Showing the "dark side" of your world

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amillimiles

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I'm curious. At what point in your novel do you drop hints about the flaws of your world, the "dark side" of your kingdom? I've had a reader tell me the larger problems in the world (poverty, illness, corruption, etc.) should be presented within the first few chapters.
 

RikWriter

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Depends on how long the story goes. One of my books was basically written as a stand-alone and I start out with the dark side of the society...and it gets darker as it goes along. The other started out with a society that seemed basically good with a few rough edges...and then in the next book some of the corruption showed through. By the third book, the main characters are basically part of a revolution.
Whatever suits the story the best.
 

Readable Joe

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I just try to weave it in wherever I can:

* MC has to take a ferry because the railway workers are on strike.

* MC captures a bad guy and hands him over to the police, who will "extract a confession out of him" to see justice done.

* Little girls asks innocent questions to the MC "It won't be like last summer will it? When the army came and made those noisy ladies at the factory shut up?"

I think a powerful effect is to show that people living in that world think these things are normal and part of the course of societal life. That's what I'm working on.
 

rwm4768

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I show it when it's relevant and interesting, whenever that is. There's no set rule for how to do that kind of thing. Many books, for example, play off the innocent young person trope. You have this person who has grown up in an isolated part of the world where things aren't so bad. Then the bad things come there, or the character has to leave home and discover the bad things for themselves.

Other books, especially many in the recent Grimdark trend, show you how horrible the world is right from page one.
 

BookmarkUnicorn

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There's also the hero from another world who is a mix of the two. They're often shown the dark side right after the best side of the world right off. I think though, in stories today it's really common to show the dark before the light, if any light at all...
 

Jamesaritchie

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If the dark side is integral to the story, get it in immediately. If it isn't, there's no need to mention it at all, or in passing, at most.
 

quicklime

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I'm curious. At what point in your novel do you drop hints about the flaws of your world, the "dark side" of your kingdom? I've had a reader tell me the larger problems in the world (poverty, illness, corruption, etc.) should be presented within the first few chapters.

snow,

be leery of something that general.

1. were these betas who saw your work? I have several betas, some of whom I have zero doubts are better writers, as well as just plain smarter than me.....and I tend to listen to them, but even they, on occasion, are formula-bound. Or biased. But if a beta saw, they MAY be saying when you get to conflict it comes out of nowhere, and therefore feels forced and artificial...."shit suddenly happens...er, because it HAS TO so we can get to the drama...."

2. If not, are they just offering very general views of story structure in general?


as a very general rule, there should be some sense things are off, even if the MC is unaware. In fact, if you're really good, and the MC is unaware, the reader won't even see the breadcrumbs for what they are until AFTER the MC finally does, sort of like all the little tells in The Sixth Sense about the estranged wife, etc.

That said, so long as it isn't an issue of snowflakery, your story trumps this very soft "rule", imho. If you have a valid reason they'd be unaware and you stick tight to their POV there may be no actual hints or suggestions to mention until they also realize what is wrong. At the same time, if they are aware now, and wrongness permeates their world, it should be shown. Even horrible things can be mentioned in passing, as part of just...mundane narration, I guess....

"Cotton hated Wednesdays; he'd have to get up extra early for work, stop at the ration line afterwards, and the worst part would be the fucking smell of burned kids sticking to his coveralls. It made for an exhausting day."

obviously you would get that something is wrong, and also, that it really isn't, so much, to the MC. For them, it is part of life. But in subtler cases, you just might not have anything to really say about the world right away.
 

Blinkk

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as a very general rule, there should be some sense things are off, even if the MC is unaware. In fact, if you're really good, and the MC is unaware, the reader won't even see the breadcrumbs for what they are until AFTER the MC finally does, sort of like all the little tells in The Sixth Sense about the estranged wife, etc.

That said, so long as it isn't an issue of snowflakery, your story trumps this very soft "rule", imho. If you have a valid reason they'd be unaware and you stick tight to their POV there may be no actual hints or suggestions to mention until they also realize what is wrong. At the same time, if they are aware now, and wrongness permeates their world, it should be shown. Even horrible things can be mentioned in passing, as part of just...mundane narration, I guess....

I came here to say almost exactly this. Great advice, and well stated too.
 
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I get what you're after, but I don't think "flaw" is quite the right way to look at it. To me, the best stories are where the world, be it another world or this one, is realistic. The loveliest garden can have moldy undergrowth and creepy insects. The ugliest terrain can have beautiful features.

That goes for characters as well. The enchanting fairy princess may have a mean streak and the cruel villain my have a weakness for kittens. That's where you as the writer are able to inject surprising twists to the story and make things that much tougher for the protagonist to overcome.

I think it's important that the writer dabble the nasty with the good or vice versa from the first page on.
 

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Added comment as i wait for a haircut: Red Leaves is much like this.....the book i am thinking of--there must be like ten books with that title-- has a clueless narrator who's son babysat a girl who disappeared that night. Even thoigh the narrator comes to have all the answers, they are always the WRONG answers.....even when he realizes things are wrong.he misunderstands them, but his conclusions and the reveal are both valid from the evidence......
 

job

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Are you purposefully withholding information so you can do a big reveal later on?

If not, you may want to avoid leading the reader down a false trail. Put relevant info in before the reader builds an incorrect picture of the world.

