Note: This article, It’s Not Wrong to Make Your Novel Dark (Here’s How to Do It), first appeared in MetaStellar’s Writing Advice of the Week.
There’s dark fiction, dark fantasy, grimdark, and straight-up horror. All of these genres carry dark and potentially disturbing elements. Some readers like it, and others don’t. However, if you want to write a dark novel or include dark themes in your writing, you can absolutely do that! If you feel that this is the path your story must take, then go for it!
However, sometimes writers stray into the territory of shock value and excessiveness, where the dark aspects don’t seem to hold any purpose. Instead, everything is dark for the sake of being dark. There’s a right way and a wrong way to include dark themes in your work. Read on to find out more.
Prepare Your Reader for Dark Elements
The biggest pitfall when including dark elements in your story is failing to prepare your reader for the elements you include. This is especially true when things are done for pure shock. It often rubs readers the wrong way and prevents them from continuing their reading unless they have a strong stomach. Whether you’re writing in a darker genre or you want to include darker elements, you need to prepare your reader for what’s coming.
Imagine, as an example, that your main protagonist is wandering through the woods, and they come across a coven of witches performing gruesome human sacrifice. This is where things get dark, but you can prepare your readers. What happens when you do this? Well, it actually works in your favor in multiple ways.
- Your story builds tension. You build up toward something that’s going to be important, and as your character moves through the forest, they become more apprehensive, anticipating that something is going to happen.
- Your readers start to get anxious (and want to read more). At the same time, your readers also get anxious to find out what’s going to happen and what could possibly be in the forest. They prepare for something dark and treacherous based on the context clues you give throughout the passage.
So when you prepare your readers and allow them to anticipate something dark that’s going on, then you allow your readers to become more invested. Of course, sometimes readers will stop reading, but that’s fine! They were warned, and they decided not to continue. That was their decision, and you can’t control it. However, you can control what you put on paper.
Avoid Shock (Unless It Has a Point)
Sometimes dark elements in books come out of nowhere. Characters unexpectedly die, or unpleasant things happen. When you throw in something dark randomly that confuses or disturbs readers for no reason, you’ll encounter reader problems. Shock value, above all, doesn’t add to your story and instead takes readers out of the moment.
All the examples I can think of are a little lurid to put in this article. So I’m making one up again. Imagine your main protagonist escapes a haunted house after spending the entire story trying to escape. Then all of a sudden, they’re hit by a bus. All their work was for nothing, and the ending came out of nowhere. This was done purely for shock. It’s also absurdly dark if you add details about how their death was horrifying. It’s fine if you want to include a plot twist or something that comes out of nowhere, but it needs to have a point in your story. If you don’t have a point, the shock only serves to upset the reader.
You might want to do that. Or you might want to avoid that. Here’s how to make something shocking in your story have a point.
- Establish this is how your world works. If you have a fantasy world where dragons frequently eat people, and you get into the gory details, be sure to establish that this is the norm and the conflict the characters push back against. It’ll become a dark element to your story that prepares your readers for when, if ever, it happens again
- Establish that this was something that had to happen. Say you have a character that suddenly contracts cancer and, not long later, dies. You might go into detail about how they die, and it can get gruesome, but if you establish that this death was the natural order of things, this adds to the dark themes of your work while also adding more depth to your story.
Remember to Let Your Readers (and Characters) Breathe
Lastly, you need to think about your story’s characters as well as your readers. Allow your characters to relax. They don’t always need to experience shocking events. Having terrible things happen one after the other does multiple things to your story.
- Your structure isn’t able to build properly. Traumatic event after traumatic event doesn’t move the plot forward. Worse, it also draws the focus away from any type of structure you need for your story. So you’re focusing on making something shocking and dark rather than moving the story forward.
- It keeps your characters from growing and developing. Since they’re always experiencing trauma and not growing from it, your characters aren’t able to advance along with the plot. This affects everything from being able to make decisions to having quiet moments of character development.
- Readers won’t be able to keep up and find the book exhausting. Readers like it when dark elements show up in fiction, but if it’s all dark and shocking, things keep showing up one after the other, then readers will get mentally and emotionally tired.
Remember to let your readers and characters alike breathe when it comes to including dark and shocking elements. This includes being mindful of your audience, researching the genre you want to write in, and all around finding a balance between dark and lighter elements in your story. So be mindful of what you’re writing, but know that it’s possible to make your novel dark and not deter readers.
Happy writing!
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