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arethereanyoriginalusernames · 5 years

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Writing Advice (mostly for beginners )

Dark Sides

MUAH-HAHAHA! Welcome to another edition of writing advice that ....no one asked for. Ok, just for the record, I'm making this post mainly as a sort of stress relief. I would've worked on my character spotlights, but I'm still figuring out how I'm going to do them exactly. Don't worry, I will start that right after this

Before we begin proper, let me make something perfectly clear. You do NOT need to take my advice or agree with me. This is simply me giving advice that I hope will help others. If you'd like to add on anything, or give your own thoughts on this matter, please feel free to do so. Btw, here, table of contents because yes:

1. WHAT THE FLIPPITY-FLOP IS A DARK SIDE

2. CAN A DARK SIDE COME FROM A CHARACTER'S PERSONAL FLAWS?

3. DEMONIC POSSESSION

4. THE PROBLEM WITH USING DISSOCIATIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER

5. DISCUSSING JEKYLL AND HYDE

6. WHAT DO WITH DID?

7. FINAL THOUGHTS

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Part 1, What the flippity-flop is a "dark side"?

For formality's sake, let's discuss what a dark side is. A "dark side" is a term meant to discribe how a usually good thing or person has a more negative aspect about them. "Dark", of course, being used to describe behaviours that are seen as being morally wrong. Greed, anger, you get the picture. As an example, say you have a character who is usually sweet and harmless, but has a hidden malicious streak. Congrats, you've found a character with a dark side. However, let's be a little more specific as this definition of having a dark side can apply to any usually character with a flaw. In storytelling, a character with a dark side is almost always a good person, however, they have some negative quality about them that society doesn't see. And this negative quality is usually something extreme, like being a serial killer.

You'll often see this trope in genres such as horror, or thrillers. There is more then one way go give your character a dark side, so let's go over some ways to do so.

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Part 2, Can a dark side come from a character's own flaws?

Absolutely. A character doesn't need to be processed or have something out of their control occur to them in order to have a dark side. I honestly find it disappointed how few people actually allow a character's dark side to come from their own flaws. It can lead to great character depth and even character development, two things that can make a really interesting character. These characters don't need a demon or anything outside their control. They're rotten apples that just have a bright exterior.

An example of a character with this kind of dark side is Johanna from Sweeney Todd. Specifically, the musical. The movie admittedly butchers (pun intended) her character. After her father was unjustly imprisoned and her mother went off her rocker, Johanna became the ward of the despicable Judge Turpin. Under his care, Johanna was imprisoned inside his house for most of her life, and of course, Turpin is perving on her and wants to marry her. During the story, Johanna meets Anthony, who she doesn't even know much about, and he falls in love with her at first sight. Turpin tries to stop this relationship by locking Johanna in an asylum, but she kills the guard and runs off with Anthony. Throughout the play, we get hints that Johanna isn't as sweet and pure as she appears, and who knows how much of her relationship with Anthony is really love or her desperately trying to get away from Turpin, taking advantage of Anthony and using him for her own gain.

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3. Demonic possession

I'll be honest, often times this can feel like a cope out. Oh it's not the character's fault. A demon is just controlling them. My advice for dark sides that involve possession is to perhaps focus on the mental state of the person being possessed. Did they want to be possessed? Do they like it? How do they deal with it? How does it affect them? Yada, yada, yada. By focusing on how the person feels about the possession and how they deal with it, you can create a sympathetic and interesting character the audience can care about.

Also, try to make whatever is possessing them interesting. This may be a me thing, but honestly, almost all the time the thing doing the possessing is just some one note baddie, whose entire personality is "LOL, evil." Look, yeah, the idea is that they're supposed to be bad, but can we get some variety? Maybe they like cracking bad jokes. Maybe they enjoy Shakespeare. Maybe they're a romantic. Maybe they're possessing someone in order to escape something. I don't know, just stop with the one note baddie!

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4. Problem with using DID

Otherwise known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder used in media to give some excuse for our good guy to be a bad guy. A recent example of this has been done in the movie, "Spilt". Again, this is often seen as a bit of a cope out as it gives a lazy excuse for a good guy to suddenly be Jack the Ripper. However, in recent times, this trope has been scrutinized by writing critics, and since a lot of amateur writer's use this trope, I feel as though I should touch on it here. A lot of people feel as though the portrayal of DID in this fashion is, well, offensive. It portrays those with DID as dangerous individuals with some sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing going on. Speaking of Jekyll and Hyde....

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5. Discussing Jekyll and Hyde

While The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is by all means a wonderful story, I find that a lot of people rip this story off when they use the evil split personality trope. The funny thing is, Jekyll and Hyde is actually a better example of a dark side coming from one's own flaws rather than that of an evil split personality. In the story, Hyde is created when Jekyll experiments on himself. What is this experiment? Jekyll is trying to seperate the good and bad from a person to see what would happen if you had an individual who was "unrestrained by morality ". Guess what that means, kiddos. Hyde, in a way, IS Jekyll. Hyde is Jekyll unrestrained by morality. He's all of Jekyll's flaws anthropromorphed into a person. Hyde isn't a case of DID. Personalities created by DID, also known as "Alters" , are created by the individual experiencing trauma at a very young age. Trauma so severe, their brain develops different personalities just so that that person can deal with it. Hyde isn't an alter. He's a glorified display of all of Jekyll's flaws created by science magic.

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6. So what do?

According to people far more knowledgeable about DID than I could ever be, alters generally aren't violent mass murderers. Alters can, however, be angry and even violent. Another thing to take into consideration is representation. Do you really want to risk representing a group as terrible people? I personally do not recommend using this trope if you're just starting out. DID is a complicated topic for a lot of people. If you really want to take the plunge, I highly, HIGHLY encourage you to do your research.

