Don't Forsake Your Story

Dear writer, 

We live in a world bent on diversity. And that can be wonderful, because clearly God has made all men equal. No race and neither sex is anything more or less than human, and no belief warrants cruelty from another. 

And yet, society has taken race, sex, and religion and caused it to further divide, not unite.
But that is a subject for another day. I'm not writing to you to tell you what you very likely already know. I'm here to encourage you, when you're under pressure, to not bend to society.

What I mean by that is that content creators, writers, artists, musicians, film makers, are being pressured to include things in their work that they wouldn't otherwise include, and that's really damaging the world of artistic content. 

Writers are throwing in LGBT+ characters or making characters suddenly become gay or pansexual or asexual or bisexual or what have you, they're plugging in characters of a certain race that weren't there before, they're tossing in characters of some religion, they're shoving in a "strong independent women" attitude in their heroines, they're including arcs that make no sense and they're ruining dynamics, all for the sake of pleasing society. And I have yet to see this be carried out and written well.

Now, I'm not writing this because I am against diversity. I am a Christian and do not believe or support a few religions, beliefs, and the LGBT+ community, but I don't hate the people in them, either. I'm not against strong or independent women, in fact I would love to see them properly depicted more often. And I am not against any race.
What I am thoroughly against, is authors being pressured to include any of the above where it is not due. I am against an author forsaking their story for the sake of pleasing society. 

If you are writing something that includes these things, and they are genuinely a part of the story and the characters, carry on. 

If you are writing something, and shoving in some or all of these things for the sake of society, please, stop. You don't need to please society, it's okay for you to write your story and characters how you want to write them. And if you are called sexist, racist, homophobic, or religion-ist, then so be it. You know that you aren't those things, you know that you are staying true to your story. Your story, writing style, and character development will suffer greatly if you force yourself to write something that is wrong for the story, and you'll lose the good readers.

Then there's all the stuff that isn't political or about diversity, it's about your writing choices.
If you choose to have a character do X thing, or if you move the plot in this way when someone suggest you do the other way, or if you cut or add a character, or how you end the story, it is all up to you. The decisions you make in a story are yours to make.
Receiving advice, constructive criticism, having someone to help you brainstorm, being given word choice suggestions, these are all great things. But at the end of the day, those things are just ideas. Ideas that you don't have to take or follow through with. Sometimes, maybe you should, and when they're coming from experienced writers they're especially worth considering. 

Still, the only person who knows your story as well and in-depth as possible is you. You know things that may never make it into the book, you know minuet things about the characters that still manage to affect decisions, you know how you want your story to be received, you know the atmosphere and aesthetic and plot and every little thing so much better then anyone else ever could. So only you can make the decisions as to where your story goes and where it's written, and if something suggested to you feels wrong, you are under no obligation to go through with the suggested idea.

Stay true to your stories, friends. 

    Yours,

                   ~ Edna Pellen