Ah! But what about 'we minority' who revel in depression and decadence ... (sinister laugh)? I don't want the light ... I don't want hope. Take me beyond Dante's Inferno ... Take me beyond hell --where even the devil dare not go! (Long sinister laugh). ------------------------------------------------ Be good, wise and strong
As dark as the story demands, without resorting to darkness as cool factor. Which sometimes goes as near as someone dying, and as far as someone waxing rhapsodic about how that dead person's innards cascade out of his slit gut. Torture, cut limbs, poison, graphic pain, the works.
I normally have the antagonist wanting something that the protagonist took from him. It's not really the protagonist fault that the antagonist lose it; it was because of the villian's behavoir towards the main character. And the story gets a little darker as the antagonist tries to defeat him, but that still didn't work, that he wouldn't get back what he once lost, so the villian has to make things lighter to get what he wants.
WE are here ... lurking in the dark! (Sinister seething). Give even a hint of those 'very dar' pieces, and you will hear us! (Sinister hisses). Put even 'one' out there, and our legion will decscend on it like ravenous wolves! Its dark blood dripping from our fangs! (Long howl). --------------------------------------------- Be good, wise and strong
My main project is targeted at children, so the dark aspects of the story are subtly hinted at. I can go as far as putting in sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, statuotory rape, death of a loved one, homelessness, and mutilation into this story, all as long as it is not mentioned in dialogue or witnessed by any of the main characters. It will be lost between the lines to make the universe seem more complete.
Darkness depends on context. It's not all about gore. It's about what the reader expects. You could write a huge zombiepocalypse and not be "dark". But one murder, in the context of a suburban romance, could be VERY dark.
I will write anything. I will not describe anything, though. If there's extreme graphic violence, sex, or graphic sexual violence, I'll imply it. The reader doesn't need me to tell them exactly what happens, and I don't really want to think about what exactly goes down. The exception is if the point of the scene is the graphicness, but it's a tool that I would use sparingly. From an ideological standpoint, I am capable and willing to write pitch black material if that's what I want to tell a story about.
There is something to be said for the implications one's own mind adds to images generally conjured by a book. Saying the screams filled the air as a person was picked apart as easily as a child picks the petals from a flower is enough... No need to describe the tearing of muscles and ligaments and blood that is involved. You can paint a picture deeply enough that the mind fills in the blanks, without going overboard or getting overly violent in text. I think of it in terms of torture techniques. If someone says they are going to rip out fingernails one at a time with pliers, that is pretty fixed. If someone calls another person over and tells/asks them to bring over a pair of pliers, a blow torch, honey, and a fire ant farm, the images your own mind conjures up to figure out what might happen are stronger than if you said it plainly.
There's a book I really enjoyed just because of the "darkness" it reached. Being able to write something like that is one of my objectives. It was something like... killing floor? By somethig Child? hmm. let me investigate... Yes, I remembered correctly, it's Killing Floor by Lee Child. And I just found out it's his first novel, so I'll clearly have to go look for more. That's, of course, unless I'm completely wrong. So I'll do a forum question about a scene I remember. P.S.: However, had I not remembered that particular scene, my answer would've been "Less dark than Baywriter".
Not very. I'll kill myself if I ever find myself lingering on the extremes of human depravity rather than all those lives of quiet desperation.
I go pretty dark with a couple works. I just started writing a book with a very evil MC. This will be the first clearly evil MC that I have written from the evil ones view. Delphi the cold, when she was introduced she was just a anti-social person, but I have been writing the book of what made her into this person, and she just went through her first torture session, this was when she was tattooed. Not sure if I will keep working on "Pet" as a main character. She was a great secondary character, but her life can get pretty dark. Taking her from her adopted slave "parents" because they did not have the perfect slave attitude around her. I think it depends on the work. If its dark just for being dark, I probably wouldn't. But if the story turns dark, then I would probably follow where ever it takes me.
Surely it depends on what you are writing? [Tries to imagine Stephen King's Carrie as it would have been written by Barbara Cartland.]
Dunno I write romantic comedies lol They just always end up going dark. I will write a scene about exploding apples and whoopi cushions and disrupt it with tsunami or an earthquake. Oh he is getting too friendly with that's lover let kill the lover or he can have an affair What are those young lovers doing - I know I need an assassin and a poison arrow. Darkest book I ever wrote began life as a romantic comedy with slapstick humour. Whereas the dark crime book I set out to write has dark moments but is borderline the romantic comedy I usually start out with.
The question should be how can we amplify the panic ,darken the tone, while continuing to show not tell ?
I guess it would also be interesting how "dark" is defined, exactly. I mean, does it imply very perverted/disgusting stuff as well or is it meant to be more like evil and unethical things? If anyone knows The Obelisk by Vladimir Sorokin (warning: reading it will probably make you wanna puke!)... you think that's dark? If you take out things like in The Obelisk (korophilia and other such very strange disgusting things, especially in combination with sexuality), I don't think there's a limit for me. I've never watched a movie or read a story which made me feel like it's gone too far. So I guess there is nothing so dark that I couldn't (or wouldn't want to) write it down. I tend to be quite dark and I like gory details. Some of the stuff I wrote would really disgust most of the readers, I think, but that's how I wanted it to be. I love characters that are kind of evil and psycho and I mostly don't use the victim's perspective. Actually, I have much more problems writing about very deep (positive) feelings, especially love. I think I could never, ever give a detailed description of a couple in love in a romantic situation kissing each other. Yuck! I never used a diary and I absolutely don't understand why people write down private things that they don't want anyone to know. There's always a risk someone will find it and read it. Seems kind of a contradiction. So maybe that's right for diary entries ^^ I think this is always difficult with things you haven't experienced yourself (and neither anything that comes close to it). And I guess that it's more difficult for dark stuff if you use the victim's POV...
It all depends on the plot and characters of the story. I'm working on two projects on the moment. My first project's darkest scene is pretty much just a non-graphic, but very emotional death scene. The second one however, is very dark. It involves a psychopathic father's descent into total evilness; from beating his children as a form of dominance only to have them rebel so he moves on to a planned out emotional betrayal which ends in rape. Then he meets his "Soulmate" and goes onto murder, torture, demonic ceremonies. Although he does have limits: No Cannibalism, No Necrophilia, and No Pedophilia. Everything else is okay in his book. But that's just him. I could easily create another character which does that. I'll never write sexual graphic scenes of any kind and cannibalism is just to creepy for me to write a scene about. Although I will mention it as a horror effect. Torture and violence I will get graphic about, but not to graphic. So I'll pretty much add anything but will hardly get graphic about it.
If you are going to write horror, etc you also need to think about what a person's reaction would really be, not rely on movies. Think about a horrific car accident or bombing as shown in a film, then consider news clips after something similar. The genuine reaction is much messier or sometimes much less dramatic than in movies. I mean, in Japan, a lot of people are just wandering around numb at the moment and I don't think this is necessarily because of 'asiatic character'. The information about killings etc in some books is often very careful and detailed but the reactions of the characters imo don't really ring true, or the writer seems to prefer writing about the gory or tragic scenes but then does not spend long enough dealing with their effects--and in a novel you can really get below the surface of a character into his mind, unlike a movie. I dislike some 'dark' books partly for this. The other reason I usually don't read them is because I don't see any point in filling my mind with sick fake stuff when there's real agony out there. If I am prepared to read descriptions of dismembered bodies I would rather read up on the Boxer Rebellion or the troubles in the Congo, which at least would give me some extra knowledge in undrestanding these countries.
