The Moral Escalator: Making Goodness the Main Action of a Story
Author Regina Linke discusses the moral escalator and how making goodness the main action of a story can be very powerful for readers.
As a writer, I fully admit that when you have sex and scandal, power and violence, and satire and humor as potential tools to spice up a story, why would someone choose goodness as the main action?
I like to think of a character's morality as an escalator in a multi-level mall. The escalator isn't the point of a shopping trip, but it can move a character up or down, ultimately determining which stores he's able to shop at. As goodness and badness are simply different directions on the same mechanism, they become portals for a writer to open up different dimensions in which a character can operate.
To make goodness the main action of a story, therefore, is a deliberate choice on the part of the writer to make the story one with moral depth, in which kindness offers the solution that violence cannot.
As a creator of picture books, I find one of the best examples is Aesop's fable, The Lion and the Mouse. The lion grants the mouse its freedom and is rewarded for his mercy later, when the mouse frees him from the ropes of a hunter's trap. The lion chooses goodness despite its going against his natural impulse to do the exact opposite and ultimately reaps the benefit of his mercy.
A slightly different but maybe more charming example is the folk tale Stone Soup, in which a clever traveler tricks a village of struggling neighbors to pool their individual ingredients into a delicious soup that feeds the entire community. In this story, the reader is made increasingly aware of the moral escalator, but the characters themselves don't realize they had ridden it to a higher level until the very end.
While these old stories have stood the test of time, modern ones that place goodness front and center like A Sick Day for Amos McGee or Last Stop on Market Street, continue to find a place in the hearts of children and the grownups who read with them. I think this is important to note, because in a world of endless entertainment possibilities and money to be made from them, it's easy to look at adult media and be distracted by the sheer volume of material that's dominated by sex, scandal, power, violence, satire, and comedy. But take a moment to look at what we write for our youngest readers, and notice what we create for them. What we create for the most innocent is, deep down, what we yearn for ourselves and the kind of world we'd like to live in. While the ego might arm itself with cynicism, the soul blooms in goodness, awakens in hopefulness, and rejoices in kindness.
I think this is why while successful stories for adults indeed might involve aspects of sex, violence, or comedy, the ones that really spur our personal examination and personal growth, are those that make room for heart. They ignite us with a dose of faith in humanity and appreciation for its small yet significant moments of grace, rather than leave us languishing in bitterness and despair. The most inspiring stories of all are in fact, not works of fiction, but memoirs and biographies that chronicle the difficult choices real people made—much as the lion did the mouse—to be kind rather than to harm.
What all stories that effectively feature goodness as a dominant driver and life antidote have in common is they walk the fine line of showing the benefits of goodness through example without using direct, sanctimonious threats or fear, to encourage readers to meditate on the moral escalator for themselves. This, of course, is more easily said than done.
If the writer must take some focus of a shopping trip away from the purchases in the mall and redirect it on a background operation, he must do so without putting too much attention on the escalator ride itself and trapping the character on an infinite ride with no resolving action. He also has to consider the distance traveled on the escalator and make sure it reflects a realistic level of moral development or moral degradation. Make the ride too great a leap, and the reader gives up on story for being completely unachievable, unbelievable, and therefore personally irrelevant.
Making goodness the primary action might not be right for every story, but if you find a chance to highlight goodness at a critical inflection point, take that extremely powerful opportunity to open a different dimension not just for the character in question, but for the collective conscience of your readers. It just might take your story to a completely different level.
Check out Regina Linke's Little Helper here:
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