How To Take Care When Writing Dark Subject Matter

There’s a question that I see a lot in the writing community that goes a bit like this: “If I insert (XYZ) into my book about (ABC), is that too dark? Does it go too far?”

As someone who really enjoys darker subject matter sprinkled into books and frequently enjoys putting dark themes in my own writing, this is an interesting question to me. How far is too far? How dark is too dark?

I’ve read characters who are known to be some of the most wretched and vile characters in fantasy and barely flinched, and I’ve also read comparatively lighter fantasies that made my skin crawl and had me putting the book down in disgust.

So what’s the difference between them? Why is one easy to stomach, while the other feels disgusting?

To me, it all comes down to two important criteria: self-awareness and story impact.

Story Impact

Story impact is the easiest one to explain for me: If something extremely dark is going to happen, it must be justified through its impact on the story.

If something traumatic is going to happen to a character, show that character being affected by the event. It doesn’t have to be endless moping and overdramatic angst, but there needs to be some impact on the characters. Even better, have it affect the story in a meaningful way. The impact on the characters should affect their decisions and relationships, which would affect the direction of the plot.

The same goes for having characters doing terrible things. Terrible actions caused by characters must have some form of consequence.

Think of writing trauma and dark subject matter as having something similar to Newton’s Third Law (AKA: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). When going dark and having events that would, in real life, cause trauma or other ramifications for the characters, there must be an appropriate reaction and blowback from the event.

Basically: characters and events must have consequences, be it physical, psychological, or socially, for the terrible things they do, and ramifications for the terrible things they go through.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t have evil characters getting away with the things they do, but at the very least there should be a sign of other characters around them being horrified at what is happening (or, in the absence of other characters, some other sign of what the character is doing as reprehensible–though this can be much harder to pull off.)

Self-Awareness

The second piece of criteria, and the more difficult one to pin down, is self-awareness.

Basically, when something terrible happens, there should be a sense of the author being aware of something terrible happening.

Like in the previous point, a lot of this comes down to showing actual consequences for characters doing or going through terrible things, with an acknowledgment that these situations have weight to them. However, another big part of it comes down to one very important thing: accurate marketing.

Know Your Target Audience

A lot of whether or not it’s fine to add dark content comes down to knowing your audience and what they expect out of your work, as well as setting up their expectations from the get-go. As an example: when I read grimdark or dark fantasy I expect horrible things to happen to the characters and for it to be handled much differently than if I was reading a light-hearted adventure story. Knowing your genre and audience is extremely important here.

This is a big part of having self-awareness. Grimdark stories are very aware that they are grimdark. Dark romance is very aware that it is dark romance. And, when writing these genres, it’s extremely important for the author to be aware of what they are writing. Without that awareness, the darker scenes can end up sending a very wrong and unintentional message.

This is something that I see come up a lot with certain romance books, where the relationship is extremely toxic but the author is trying to pull it off as romantic, leaving many readers with a sense of disgust and discomfort. Sure, there are some sub-genres that are geared specifically for dark and toxic relationships, but the same can’t be said for certain notorious series such as Twilight, for example, where the romance is extremely toxic but played off as being perfectly acceptable.

So how is this fixed, then? How can darkness be integrated in a way that feels earned and thought out, rather than giving an impression of the author just not being aware of what they have written?

In Short…

Here’s the thing: without ramifications and story impact, without an awareness of the consequences of the events happening to the characters, dark and disturbing content becomes nothing more than exploitation, darkness for the sake of darkness rather than darkness for the sake of storytelling.

If that’s what you’re into, go for it. Some people want that kind of content in their reading, and that’s fine.

But if you want your darkness to have meaning and impact, enhancing the story instead of dragging it down, then know the impact the darkness would have on the characters and story, and decide for yourself if that is a path you want your story to explore.