How do I make my story dark? And just how mature does it have to be?
One of the most common questions I’ve discussed with my sister is “What would my book be rated?” Is it a young adult, new adult, middle grade or something else? Or, “Is my book intense enough?” I believe if the work is quality, there’s a level of intensity a book MUST have. Now that level depends on the genre. If you’ve ever had trouble making readers on the edge of their seat, or cry when you want them to, there are a few things that help an audience be visibly anxious as to the outcome of your tale. Whether it’s personal drama, or physical conflict in the story there are ways to make the reader take them more seriously. So in this blog we're gonna look at a few things:
-How do I make my story be taken seriously?
-What is it that makes a story dark ?
-How do I apply these concepts to my story regardless of the genre?
-How do I judge what genre (age range) I want my story to be?
Now I by no means claim to be an expert on genres (like all writers I’m learning more all the time), but I have written several books and watched a lot of entertainment–in doing so I’ve tried to break down answers to all these questions. With the help of others reading my work and watching the same entertainment as I do, I believe I’ve put my finger on what it is that makes a viewer/reader look at the conflict in your work as if it were really happening. If you’ve noticed any other tips feel free to let us know in the CONTACT US page because we're always learning.
How do I make my story be taken seriously?
This is a broad question so let me explain what I mean. When I was accosted with witnessing brief scenes of Vampire Diaries it was difficult to take literally ANYTHING seriously. I saw a vampire punch his hand through a woman’s chest and rip her heart out (it’s never addressed and when other characters learn about it they act as if the vampire said a dirty word or something). A girl hears a vampire committed murder, then proceeds to get upset over the fact her boyfriend didn’t tell her an inconsequential secret. A vampire mind controls and abuses a woman repeatedly and as punishment two girls laugh at him and deny him a dance.
If you're noticing a pattern we're getting somewhere: Actions and consequences. In a show like Vampire Diaries there aren't any. And they're so small and irrelevant it feels like they may as well not be there. If you want the reader to take action, death, betrayal and any other significant conflict in your story seriously then there MUST be consequences for actions. For example, consider a scenario:
Your main character is a cop on a deep undercover op. While on the mission they get in a conflict with someone which results in them ending the person’s life in self defense. This person was the lover of a dangerous crime boss. We’ve built up this whole story about how violent and dangerous this crime boss is and how they kill anyone who looks at them wrong. Now your main character has killed the crime boss's lover. What do they face as consequences for it?
Now no one likes a character with plot armor. But if your main character walked away from this and nothing happened to them, that would be very poor writing (an obvious case of plot armor) because it would lessen the concern your readers have for them. We basically know nothing can touch them because they just angered a dangerous character who does nothing to retaliate. That example is a larger scale one, but this even goes to the smallest of plot details.
If a character learns something how does it affect the other characters? How do they respond?
If a character witnesses something pivotal how do they react? How does it affect the sequence of events?
How is the world around them affected by their actions?
How are your characters internally affected by actions in your story?
You might think this goes without saying but I promise you…it doesn’t. If I had a dime for every time I saw characters make choices, kill off other characters, and all kinds of things without facing any consequences for it I’d be a rich woman. Even small details like your character being a teenager who gets into a fight at school and has to deal with social or personal consequences, those elements have to be there or else it’s like telling your viewer “It’s okay this isn't real.” This lowers the tension in the story and in your viewers mind. Ensure that there are consequences for choices made by your characters and for all events in the story. Don’t leave details hanging or people left asking “So we’re just not gonna address that?”
What is it that makes a story dark?
Nothing helps your reader’s get invested like a little bit of darkness. Now, the natural question is “what’s included in darkness?” First, I’m gonna debunk a common myth that darkness means gratuitous sex and violence. Are those elements mature? Yes, however in my opinion, they should nearly never be included in entertainment (I will make exceptions for violence if its being enacted on very evil people but sex is an element which belongs offscreen). You don’t need to be extreme or gratuitous to make something scary, or dark. Darkness is raising the level of maturity or stakes in a story, typically entailing more dire or disturbing themes. For example, if you're watching Liv and Maddie–you never wonder if someone is going to pull a gun and kill another character. Liv and Maddie is a family comedy show and not dark in any way. However, if I’m watching Taken 2008 and at first it feels like a movie about a father and his daughter–the story gets dark the moment she’s kidnapped by human traffickers in another country. The tone for the film was set long before the girl was captured, but that incident is what really tells the viewer, “Oh, I’m in this kind of movie.” It lets them know such a horrible thing is possible in this story and that they now need to be on guard for similar things.
