: Re: Is it bad that I touch macabre subjects? Will writing about things like suicide, self-harm, and tragedy give me negative results when my stories are read and is it best just to avoid these

@Annie587

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I would recommend to be very wary of the topic of suicide.

There appears to be a lot of evidence that suicide. like other behaviours, can be contagious.

Media Contagion and Suicide

As a result of this many countries have codes of practice regarding reporting and sensationalism of suicide, particularly in children, teens and young adults.

Media Guidelines for Reporting Suicide

While most of the literature I have seen relates to journalism, there are certainly sources which include fiction as being part of the same effect.

'Evidence also supports the connection between fictional suicide stories and subsequent imitative suicides.'

Given the substantial evidence for suicide contagion, a recommended suicide
prevention strategy involves educating reporters, editors, and film and
television producers about contagion in order to yield media stories that minimize
harm.

There doesn't seem to be much literature about the effects of suicide in fictional writing. It might be that you don't get the single 'big hit' of exposure to a population that you do with news or TV drama stories, or perhaps the different uses of 'literature' and 'novel' are confounding my search.

Anyway, my point was not to say 'don't write about suicide', but to say 'consider the potential effects on readers of writing about suicide'. And consider the effect on yourself.
You presumably wish your writing to have impact and be memorable. Writing can be powerful, so writers have a duty to give consideration to how they wield that power.

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