On writing darkness

I started writing this post when I was editing The Gathering, The Hundred - Book 1, and because I tend to be easily distracted while editing - squirrel! - I seemed to spend a lot more time avoiding editing than actually doing the editing.  It all got done,  in the end.

And in my avoiding editing phase, one of the things I was thinking about was: why my writing is quite dark.

Writers do like to torment our characters.  I wouldn't survive half the things I throw at my lead characters. And yet, they do survive. And often thrive, too. 

But then, I don't write to reflect my rather boring, ordinary, life. I write to explore other worlds, to meet people I will never encounter in life, and to test them, to see what they are made of.

I also think that, for many of us, when we pick up a book, we're looking to escape. We don't want to think about the dishes in the sink, the hoovering, the laundry, and all that pedestrian stuff.  Instead, we want a world full of rich and vivid characters, and if it's a fantasy world then there should be magic and wonder, too.  And, in the best of stories, the best and the worst that humanity has to offer. 

I love all kinds of stories, where good triumphs over evil, where ordinary people become heroes, where extraordinary people are tested to their limits, and where I can believe, just for a moment, that magic is real.

And, it seems to me, that all of that comes with a cost.  Good can't triumph on its own; there needs to be evil. Heroes need something to struggle against. Extraordinary people need to face extraordinary challenges so that we can see their full potential being realised.

And there can be no light without shadow. So, in order to uncover the magic, I also need to explore the dark.

(Photo by Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash)