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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...
#3: Attribution notice added
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
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?