blogs_blog_1497

I found that for a story to be considered dark, it has to take place at night. Or underground. In a place with a lack of light, thus dark. (And see, when it's dark you don't have to see all the little detail! That works best in movies, to make their effects cheaper. Not so much in stories, where the description is like "well, I could tell you what this is, but its dark so i can't see it, so never mind.")

 

And I dunno, parts of the original Land Before Time seemed dark. Or maybe the word I'm looking for is "scary."

 

To me a story is "dark" if moral aspects become uncertain. Lots of people like to think in a binary "Good vs Evil" with no line in between. What makes a dark story for me is the clash of differing philosophical merits that leaves the reader questioning what they would do presented with the same issue as the protagonist. Situations that contain no binary "right" or "wrong" choice. For example: You have a son and a daughter. They are both in mortal danger. You can only save one. Which do you choose?

 

If you decide not to act, they both die. If you choose one over the other, you are literally deciding who lives and who dies. It is impossible to save both.

 

To a person that values human life, the situation becomes ambiguous to what the correct form of action is (which one to save). To someone whose philosophy is about fairness, the only truly fair choice is to let them both perish. That can leave people questioning what they would do. That makes them question what is uncertain. It causes people to explore what is "dark."

 

There are different ways for stories to do this, in my opinion, and like everything subjective it's a broad spectrum. At least that's what I think.