It’s Too Dark in Here!

Ok, guys. Now you all already know funny is not my forte, right?

Sometimes I don’t even get it when I read it –well mostly I do, but some of the text shortcuts go over my old head. What? Stop Laughing. I am SO that old. Under this red coif is a full head of white hair. “Oh,” bat, bat, “you don’t think I look my age. Aw, you’re so sweet. It’s nice to humour the elderly … But don’t think I don’t see through you, flatterer. So stop patronizing me.”

“But you’re throwing me off my game, here. Thought you could distract me from my ‘seriousness’, eh? Well I’m not senile yet. So listen up.”

What’s with all the dark stuff everybody’s writing these days? All apocalypse, hurt, crime, dystopia. Where’s the light at the end of the tunnel? Doesn’t anyone believe in the nobility of the human spirit anymore? Is there no one out there that sees that strength of character can overcome adversity? Are happy endings taboo now? I say all this tongue in cheek, but I am not entirely joking.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to forget about reality. Sometimes (well, maybe often) reality bites, or sucks, or is just plain nasty. But I like to see a way out, a redemption (not in the religious sense) of the spirit in my characters. I want the good guys to win. Sure they need to fight the odds. They have to face hardship, struggle against the odds, overcome adversity. And it’s how they do that that makes them interesting, that makes me want to spend time with them.

When I read a book I want to see that human nature is not all selfish, sociopathic, hopeless and without any redeeming qualities. I want to see a way out of the mess, glimmers of sacrifice, love and kindness that eventually gets rewarded instead of knocked into the dirt. Yes, it can take a while to get there. I am not looking for it all to be just warm and fuzzy. It still has to be real. But look at your own lives, your own selves. Yes, we all have our dark sides – but don’t we also have our inner moral core, our compass that tells us what boundaries we must not cross? And don’t almost all of us have hope for the future, for love, families?

You see, I may be way off base, but the bulk of what I see written over the last few years is so dark, so dystopian, so unrelentingly hopeless. So much of it shows only the underbelly of our existence.

Yes, I get that the world looks pretty bleak a lot of the time. But are we holding back its progress by dwelling only in the dark? If all we show is the dark where will our readers see any light? They say that watching violence in the media inures us to it. It no longer affects us. We become desensitized. Do we want to do that with our writing as well?

And because I write characters that find a way to overcome their past pain, does that make what I write fluff? Does it make me old, passé, cliché? I hope not. Because I believe in the nobility of the human spirit. I don’t look for ‘happily ever after’ but I want some balance between good and evil in what I read.

Would someone please turn on the light? I can’t see in here.

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Yvonne Hertzberger is a Contributing Author at Indies Unlimited and author of Back From Chaos and Through Kestrel’s Eyes, Books One and Two of Earth’s Pendulum, an Epic fantasy trilogy. For more information please see the IU Bio page and her blog at  http:/yvonnehertzberger.com

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Author: Yvonne Hertzberger

Yvonne Hertzberger is a native of the Netherlands who immigrated to Canada in 1950. She is an alumna of The University of Waterloo, with degrees in psychology and Sociology. Her Fantasy trilogy, ‘Earth’s Pendulum’ has been well received. Learn more about Yvonne at her blog and her Amazon author page.

16 thoughts on “It’s Too Dark in Here!”

  1. Nice post, Yvonne! i like the dark and the light. But I love a character that, while acknowledging his or her humanity and darkness, rises above in some way. Or, you know, kills the sparkly vampires.

  2. You are so on the money,Yvonne. Call me old fashioned, but I like a good story where the character grows, becomes something that they never knew they could be. Thanks!

  4. Yvonne, I write with the lights off in a windowless room, typically beginning after midnight into the wee hours of the morning. The world is a dark place. Everyone, at least the sane ones, have a fear of something. I find it's easier to focus on those fears in dark solitude.

    I'm not the kind of person that could write a thriller while sitting in a coffee shop. Well I suppose I could, but there would be at least one serial killer on a caffeine high involved. To address your point though, why do we find it necessary to write about the dark scary people and places in this world? Because it helps us find courage.

    I firmly agree with you that reading a hopeless doom and gloom book is a downer though. The world does need a little light, but sometimes we must fear the dark in order to appreciate that light.

    Writing in a dark room helps remind me that my characters are always searching for the lighted path. It's when this path is lit by the fires of Hell that make for an interesting journey.

    1. KD,

      I like to write in a dark room, also. So one night after a cocktail I by accident hit a function key – now the Word doc has double arrows instead of quotation marks, and there is an extra space before the exclamation point and the question mark.

  5. Thanks everyone. Nice to know I am not entirely out to lunch. Just to clarify, though, I also write about dark things. My characters suffer and there are catastrophes in my world. The difference I am getting at is the hopelessness and lack of positive traits I see in so much of what I read, and what I see on TV as well. That is a generalization, of course. I just find it a worrisome trend.

    KD, I agree about the journey, though. The happy ending has to come from facing our demons and finding our strength in that process.

    1. There are a few TV shows that I like to watch, but I gave up on the news channels years ago. The 'spin' from both the left and right is just more than I can take. Throw in the added focus of death and disaster to these newscasts and it makes you want to buy a truckload of guns.

      You're quite right though. Reading should be entertainment. If I wanted the hopeless drama of failed lives then I would watch Jersey Shore.

      😉

  6. Yvonne, I can't agree with you more. Just call me Pollyanna.

    I am not reading anything, willingly, at this point that is depressing. I want to be entertained, not contemplate ending it all. The TV news is bad enough. Keep writing your 'happy endings' and people will keep reading them. They need them. 🙂

    1. Thanks Lois. That's where it's at for me, too. I don't what what I do for pleasure to be the cause of bringing me down. It's hard enough to stay positive. But I also do get it – why it is so hard for many to even contemplate happy endings when we see so much doom and gloom in our real lives. And I think this is even more true for the young. Optimism for the future is not easy to find.

  7. I hear ya Yvonne, I refuse to go see a movie unless I know there is a happy ending. Although I suppose my book is a bit dark, as its focus is abuse, in real life I like to surf the positive energy flow.

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