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To a large extent this is will be dependent upon the taste of the person reading - so you have to work out who your target audience is and how you're trying to make them feel. There's nothing wrong...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41456 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41456 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
To a large extent this is will be dependent upon the taste of the person reading - so you have to work out who your target audience is and how you're trying to make them feel. There's nothing wrong with dark or "depressing" material but it won't to be everyone's tastes but what is? What I would say is that you may want to insure that there is at least _some_ lightness or reasons for optimism in the story as a whole. Not even _The Bell Jar_ or _The Lovely Bones_ are all depressing, all the time! This can be done either with moments of humor or hope for example. > ...as are most of her companion's backstories This leaped out a me a little bit, be careful not to overuse the tragic backstory trope - if _everyone_ has a full on trauma conga line in their backstory then it will lessen the impact of each one. The same also applies to the more traumatic experiences you put the characters through during the story - throw too many at them at once and it lessens their impact. Consider spacing out some of your heavy hitting moments if you want to preserve maximum impact on the reader.