Jon,

I'm glad yo uraised that point, because I feel that the dark side is actually much, much wider than that!!! To me, it's very much to do with the parts of ourselves that we repress.... Sometimes one person would not be able to understand why another finds some part of themselves to be unacceptable to themselves. And that is so much more than what 'strictly' falls into the 'dark' genres, and can be brought into almost any type of writing at all.

Although I do think you raise a valid question, whether crime writing is such a close cousin to horror, etc.

Ani

Okay, the net is very wide. I want to include all dark genres. Can we say 'Scorpionic'?

'Scorpionic'? I think you can use what words you like - it's a free Country (or used to be); but I think what the comments are saying is that all genres can show, reveal or include elements of what we may call 'the dark side' of human make-up.

Even with 'black' comedy, we can laugh 'nervously' and we all know what that feeling is all about.
Len

We are getting caught up in taxonomic twaddle.

Halfway Harry has hit the nail on the head. The Schindler film was about the balance between good and evil. But it seems to me most of us are too eager to deny the bad part in ourselves (cut it off, pretend it isn't there, problem solved).

I would not lump in crime with horror and the occult - certainly not, Shellgrip - but crime is about the dark side, surely. And detective stories would have no drive without a wicked criminal somewhere.

Hamburger Yogi

I can't quite get with the idea of two sides, a light and a dark, although that might be just a way of speaking to make the idea easier to handle. One of the interesting things to me about the idea of dividing things into light and dark, good and bad, is that it gives us the possibility of denying responsibility for what we do as humans, or makes it more bearable perhaps. So you can say trite things like 'the inner beast', or 'a little devil came into me', or 'I don't know what came over me', etc. I write about dark things, and I'm interested in how one human state kicks another off, - frightened people are often cruel, the basis of their cruelty coming from something universally experienced and understood, and fear itself is a state of innocence, (do I really think that? Maybe), so out of innocence comes ugliness.. But the stuff is all twined up together like a tangled ball of string.
Becca.

The dark side... (Luke) is great. It's exciting, it's dangerous, it's frightening, and, in terms of reading a book, it can be hugely entertaining. It's not always done very well though.

But for me, what is particularly intriguing about dark emotions or motives is where they blend, merge or cross over into light or white.

To be able to achieve the balance between the two in a story or a character is a wonderful and brilliant thing. But it is also a true reflection of most of us.

In real life we don't wander around in black hats or white hats to show that we're good or bad. But I am sure that the vast majority of us have done things that we feel were bad or wrong, just as I guess most of us think that we are generally 'good people'.

But acknowledging that these extremes of behaviour, moods and actions exist within us, and being able to describe that and weave it into writing that resonates with the reader, I think that is truly special.

It is the difference between and pantomime villain and something truly frightening.