Friday, February 4, 2011

How dark is too dark in Urban Fantasy?

Read an interesting post on a forum I belong to. Another author asked the question, How dark is too dark in Urban Fantasy?

My initial reaction was that an author should write the story as they hear/think it.  As I thought more about it, I wondered what the risks are in following that advice.

Many readers are coming to Urban Fantasy from a Romance background.  From that perspective, you could get TOO dark really quick.  On the other hand, many readers are arriving in the Urban Fantasy section from the Fantasy or Sci-Fi section.

I could probably go pretty far with that crowd before it I stumbled into TOO dark.  I write Erotic Urban Fantasy. That opens an entirely different perspective of what is TOO and what is DARK and well... potentially over the top.

Which brings me back to my initial thought.  I can't control what other people think of my story; how they perceive it or frankly, whether they like it at all. All I can do is write it and put it out there.  If someone else buys it and enjoys it, then I guess it wasn't TOO dark.


1 comment:

  1. For good or for ill, I think most of us reading or writing darker genres have a built-in boundary that allows us to safely explore these worlds/characters. It's true that you can't control (and can hardly anticipate) readership response to a particular title. Take heart that most of primetime television is grittier than anything that I've read! Outside of the rules that tend to govern the genres (formulated by commercial interest?), we all share an understanding of truly 'too dark' that remains mostly unwritten - the stuff that our primal selves will not even allow us to contemplate, no matter how safe the distance seems. Outside of that, you're good to go!

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