If you're watching 24 for the first time (first of all skip this part of the article if you don’t want spoilers) you might think that like other shows, there are people you can’t kill off. There are places that the show just can’t go. But, as the series progresses, it pushes those limits leaving the viewer to constantly be looking over their shoulder wondering, “Is anyone safe in this show?” Jack Bauer spends the entire first season trying to get his wife and daughter back. Naturally, the viewer is going to think “he has to save them because that’s what we’ve been working towards the past 23 episodes, right?” The first season ends with Bauer weeping over his murdered wife in his arms despite all efforts to save her. He comes so close to saving her so many times that the viewer was cajoled into believing it had to happen. But the minute she dies, now the reader knows such a thing is possible in this show and they have to be looking out for all their favorite characters because any episode might be their last. Now how do you implement this in your story?
Darkness is all about the potential. If you want the reader to be legitimately scared of what might happen, allow for the possibility of dire consequences or tragic results. Do this by having a presence of danger (which could take many forms depending on the type of book you're writing) which seemingly no character is safe from.
We already talked about consequences and the importance of them, assuming you’ve interwoven that into your story now it's about the stakes. In practical terms, darkness means establishing a harsher form of consequences in your story. There are two examples I love to use when considering non gratuitous darkness in your story and both are animated films: Batman mask of the Phantasm 1993 and Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996.
Mask of the Phantasm centers around the tragic backstory of Bruce Wayne and his relationship with a woman, Andrea Beaumont, all the while he faces someone in a mask (the Phantasm) killing crime bosses in the present day. The film takes place in the past and present. It’s a phenomenal film that every Batman fan should watch, but one thing it does extremely well which we all can learn from is the blending of darkness into a perfectly clean animated movie. Setting the stage, there’s a scene where Andrea Beaumont enters her home and her father is speaking with a group of unsavory criminal type men. She’s unsettled by this and her father assures her things are fine but the viewer still gets the sense they're dangerous people. Another time later in the film Andrea comes home and we see one of the most suspicious men leaving her house with a broad grin on his face like he doesn't have a care in the world. As Andrea rushes in her home carrying groceries we hear the bag drop and she lets out a scream. In these two simple brief scenes we get the sense of danger in the first scene when Andrea interrupts the meeting, and later we see the consequences of her fathers connection to these men as his daughter finds him dead. The viewer doesn't even see what the man did to her father or how he killed him but it’s left to the imagination making it potentially more disturbing.
Hunchback of Notre Dame epitomizes putting dark themes into a film by nature of the potential I spoke of earlier. Meaning, with what the film allows room for there are a lot of dark adult concepts. Just to be clear there is no strong violence and gore in this film. However, the scenes which have disturbing sequences are as follows:
-Frollo kills Quasimodo’s mother in the opening sequence (either the horse kicks her by accident or she cracks her skull on the stone steps of the church but either way it’s because she's running from him).
-Frollo attempts to drown an infant in the opening sequence.
-Quasimodo (a deformed young man) is tied up and humiliated before a crowd of mocking spectators.
-Esmerelda is fleeing Frollo who has a perverse obsession with her and sings a song about how he wants to possess or kill her.
-Frollo tries to burn Esmerelda at the stake because she won’t satisfy his lust.
-Pheobus is shown Frollo’s underground torture chamber and we hear men being whipped off screen.
Basically, there’s no inappropriate content shown in this film, but it's alluded to in such a way to make the viewer concerned or uncomfortable. When I was watching Frozen I was never concerned that someone would get beaten to death or tortured. In this film the possibility is there because we’ve seen characters die (Quasimodo’s mother) and nearly be killed (Phoebus is stabbed when he defies Frollo, and Esmerlda almost dies). The adult concepts and themes are there, as are the consequences–even if we don’t see them all in gory detail. In simple terms, if you allude to someone being tortured in your book it just got a whole lot darker. We don’t need to actually see it.
How do I apply these concepts to the story regardless of the genre?
