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Q&A How to keep darkness from piling up

I'm a big fan of ongoing stories and longer series. But one thing I've noticed about my writing (and a lot of the works I read/watch) is that as a story goes on, the tone gets progressively darker...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by System‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question series tone
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:21:26Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/40705
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:21:26Z (almost 5 years ago)
I'm a big fan of ongoing stories and longer series. But one thing I've noticed about my writing (and a lot of the works I read/watch) is that as a story goes on, the tone gets progressively darker.

The way this usually goes is that a story will start out light and happy, and then bad things will happen. And with each bad thing, the world gets a little darker. But the darkness doesn't really go away before the next bad thing comes, so it starts to pile up. And eventually, it gets so bleak and miserable that I want to abandon the story and move to something cheerier.

I can't just get rid of the dark events. Characters need to die, lines need to be crossed, and so on. But overall, I'd like the tone of the story to be positive.

How can I keep the darkness from taking over?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-12-13T16:58:49Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 5