Let's say you have a major fictive world situation where half the people are slaves and they sacrifice a couple dozen slaves at every full moon.

You can have somebody say, "Who do you suppose will get sacrificed next Tuesday?" on page 5.

Or you can divide that information about the fictive world into four or five sections.
Slaves exist (page 1)
Slaves dread the new moon (page 7)
Slaves are unhappy and threatened (page 8)
Something (unnamed) will happen on Tuesday (page 25)
and then finally
"There's the stone where they sacrifice the slaves every month." (page 40)
 
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amillimiles

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In my novel, the character is the heir to the throne and one night the kingdom falls due to a coup. I paint a beautiful picture of this kingdom before its fall to establish something that the MC can fight for later on. The central plot has little to do with what's wrong with society, and more to do with the twisted ideals of the villain.

I scatter breadcrumbs about the villain and nobody realizes he's been plotting the coup until it's been executed.

What is the community's opinion on this?
 

quicklime

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In my novel, the character is the heir to the throne and one night the kingdom falls due to a coup. I paint a beautiful picture of this kingdom before its fall to establish something that the MC can fight for later on. The central plot has little to do with what's wrong with society, and more to do with the twisted ideals of the villain.

I scatter breadcrumbs about the villain and nobody realizes he's been plotting the coup until it's been executed.

What is the community's opinion on this?

huh...saw this last night, surprised you didn't get more replies.

1. other than "you can do anything, so long as it is done well," I am not sure how much group consensus you can expect. Opinions often vary.

2. given the "done right" part, I'm all for it, fwiw. My favorite story I ever wrote had a woman bitching at her husband, and it wasn't so much breadcrumbs as a sort of callback, at the very end he realized she wasn't being melodramatic when she started the conversation, so much as baiting him. I don't often get the breadcrumbs or callback right, but on that one I did. If you can, fantastic.

3. I haven't seen your story, obviously. So this is a very general thingy to ponder, but you said you made the kingdom beautiful to give the MC a place to fight for. You CAN, but be careful not to over-stress it into implausibility just to give him a reason; there's folks dying in Gaza and a thousand other places right now to protect mud walls and abject, miserable poverty. You don't need the place to be artificially perfect or beautiful, the MC could be fighting to hold what little he has, to hold to the fairy tales his father told him, to keep what's left of his own innocence, etc..... there's a million reasons available to you, and if "to save a beautiful kingdom" remains the best one for your story, use it, but if it does not...don't feel wedded to that rationale.
 

jaksen

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I would think your POV also plays into this. Is it written in first? Well maybe the MC sees only the 'beauty' of the world he or she is living in, especially if they are among the 'entitled' or elite class, or however you arrange your society. There are certainly parallels to today, if that's the case. I had many a student (former teacher here) who had kids who had no idea at all what was going on in the world due to the way they were raised. I mean I had kids in tears when I told them ham came from pigs and that yes, when we eat chicken, we are eating a chicken. (Dead serious here.)

If it's in third, you still are somewhat limited by what your MC sees, and how he lives, and who he or she associates with. But you can stick in a bit of foreshadowing - the beggar who suddenly interrupts the MC on his walk or ride, and then is kicked aside by the MC's escort or bodyguard. Or dark clouds on the horizon - what is that? The bodies of resisters being burned? A garbage dump? But come away, we don't need to look at that.

In omniscient you could have overtones of greed or corruption in the tone you use, some 'little did she know...' etc. etc.

But I'd still want to tell my readers that not all is well in 'Fairyland' regardless of how happy the MC and his/her cohorts seem to be. To know there is trouble ahead, or creatures under the very (thin) ice they are walking on makes the reader want to keep reading - to see what happens!
 
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Carrie in PA

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I'm firmly entrenched in the "it depends" camp. Your MC's perception of his world could very well all be roses and sunshine, but as heir apparent, he would need at least an awareness of the issues in what will become his kingdom, which could provide you with some of those breadcrumbs.

And, as with all things, I'd reveal them as your story dictates, not by following a formula.
 

Dr-I-Know-All

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While my readers know that something is wrong from the get-go, you should have the big and bag plot development fairly early in your novel. Mine is at the end of chapter two, and then reaffirmed later in chapter 8. Hope that helped!
 

quicklime

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While my readers know that something is wrong from the get-go, you should have the big and bag plot development fairly early in your novel. Mine is at the end of chapter two, and then reaffirmed later in chapter 8. Hope that helped!

be careful with formula; this is a fine generality, but it really isn't a rule, except in "how to plot" books...there ARE absolutely guidelines in writing, and they exist for reasons, but writing formulas produce formulaic writing
 
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Jamesaritchie

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but writing formulas produce formulaic writing

Not really. The formula isn't the story, isn't the characters, and isn't the theme. These are what make a story non-formulaic, and worth reading.

Though, for that matter, if there's a novel that doesn't follow one formula or another, I don't think I've read it.
 

Jamesaritchie

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While my readers know that something is wrong from the get-go, you should have the big and bag plot development fairly early in your novel. Mine is at the end of chapter two, and then reaffirmed later in chapter 8. Hope that helped!

If you mean "get to the story" early, then I agree. Not many things are worse than having to read through a hundred pages before the writer decides to start telling the actual story.

For me, if the writer doesn't get to the basic story, to who the main character is, and to at least a good idea of what he's facing, in the first five or six pages, I probably won't read page seven.
 
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