So we’ve gone over actions and consequences–they need to be in every story to establish some level of credulity. Darkness is what you employ after you’ve got the viewers attention and established their trust and investment. It involves how harsh or dire the potential outcomes and possibilities are in the given story. How do these apply? Well, in a way we’ve gone over it in the last two points. Taken, 24, Batman Mask of the Phantasm, The hunchback of Notre Dame–all of these couldn't be more different as entertainment pieces. It should go to show whether you're making something for children (as most people consider cartoons to be), or an intense political thriller, there is a way to implement these tactics. Your story doesn't need gore or explicit content to be deeply intense. These methods can be applied not only to external conflict in your story but also internal conflict. Not just to life threatening situations your characters find themselves in but also interpersonal relationships. Since this is something we breezed over I’ll cover it here because it's helpful when trying to write non world ending conflict: the difference between personal stakes and (for lack of a better term) world threatening stakes.
Personal stakes involve characters and their relationships to one another. A character could lose a best friend, a love interest, or a protagonist wants to find their family etc.
World threatening stakes involve life threatening matters in the plot. Character A could die, if character B doesn't respond to a situation a certain way the villain could destroy the world etc. There are many levels to this but you get the idea.
If your book doesn't have world threatening stakes it can always have personal stakes. In my opinion, the best stories have both. Characters could be on the verge of death but we’re only invested if we care about what's happening with those people. For example, we care about Katniss surviving the Hunger Games but it's primarily because we saw her enter to save her sister so now we're emotionally invested in the family she wants to go home to and protect. But if your story doesn't have world threatening stakes, employ personal ones. In the 1991 film Hook for example the audience is primarily interested because of personal stakes. We want to see Peter Pan get his children back and restore his relationship with his family. If you as the writer makes us care about your characters, and be invested in their personal journey we’ll feel the effect of every personal consequence of every action made.
How do I judge what age range I’m writing the book for?
There’s an entire world of gray here that I’m not going to get into; but, broadly speaking, I believe this advice will help you determine whether or not you're writing a book to be Middle Grade, Young Adult, or New Adult. I’ve had trouble determining this but ultimately thinking about a few things helped:
How mature do I know this story will go? What do I want to be allowed in it? If you know you want characters to commit murder, or have physical intimacy, or to even reference such things frequently–you may want to consider making a book at least YA. When reading Percy Jackson, a person never wonders or worries if two characters will have a love scene or even if sex will be implied. It’s a children's book and while characters like the Greek gods have various affairs none of it is spoken of too specifically or shown. The main characters are the oldest teenagers; and, while in other books teens are doing all kinds of inappropriate things, you don’t worry about it in these books because of the genre. The minute you stamp middle grade on it you know there won’t be too many mature things shown or implied with main characters. As always, ratings are being pushed more and more today but as a general rule of thumb this holds true. Twilight for example would be a YA book because it has a lot of kissing and discussion about physical intimacy even if none is shown.
Who is the target audience for the book? Who am I writing it for? If the audience is people in their late teens to early twenties you’ll want to make the book more realistic and mature. There’s a reason YA books are primarily read by early teens who now admit they’re too mature to really enjoy them. Most fans of YA read books like Twilight, Mortal Instruments, or Hunger Games and then later look on them as a guilty pleasure. Some books hold the test of time and others are written for a specific age group in a certain phase of life.
How old are my characters in the book and how mature are there issues? If your main character is 12 and the book is a fantasy adventure, most likely you're writing a middle grade. If your protagonist is 15 and her biggest problem is who she's taking to Prom, then you're writing a YA. If your main character is an abuse victim who struggles with PTSD, you just amped up the rating and now we're looking at an adult book or a YA at youngest. Crime thrillers, romance, the same rules apply to all of this. However mature you’re going to make your characters issue will determine what rating or genre you plan on going with. I have a book about a young woman in mid 20s with super powers in a politically divided city, because of her age and specific life struggles I have to target the book at New Adults. If my character has a fulltime job, and adult struggles teenagers won’t be able to understand and enjoy it as much. So I have to target the book to older readers.
Again, there’s a lot of gray in these genres because we’ve pushed the boundaries with what’s allowed in all kinds of books. But as a general rule I find these help a lot. Hopefully, all of this was helpful in thinking about how to raise the stakes in your story, and make your reader fully invested in all your conflicts, personal or world ending.
