How do I avoid grimdark in my writing?

[A. E. Lowan]

"Hope. Rebellions are built on hope."

 

[The Dark One]

Never had much interest and never really thought about it...

But having read this thread I am now an expert. It strikes me that 1984 is a perfect example of grimdark...a novel which is all about the raising, then the extinguishing, nay the annihilation, of hope.

Orwell was a cheery soul.

 

[Kasper Hviid]

To really have that discussion I suppose we would have to get into a debate about which works qualify as “grimdark.”

Admittedly, I simply used "grimdark" as a shorthand to describe that my writing tends to have a whole lot of racism, famine, sexual violence, genocide and suchlike. I don't know anything about it as a genre, really, other than what I would guess it would be like without ever having read it. (My guess would be something kind of like Frank Millers Batman, but with a downer ending thrown in to up the nihilism)

the grimdark genre sounds only that one note: Things Suck. I kept finding my attention wander, feeling unconnected with characters, and I finally decided it was because the stories lacked nuance. Cleverly cynical, morosely cynical, epically cynical, doomed to be cynical, it all came out to more or less the same note.

Even though some of my writing is kinda dark, I pretty much always end on a positive note. Way back, I read a think piece criticizing the dreariness in today's entertainment. It was argued that while dark and dreary stories will make you appear to one of those deep ones, it is also something that is really easy to pull off. Writing something which makes a reader laugh or gives him hope is way harder. And I think I took this to heart. To me, over-the-top-darkness is kind of a cheap trick.

Try some writing exercises where you actively try and write other things. Think of a few stories of different feels and genres that you've liked and try to write a few spontaneous scenes in those styles, maybe even as fanfiction or a short story. The best way to learn is to practice.

Funny thing is, this post was prompted by a WIP short story which I felt was a wee bit to grimdarkish. But that's the good thing about short stories, you can try ideas and see how they work out, and learn from that. One thing I have noticed is that I have a lot of ironic distance in my writing. I like that style, but I feel I should work at writing something which is more sincere.

Reading a lot of the types of books that you'd like to write may help.

Good advice. One can find inspiration the strangest of places. For instance, reading Leave it to Psmith really lured me into the trickster archetype.