The danger in balance is tenable plot arc. If you are shooting for reconciliation, great. If you are aiming for a treatise on misunderstood intention causing catastrophe, well..you may end up with an epic read and re-read in literature classes for generations to come, but it may not make Amazon's top 500 =)
I intuit that you could pull off a fair examination of both sides of any given story better than most. My peanut gallery points:
1. Character identification: a) Vulnerabilities - embedding the characters with weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that resonate with the reader - I love Gemmel's characters, if for no other reason. Druss makes a dayamed good flawed hero. b) Redeeming traits - surprisingly noble, stand up and be inspired, behavior from less desirable characters.
2. Mitigating background that puts otherwise untoward behavior into - if not a rational context - at least an understandable one. Requoting Longfellow: If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find there enough sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility. The big mitigating forces being those very things over which the characters have zero control: circumstance, developmental neglect and/or abuse, genetic limitations or predispositions, and personal history forged over a lifetime which cast certain events into incontrovertible predictions - regardless of whether the perception is valid or no. Self-fulfilling prophecy shades of the Montagues and Capulets, perhaps?
3. Ubuntu: For philosophical back story try Desmond Tutu's
No future without forgiveness He translates an ecosystem world view of the South African tribes into something like: 'What dehumanizes you dehumanizes me, to forgive isn't noble, it is the best form of self-interest'. Permitting the plot arc to take you to short term victory that ends in long term suffering for the victor may support such a theme.
4. Dressing up familiar themes in new garb. Lucas's rewrite of Taoism as the 'force' in the Star Wars universe is a good example. A step further, though, for comparable sympathy rather than juxtapose ego against interconnectedness, just use the two compliments. Yin and Yang, intended to be complimentary and both needing each other to be whole, but dissembled into antagonism, makes for a compelling conflict.
5. Shared stage time: Perhaps overly obvious, but worth re-mentioning, equal narrative attention. Human nature is easy sympathy, guided by propinquity. But if we feel equally close to both sides? Harder to take sides.
6. Competing priorities: I rarely face life dilemmas between world changing good and apocalyptic evil. I am defined much more by the common but subtle choices. Plot arcs leading to choices between good and good, or good and maybe a little better, would lend a real life quality to the story if you could write it convincingly.
7. Rather than write archetypal characters, allow them to change and either grow or be subverted through the text. Or even change their positions based on the acquisition of new information.
8. Do the same with the reader. Lead the reader through various sympathy shifts before leveling the story field. 'Wait I like her, no him, no her."
9. Write to
your strengths. Help the reader challenge their own implicit assumptions. To my mind this is your signature gift.
10. Don't over think it. Rumi penned "people spend their lives stringing and unstringing their instruments. They are always getting ready to live." Your signature gift can be a compulsive weakness to flawlessness.
Just write and see what happens. And whatever you do,
don't write the epic that will be read and re-read. Just write to write
If you ever decide to take on beta-readers, please add me to the applicant pool.
