I like dark stories. I like stories that are grim and violent and seemingly hopeless. I like stories where the heroes are battered, bruised, beaten, foiled, and know great loss. I like stories filled with injustice and overwhelming evil trying to smother out the good.
I don’t like the darkness for its own sake. It’s true that I enjoy battle scenes and war stories and am not averse to violence. But I don’t enjoy the blood for its own sake, either. And I’m no masochist who watches bitter stories simply to sit alone later on and feel bad about the state of the world.
I like dark stories because the lights in them shine all the brighter. The sun is easily ignored on a sunny day, but it makes itself known when it breaks through the storm clouds. Moments of compassion and hope are all the more meaningful in a story filled with sorrow and cruelty.
We know what good is when it is juxtaposed against evil. We know what heroes are when they stand in the face of the impossible. We know what hope is when it defies despair.
When a writer understands that a dark story can still be uplifting and not merely a means to rage impotently against the wrongs they have known in life, then that story can be something great. We learn that life can be cruel, but we don’t have to be.
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It hasn’t gone anywhere, and it won’t anytime soon! My first book, A God Walks Up to the Bar, is available on Amazon.com. Witness the modern day adventures of the Greek god Hermes in a world much like our own – plus with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, and magic. The myths of old never went away, they just moved on with the times. It’s a tough job, being a god!
Jake W. Powell 