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7. Final thoughts

Dark sides can be so much fun to do. There's so many directions you can take them in, and different ways of going about giving your character a dark side. However, be careful if your dark side is in some way due to a mental disorder your character has. If you don't feel as though you're ready to tackle mental disorders, I'd strongly recommend staying away from using them. When done right, a dark side can make a character not just sympathetic or scary (depending on what you're going for), it can create an interesting character.

Thank you for reading, and as always, please let me know what you think.

I apologize for wasting your time.

-ATOUN

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khirsahle · 6 years

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oooh, i've never read stephen king before. his bibliography is quite intimidating, but i'd like to at least read one of his works of fiction-- do you have any recommendations, any favorite "hits"? how about "it"? i haven't seen that movie yet

Oh gosh, I have opinions. I will try my best to share them without spoiling anything.

First–and this is really important–DO NOT READ IT AS YOUR FIRST STEPHEN KING. I cannot stress that enough.

Stephen King has some incredibly wild ups and downs. When he’s on the ball, he just has this way of weaving descriptions together. It’s pretty masterful. But he has some incredibly low lows, too, and some of his books can be pretty…hoo boy, offensive.

IT was so offensive I literally screeched in fury and flung it at the wall. I ended up finishing the damn thing because I was dogged, and I manage to love things around the bullshit, but there’s some utter BULLSHIT in that bloated mess of a book. Thankfully they took the most egregious stuff out of the movie…though they added some other random stuff, like, why you got to do Mike like that, movie? It has some interesting things to say, and some truly surprising and horrifying moments (I never have looked at refrigerators the same since reading), but you need to build up some goodwill toward this occasionally highly problematic dude before you tackle that one.

Personally, I would start with The Shining. If you’ve seen the film…you still have no idea what this book is really about, because the director took all the subtly creeping horror and complexity and went lol Native American burial ground instead and kind of took a piss on it all. That doesn’t stop me from seeing the interesting things the director did contribute, but you can consider me one of those bitter kittens (like King himself) who did not care for the shift away from the true themes of this book. The real story in The Shining isn’t a haunted hotel–it’s about alcoholism, and very real very human inner demons, and how cycles of violence are so hard to break. It’s about how maternalism and how freaking powerful it is, and the dark impressions dark deeds/people leave behind. There’s no burial ground. The true evil of the Overlook is way scarier than that.

And seriously, you will not look at hedge animals the same way again. Holy shit.

PS: This is not to say King himself never went lol Native American burial ground. Which. Ugh. But this book was different, damn it.

PPS: DO NOT read this book right before travel. I made that mistake and, um, wow, bad idea. Its brand of horror is slow and creeping and will catch up with you if you’re anything like me.

After The Shining…hmm. It depends on that kind of reading experience you like. Personally, my second favorite King novel is the least favorite of some other fans. But dammit, I adore The Stand, so I’m going to recommend it. It is apocalyptic good vs. evil with some pretty incredible multi-line character work and one really cool, really chilling villain. It was vaguely “updated” for more modern times, but all the casual racism, sexism, and ableism of the time is still in there, so… Not so much.

Go in prepared is what I’m saying. There is a character who is called a “deaf-mute” the whole way through, and there is a character who is freely and almost gleefully called “a retard”, and it’s really upsetting for a modern reader. But those two characters ended up shaping my childhood in strange ways. When I was about 12, I went through the entire book and highlighted everything Nick said in yellow and everything Tom said in blue, just so I could find them more quickly. So I do think it’s worth putting on your protective gear and giving it a read, but do be aware what you’re going to get in addition to some really interesting characters and worldbuilding.

Also, that fucker is long. It’s really way too long–and there’s a special edition where King added in even more. This is a good book to take a lesson about the “bloated middle” from, actually. King clearly lost track of where the story needed to go and instead faffed around a bit in the middle for some time before jumping back on track. So if you find yourself getting bored midway through…you’re not alone. Even King has given interviews about how he almost walked away from this book because he got bored in the middle. I just wish he would have taken that as the SIGN IT WAS.

Oh! There’s also this really terrible and yet so worth watching mini-series staring all kinds of people you’ll recognize (Rob Lowe plays the aforementioned Nick). It’s not a great representation of the banality of good and evil or the sweeping apocalyptic intrigue you can get from the book, but hey, it’s fun. I’ve watched it way more than I care to admit.

Lots of people recommend The Dark Tower series, and I can get behind that. He does some pretty interesting work with his short stories–I mean, the movie of Shawshank Redemption is pure genius, and the story it’s based off of is pretty dang good–and serials. The Green Mile has its problems, but the world he created was so atmospheric that I still consider it worth studying.

It has been so long since Stand By Me that I can’t remember if I recommend it. But you can safely stay away from ones like The Cell (rubbish), and The Dome (ugh.) I’ve never been able to bring myself to read Misery, as the idea freaks me out too much. If you tackle that one, let me know what you think.

Actually, start with his book on writing. It’s one of the best. Keep in mind that you can ignore any “rules” you don’t like. (He is allergic to adverbs.) But overall, you can really learn a lot from this guy–both what to do and what not to do. He manages to be a parody of himself way too often. The deep-descriptive genius he can bring to some books can be an epic lol failure in others…like in The Dome, when the bisection of a gopher is treated with the same narrative oomph as the hero being trapped. I can’t even explain how silly it was, but yeah, sometimes your greatest strength as a writer can really fail you.

…and also, SERIOUSLY, go in aware that there will be problematic shit, okay? Okay. Have fun!

#ableism

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