Too dark, too short, too epic?

SillyLittleTwit · Sep 23, 2016

H.G.Aguilar said:
I struggle with "too dark" also.
My novel is meant to be a Lord of the Rings for a new generation, assuming we've matured as a society enough to accept some very violent and even taboo scenes. But none of the great classics seem to include any of the most foul pits of the human psyche. Therefore I sometimes think my work can't become mainstream. (too dark)
I envision it as a movie someday. Thus, I've changed an unnecessary disemboweling scene to his femoral arteries being cut.
However, the attempted rape and subsequent cannibalism I feel is an important plot point. Neither are explicit in their descriptions but I feel it would probably earn the movie an R Rating, and keep it out of high schools and under for reading. A child dies in very graphic way. It is meant to jar the sensibilities. The theme is largely about death, which is very sad and awful until the characters learn the truth, and can think of it in a different way.
So I don't know. Can one attain Harry Potter popularity while including some very adult themes and scenes?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but including wall-to-wall rapes, disembowelling, and cannibalism does not inherently make a work more adult. Rape in particular is a very sensitive area, with substantial psychological issues associated with it - it should not simply be used for shock value.

Also, what, exactly, do you mean by "great classics"? Taking The Lord of the Rings as a starting point, you have catapaulted heads, an on-screen suicide, a cannibal major character, and a swamp full of corpse-ghosts. The Silmarillion is darker, with nearly everyone dying, multiple on-screen suicides, incest, allusions to rape, and so on. A Song of Ice and Fire and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are pretty dark as well, and if you are into more recent stuff, there's the likes of Joe Abercrombie and Richard Morgan.

H.G.Aguilar · Sep 23, 2016

I don't recall the cannibal major character? these are only the most extreme parts of the story, and they are not merely for shock value, it is an important part of the plot. Another of the classics i was thinking of was CS lewis, so clean and yet so popular...

SillyLittleTwit · Sep 23, 2016

H.G.Aguilar said:
I don't recall the cannibal major character? these are only the most extreme parts of the story, and they are not merely for shock value, it is an important part of the plot. Another of the classics i was thinking of was CS lewis, so clean and yet so popular...

Gollum. Who cheerfully eats anything he can get his pale fingers on.

Narnia is children's fantasy (and Christian children's fantasy at that). There are disturbing scenes, but the disturbing scenes involve implications (Susan's damnation, the extremely negative view of sexuality, Muslims who worship Satan, the potshots at atheists, et cetera), rather than Lewis deciding to be dark. So it's a whole other kettle of fish.

jjdebenedictis · Sep 23, 2016

H.G.Aguilar said:
I struggle with "too dark" also.
My novel is meant to be a Lord of the Rings for a new generation, assuming we've matured as a society enough to accept some very violent and even taboo scenes. But none of the great classics seem to include any of the most foul pits of the human psyche. Therefore I sometimes think my work can't become mainstream. (too dark)

Have you been reading much current fantasy? Because as SillyLittleTwit mentions, Joe Abercrombie and Richard Morgan are already doing exactly this, as is Mark Lawrence and Kameron Hurley (in fact, she has ritual cannibalism, specifically, in her latest series). The "Grimdark" trend has been very popular in fantasy in the past decade, so society is ready.

gambit924 · Sep 25, 2016

Well, here's the thing. Kids will read whatever they want to, or are capable of reading. I was reading Tolkien when I was in the fifth grade, Memoirs of a Geisha in high school. Slaughter-house 5, Catch-22, Along with authors like C.S Lewis, Terry Brooks, and so on. That's why I dislike all these genre distinctions as it pertains to age groups. While there are some things that are definitely for young people, and some things that are definitely for elder people, there's no reason why the lines can't blur. My book would be fine for a young person, as there are only a few naughty words and maybe one dismemberment. By the age of 16, I had read worse. And the worse word there was the word "cock". And everyone knows and understand that word. It's not like it's the worst word. So kids will read what kids will read.

gambit924 · Sep 25, 2016

Rape is one thing I would almost draw the line at though. While it is part of the human reality, we must be careful how we use it and how it is portrayed. Anyone who would use it as a primary plot device is not using good story telling. Not that I am saying that you are, but just in general. Anything that detracts or desensitizes rape from the terrible crime that it is, well, that's not good. It makes rape merely something that happens rather than the terrible crime that it is.

Too dark, too short, too epic?

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