the antagonists tend to always be a few steps ahead of my protagonist, and my protagonist is...
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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/34186 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
I'm thinking about a YA dystopian novel and have planned it quite thoroughly. However, when I look back, the antagonists tend to always be a few steps ahead of my protagonist, and my protagonist is always _just_ too late to stop the antagonist. This happens multiple times during my novel, and even at the end, my protagonist fails to achieve his main goal (but he _does_ wound one of the antagonists fatally). In the sequels I've planned (if my novel is a hit), the protagonists still keep on failing, only ever winning the final battle of the series (so they continually fail but win the most important battle). My question: Is this bad? Should I make my protagonist triumph fully at the end of the book?