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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48149
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48149
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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 ...'  
> <sub>J.K. Rowling, <em>Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone</em>, chapter 1 - The Boy Who Lived</sub>

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 ...  
> <sub><em>ibid</em></sub>

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.

Original score: 16