Challenging Authors To Write The Flip Side

Bloggers, vloggers and entertainment tip givers are shooting down cliches everywhere. Watch out for this cliche! Watch out for that cliche! But there's one form of cliche almost no one goes for: the minority viewpoint. I'm talking about how so many stories are told from the major group instead of the smaller group. I'm talking about how so many stories are told from a classic good instead of a classic bad.

Get ready for my challenge for authors to start writing the flip side.

A Little Backstory

A while ago, I've been reading a bunch of historical fiction about the World Wars. Do you know who the main character was in almost every one of them? That's right. Either a Jew or an evacuee. Sometimes a male soldier. 

Source: Tenor

Eventually, it became the same thing over and over again. A Jew and their family became devastated by German soldiers and the Jew suffered throughout the whole story. However, they stolidly kept fighting and surviving until the end. 

A young child (often with family issues) is sent out of London to someplace in the country and is forced to live with a stranger. Over time, they begin to love the new person and don't want to go back. 

The problem with this is that in every portrayal, Germany is the bad guy. Sorry not sorry, but Germany isn't the bad guy. Blame Austria.

I'm kidding. Germany shouldn't be called the bad guy because not every German wanted the war. It's not even entirely the Nazi's fault because many people were forced to join out of threats or necessity. It's Hitler you should call the bad guy. (Unless you're writing from Hitler's perspective.) 

What he did is objectively horrible. Can we all agree on that? I don't believe we should justify his actions unless there's someone else to explicitly say or show it's wrong. But what about German people who didn't want the war? What about the female soldiers and nurses? What about people fighting the after-effects? 

Yes, the Jews went through terrible circumstances and that deserves to be shown to the world. Yes, the evacuees were through heartbreaking times and that also deserves to be shown. However, there's already many stories showing that. Maybe it's time to show a different perspective.

What Doesn't Count

I'm not talking about books that just happen to be during the war but are about other things, like Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. True, they're young people forced to evacuate because of the war but we all know they are magically transported to a fantasy world, making it fantasy, not hi-fi.

So...

Source: Giphy

Books Without The Flip

Here are three examples that don't show the flip side. Note that these aren't necessarily bad stories. In fact, the first two books explore mental illness and disability respectively on top of the war theme. However, they still qualify for this list because they don't flip.

Goodnight Mr Tom 

This is a classic evacuee story. The main character is called Will and he is sent to a Mister Tom, a grumpy old man living alone in the country. Hurting from his mother's abuse, he blossoms under Tom's care and begins to love the old man. And of course, the threat of war hovers over them. 

To be fair, war isn't entirely central to the story, but I'm still counting this as an unworthy example because the evacuee theme is fairly prominent.

The War That Saved My Life

Admittedly, I don't remember much from this one because it's one of the earliest books I read, so if I get the description wrong, too bad. (Just kidding. Please leave a friendly comment below!)

This book is similar to Goodnight Mr Tom except the main character is a girl named Ada. Her abusive mother tries to keep her home because Ada's club foot serves as an embarrassment but when her younger brother is evacuated, she runs away with him. They are sent to a lady named Susan who begrudgingly takes them in and eventually, familial love becomes mutual. 

Again, the evacuee story we've read too many times. However, it does get points for having a female main character.

This Book With A Title I Can't Remember

The main character is Jew whose family is forcibly separated by Germans. The family struggles to survive and one by one, they die, leaving the main character by himself until he is rescued by a nice English couple. However, the couple become targets of the Germans and the Jew has to go on the run again. 

The Germans are continually the bad guy. It's an English couple, not a German couple, who rescues the main character. If it was a German couple to balance the first Germans introduced, it would have shown that not all Germans were supporting the war. But this is not so.

Books With The Flip

The Book Thief

Finally. A German main character. Liesel is a German girl who goes to live with a German family who are suffering under German rule. 

Markus Zusak writes this story from Death's perspective, who is an omniscient first person narrator. We see representatives from different nationalities during Death's collecting. When Death takes an interest in Liesel, we get to see how hard a German family's life was when they opposed the Nazis and during the story, we also see how German people who supported the movement suffered.

Through Max, a Jewish boy, we get a snippet of a German-Jew friendship and how some Germans helped the Jews. This all helps readers understand that not all the Germans were evil.

Not many people are daring enough to write from this perspective, so kudos to the brave souls who do.

The Girl From Snowy River

This is about Flinty, a young girl struggling to survive after World War One. Her family went through hard times and now it's up to Flinty to take care of her younger siblings. 

What makes this unique is that it's taken from the perspective of a female living through the aftereffects. There's two things we don't see often. To all the guys (and girls) out there, the girls went through a lot too, okay? That's all I have to say to that.

The aftereffects is also rare because most authors write about conflict during the war but not after the war. I don't know why since the consequences still affected so many families, but this is another option to consider.

To Love A Sunburnt Country

I kind of cheated with this one because it's by the same author from the same series as The Girl From Snowy River, but Jackie French is truly a legend.

Nancy has gone to Singapore to be with sister-in-law, Moira, and niece, Gavin, so they can return to Australia together, but they get caught by the Japanese. Again, it's a female protagonist.

But the unique aspects is that it describes the life of prisoners under Japanese rule. You'd think there would be more stories where the life of the POW is described, but there aren't. They lived a hard life too and yet they survived. French also reminds us that the Japanese were on the German side. Not only that, but we are brought to sympathise with the Japanese because, like the Germans, not all of them supported the war.

Thank you Jackie French for all your flip sides!

Some Other World War Ideas

Keeping to the World War theme, here are some other perspectives to try.

• A German
• A female nurse
• A female soldier
• The pilots
• The people left behind
• People living with the aftereffects
• Parents of evacuees

There are so many other perspectives to try. Let your imagination loose. Be brave, be bold! 

The Final Challenge

I hereby challenge all you who read this to write the flip side. I know I've mostly been talking about World War stories, but do this for whatever story you want to write. Think deeply about every perspective possible and write the unique one! Choosing to write from a different perspective can give your story a lot of novelty and increase reader enjoyment. Think about how much people enjoyed The Book Thief.

Do you accept?

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The challenge to write the flip side is issued. Who will accept?

Are you going to accept the challenge? Leave a comment below. If you liked this post, be sure to share, follow and eat chocolate for more content! (Eat chocolate anyway.)