“Light” and the use of such terms

It’s occurred to me that I might need to stop referring to The Color of Fire as a “light” fantasy/romance. What makes it “light” is the fact that as a fantasy, we’re not really saving a world, or saving much of anything, and the magic is contained to one person, and aside from one scene where he uses it to fight, for the rest of the book it’s just a part of his character. As a romance, the romance is there and the feelings are there, but it’s rarely pointed out and only ends with a kiss. As far as tone goes, though, it’s turning out to be pretty heavy.

The problem is Lena. When discussing writing styles with a good friend of mine, I pointed out that my writing tended to lean towards the dreamy and whimsical, when it leaned to much at all, but not to think that that meant all my stories were light and happy. With a nod, she told me “There are nightmares in there too.” There are, and Lena has full access to those nightmares. Whereas Rae in Arbiter was straightforward and to the point, and tended to break down the magical events around her into more mundane terms, Lena turns the mundane into the magical and occasionally the sinister. She looks at the world from an artist’s perspective, and what she sees isn’t always what’s in plain sight.

Oh, there’s whimsical sweet imagery in there too, like when she looks at fishing boats out on the ocean at night and compared them to jewels on a sheet of black, but all in all, Lena is an interesting viewpoint to write from. Now that she’s happier, I wonder if the dark images will start fading, or if she’ll keep tossing them into the narrative, to remind us that she’s not quite all there, although she sees more than people give her credit for.

There’s a reason for Lena to be depressed for the opening chapters, but I won’t go into that now because that contains plot spoilers. But when you have the main character allude to suicide in Chapter 4, no matter how slightly or how subtly it might be, you are not writing anything “light”.