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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43920
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43920
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Yes, success implies validation and agreement by the author. I say that for the obvious reason; you wrote the fiction, you designed the plot, you let the bully win. Don't say, "That's how the world is." Reality is no excuse for writing bad fiction; and you are the God of the world you write, so the world in your book is how you choose to write it, God.

Readers look for _realism_ they can relate to, but they are not looking for **reality** in fiction. Reality is unutterably cruel, cutting off promising young lives without reason, visiting hardships, poverty and injuries unto innocents by the millions with randomized abandon. In reality, the evil get away with their crimes against others for a lifetime, and often die peacefully of old age in the comforts of the palaces they built stealing the lives of the innocent, feeling no guilt for the lives they ruined. In **reality** , good seldom conquers evil, because the good are restrained by morals that do not encumber the truly evil.

We all know it; crime pays, and the criminals have no sympathy for their victims, and no qualms about destroying innocent lives to make a dollar or protect themselves from justice.

Fiction is a place where the author has the power to let good triumph over evil, and people read to **escape** reality, and be inspired, and watch a good person (as they feel themselves to be) that is trod upon rise up and find a way to _beat_ evil.

There is a reason happy endings in fiction outsell unhappy endings by a factor of ten.

We read fiction to be **entertained.** Anybody entertained by endless march of evil in the real world, by the depressing ways that selfishness and corruption and crime constantly triumphs over the good and innocent without retribution, can turn on the news. There are tons of real examples far worse than your example, of women and children being murdered for attending church, or a concert, or _school._ OF sex slaves, and so-called "honor" killings. Of families begging for help being torn apart and imprisoned, crimes by leaders which will forever go unpunished.

When I pick up a book, I do expect some evil to motivate the story line, but I do not want or expect **reality,** because I expect good to triumph over evil in the end. Even if the price is high. Find a way to write a happy ending; the power to make your world a better place is literally in your hands.

Original score: 4