How do I introduce dark themes?

Four chapters in, your readers should have an idea what they're in for. Not everything that's going to happen, but certainly a hint. Once you've hinted that there is darkness, you can skirt it, turn your back on it for a while, or plunge right into it as you see fit in different parts of your story. But it can't just show up out of nowhere more than a quarter of the way through.

Yo mention Harry Potter, so I will use that as an example. Voldemort is in fact mentioned right in the first chapter, by Dumbledore and McGonagall:

'What they're saying,' she pressed on, 'is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are - are - that they're - dead.'
Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped.
'Lily and James ... I can't believe it... I didn't want to believe it ... Oh, Albus ...'
_{J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, chapter 1 - The Boy Who Lived}

Death isn't going to be brushed over in this story.

'It's - it's true?' faltered Professor McGonagall. 'After all he's done ... all the people he's killed ...
_ibid

That Voldemort was a serious monster. And there's no sense of giving him this much page-time if that's the last we're going to hear of him.

After that first mention, we spend quite some time without anything "dark" happening. Hagrid mentions Voldemort and gives us more information about him when he meets Harry - we get another hint that Voldemort is important. But overall, most of the first book is "fun in magic-land". Nonetheless, there in the first chapter we saw a gun on the wall. When the gun fires, it's not out of the blue.

Every time Voldemort's attempted return is thwarted, the gun jams. But a gun that doesn't fire is boring. Eventually, the gun has got to fire, Voldemort has got to come back. In the first chapter of the first book we got a promise of darkness. Sooner or later, the promise has got to be realised. And each time the promise is repeated, our anticipation grows. So when Voldemort finally returns, there's got to be enough darkness to satisfy the promise.

That's what you've got to provide in your first chapters - a gun on the wall. Whatever your dark themes are, hint at them in the first chapters, hint some more a while later. When you need the darkness to finally show its face, you've got the gun on the wall - all you need is to take it off and pull the trigger.

posted about 5 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

The fourth chapter is too late. You need to do this within the first 10% of the story (by page count), anything more is too late.

If your MC does violent things for good reason, you need to give the reader the idea they are capable of this early on. At the beginning of a story, the reader is ready for anything -- magic, superhuman powers, aliens, gods, immortals, interstellar and intergalactic travel, shape-shifters, fantastic creatures and people like Wolverine. Anything! But their patience and acceptance fades by the 20% mark or so, if you haven't introduced something by then, it starts to look like Deus Ex Machina territory, like you are just making new stuff up out of the blue to move your plot along. You don't have to intro every fantastical element then, if you show magic, all kinds of future magic become a possibility for the reader. If you show one alien (or even mention them seriously), other aliens are fine, a whole culture of interacting aliens out there would be fine. One weak telepath allows far stronger telepaths, etc.

For violent things, you can be direct: Perhaps he kills a walk-on criminal, and has no regrets or qualms doing so.

Or you can be less direct, a man is harassing a woman, he steps in and pushes him off. The man pulls a knife, our MC doesn't flinch, they grapple and break the man's arm, then his nose with an elbow, the MC takes the knife and is about to kill the man before the woman cries "No don't!"

If you want to be completely indirect, you can at least show your MC in high-level martial arts training against rubber knife and paint gun-wielding opponents, actually delivering killing blows on dummies, as a kind of foreshadowing about his capabilities. As Galastel noted before me, that is a Chekov's Gun, you don't devote pages to this kind of training unless it is actually going to be used.

Likewise you need to demo the MC's commitment to good, that the government they want to overthrow is just as brutal. You need to show that the MC is on the side of good, meaning the MC engages in altruistic acts, the MC doesn't harm innocents for selfish gain (or at least doesn't engage in irreparable or irrecoverable harm; i.e. the MC is redeemable).

Likewise you need to show magic exists. There is no reason all these things could not be shown simultaneously in a single scene: A criminal uses magic to assault somebody and the MC altruistically intervenes, violently.

I am not saying all these rules cannot be broken, or have not been broken by best-selling authors. But breaking them risks getting rejected, and beginners should stick with the standard formulary: Introduce your fantastical elements early, and if your MC has any special powers or skills, characterize them early. While the reader is still open to anything.

The same goes for any dark side, indicate it early, but I would not show their dark side before their good side; first impressions are massively important here: Good first, and in your case, the dark side in response to darkness: The MC fights fire with fire.

You need to invent a new scene; perhaps on the boundary of Chapter 1 & 2, a way to end Chapter 1, start Chapter 2, or be Chapter 2. It can involve throw-away criminals that are gone forever after this scene, but you need to show it. Chapter 2 or 3 would likely work, but by Chapter 4, we are supposed to already have a good handle on the MC.

posted about 5 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37

"this isn't what I thought I was reading"?

This is the key phrase. The reader needs some idea of what kind of book this is. But this is where genre conventions come to your rescue. Each genre had a certain shape to its stories. Will a high fantasy turn dark in the middle? Of course it will. Will a romance introduce a rival lover. Of course it will. Thus once you establish the genre, the reader will bring all the expectations of the genre with them, and will not be surprised or disappointed when the story turns in that direction.

On the other hand, they will be waiting for the story to turn in that direction, because that is what they came for. So the question is, why are you delaying giving them what they came here for?

There are good reasons for delay. If the darkness threatens something that the protagonist loves, then we need to love that thing too, as we love the Shire in LOTR. And this too is a convention of genre. We expect to fall in love with the fantasy home of the fantasy character, knowing full well that it is going to be imperilled or destroyed.

Some of that falling-in-love time is important. Having the hero's village destroyed by marauders on page one may feel like an action-oriented in medias res opening, and a good writer might be able to make it work, but you run a very good chance that most readers will not care enough about the protagonist of their village to want to read on.

But there is a very basic principle in fiction, that each scene should execute a change of state. Something should be different at the end of each scene. So, the question becomes, can you keep us in the falling in love stage, still expecting the darkness to come, but happy for now to keep falling in love with the protagonist and their Shire? Tolkien could. Can you?

posted over 4 years ago

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4y ago

Mark Baker‭

4371 reputation 12 1104 744 58

I don't disagree with the existing answers. The other answer (your additional tools) is to put the dark theme into the title, or cover art, or book blurb.

We tend to think the document on our computer is 'the book' while forgetting there are other elements buyers will see before cracking the book.

posted over 4 years ago

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DPT‭

460 reputation 2 29 79 68

Foreshadowing is your friend.

Your example of Harry Potter isn't quite right. Chapter One is titled The Boy Who Lived. Now that's a bit ominous. Magic is hinted at on page 1* and is outright on page 2. "You-Know-Who" is first mentioned on page 5. By page 11, when the name Voldemort is first mentioned, we already know he was a danger and now believed to be gone (but it's not certain). The chapter goes on to describe Harry's parents' deaths, that he survived, and that he was being handed over to his abusive aunt and uncle. By the end of that first chapter, we know there will be a story about good vs evil that involves the little infant who somehow survived the villain who murdered his parents.

Your book doesn't even have to be as direct as this middle-grade/young-adult series begins. Just have some strange stuff in the background. Newspaper headlines, whispers on the street, TV news reports. Make it clear that this is a world where XYZ can happen, even if it hasn't happened yet in your story.

Show us this world where magic, darkness, and death lurk around the corner. People live their lives normally in the meantime, but they know these things are possibilities. Or maybe they don't know...but they hear of strange happenings (things that happen to other people). What's important is that your reader knows they're possible. Then it won't come as a surprise.

* My pages are from the American trade paperback edition.

posted about 5 years ago

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Cyn‭

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