: You have to give your readers hope. If the world is irredeemably grim and dark, it's extremely difficult to make your readers care what happens to it. Somewhere there has to be somebody

@Gloria285

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You have to give your readers hope. If the world is irredeemably grim and dark, it's extremely difficult to make your readers care what happens to it. Somewhere there has to be somebody who sees something better. Maybe your dark character, though himself grim, does good things that noticeably help others. You might even be able to wrangle interactions between multiple characters where one character manages to make the other better. Momentary levity can help, but somewhere there needs to be an underlying possiblity that things can get better.

You can even have characters that are funny and dark at the same time. Years ago I ran a game of Dungeons & Dragons in which the characters had this recurring nemesis. He was an assassin, but he knew the characters were pursuing him, and when the opportunity presented itself he would taunt them or play (often dangerous) pranks. But the taunts and pranks were also clever and funny and infuriating once you got past the "oh c***" moment. He was also higher level than they were, and thus actually quite dangerous when they encountered him face to face.

In terms of "dark" TV shows, I can think of, Breaking Bad stands out in my mind. An affable rather boring guy slowly degenerates into a significantly evil character, but even as he descends into murder and mayhem, he is still a highly developed human character with people he cares about and intents and goals beyond simply death and destruction. By the end of the series you're really not rooting for him any more, so much as wondering how he's going to End, and who is going to End him. But that show is an AMAZING bit of writing, and a very very difficult trick to pull off. The saving grace is in the character Jesse, who goes along with White, but remains a good person throughout. He becomes horrified by the man he's been working with, and he becomes the main focus that allows the viewer to care about the events though to the finale. If Jesse had gone dark along with White, the shouw probably would not have worked so well

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