Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31128
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31128
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I think the heart of your difficulty is that you are equating light hearted with not serious ("fluff"). Your intuition that it is easier to write dark than light is correct, at least in the sense that going dark is an easy way to seem serious while covering up the fact that you don't actually have anything original to say.

Most people, of course, don't have anything original or particularly insightful to say and you can build a nice career as a popular novelist simply by affirming the prejudices of your chosen slice of the reading public. But writing optimistic works in that mode will always tend to seem fluffy, whereas pessimistic or dark works can masquerade as serious much more easily.

There is no particular mystery to writing light fluff rather than dark fluff. You simply need to write from a place of facile optimism rather than a place of facile pessimism. Getting yourself from a position of facile pessimism to one of facile optimism, on the other hand, can be very difficult.

On the other hand, if you really want to write light (as in optimistic, rather than insubstantial) you have to find a way to see the good, to see the light. This will be very much against the zeitgeist, but that is not a problem we can help you with here.

Original score: 10