Writing Clean—Part 2

Here is my part two to my initial post about writing clean fiction! This one is specifically directed to some claims I’ve seen about clean fiction in general. Read carefully!

Something I've noticed as a writer and reader in the clean fiction space is that a lot of readers expect there to be no bad at all—not just in content, but in action. No good character can ever act badly. No good character can fight evil in a way that looks imperfect. If the bad side throws a punch and the good side punches back, that's somehow wrong. The argument becomes “don't return evil for evil,” which sounds reasonable until you actually examine it.

There is a significant difference between fighting back darkness and committing random acts of cruelty. And for anyone who has read the Bible, the idea that good characters must remain passive and pristine is a strange one.

Jael drives a tent peg through the temple of Sisera. Deborah and Barak go to war. David asks the Lord in the Psalms to drive his enemies against the rocks—and then goes and does it himself, repeatedly, to defend Israel. Elijah calls fire down on the prophets of Baal. Samson kills the Philistines and himself when he breaks the building they’re in down, crushing them all. Jesus makes a whip, flips tables, and calls the religious leaders whitewashed tombs full of dead bones. (YIKES!)

The Bible’s heroes are not soft. They are not pristine. They fight, and sometimes the fight is not pretty.

Good doesn’t always mean soft and pristine. 

A book can be clean, but not toothless. In fact, good doesn’t mean toothless. Clean doesn't mean consequence-free. And a story without real conflict, real resistance, real darkness being genuinely opposed—isn’t a clean story. But it is hollow!

The Bible defines good as many things: Hebrew tov (good) in Genesis isn't a moral category initially. It means functional, fitting, working as it should. Light is good because it does what light does. It's closer to right order than niceness. In the wisdom literature (Proverbs, Psalms), good is relational and active. The good person defends the poor, executes justice, opposes the wicked. It’s never passive. The Greek agathos in the New Testament similarly carries weight and agency. It's goodness that does something. The good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine. The good Samaritan crosses social boundaries and gets his hands dirty. What the Bible almost never defines as good? Inaction in the face of evil. In fact the closest thing to a condemnation of that is the lukewarm church in Revelation—neither hot nor cold, spit out.

In terms of my books (Camp specifically), of course, the characters of Camp are flawed, young kids battling it out with Pseudo, teachers, bad grades, and sometimes even their own side—because, well, they’re human. Ronan’s fierceness gets her into trouble. Winn’s need to conquer is all-encompassing. Riordan’s humor is occasionally misplaced. These are not pristine heroes. They are kids, and they are going to fight back against the bad in ways that are sometimes shocking, hard to swallow, and even strange. But that’s the point.

There’s also a misconception worth addressing directly: the idea that the Camp characters are matching the bad side blow for blow, returning evil for evil in equal measure. That’s simply not what's happening. These kids have to be pushed to an edge before they push back—and even then, they’re fourteen and fifteen years old navigating something they were never prepared for. Their responses are proportional, imperfect, and completely human. The flaws in how they fight back are features of their age and their situation, not endorsements of bad behavior. A teenager who snaps after being relentlessly provoked is not the moral equivalent of the person doing the provoking.

To that point, David uses a sling and a stone against Goliath, and Goliath dies. He then cuts his head off. Goliath was threatening the Israelites with death. David returned the favor. And we call it one of the greatest victories in Scripture, a win for Israel brought through God. Nobody reads that story and accuses David of returning evil for evil.

My belief is this: characters must respond to the darkness, not absorb it. Will they always be right in how they respond? No. But that's part of the story—and part of being human.

xx RJ