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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