Bitter With The Sweet – Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was in art class — four years. Yes, would like to do again, if I stop getting sick and can find time. I think it’s good for my mental health. Also covers — one class stands out starkly in my mind.

I was sitting at the easel, struggling to capture a likeness (It was life drawing, but we did portraiture also) in pastels, and failing — all my paintings from that time look washed out, like an overexposed photograph) — and the teacher walking around, looking at all our work. And she said “Don’t be afraid of the dark. The dark has to be in there, or the light doesn’t show right.”

Being a snerk by avocation and an idiot by personality, I heard myself say in this thin, creepy voice “Come to the dark side. We have cookies.” And the whole class cracked up.

But she was right.

These days, when I’m mostly dealing with redrawing parts of or fixing mid journey renders to make covers (or merging three or four drawings, to be fair) because yeah, I could draw the whole thing, but it would take me a month, and cut seriously into writing time, which is why I’ve always done short cuts like Daz 3d and filter forge and what have you) — I’m often shocked when I take a sample from an area in the middle that looks, say, light blue, and the sample is a blue almost black.

Because our perception of colors is influenced by the colors around it. In the middle of darker colors, a color looks light even when it isn’t. In the middle of lighter colors, a color can look really dark, even when it isn’t.

Or, take the fact that I’ve been low carb so long, now that we know I’m NOT pre-diabetic, Dan gave me a little bit of candy for Easter. Wasted money. I can’t taste chocolate or peanut butter or whatever. All I taste is sweet. Heck, when I indulge in corn chips or fries or rice, I tell servers “This is my dessert” and they look confused, but those taste super-sweet to me nowadays, because I rarely have carbs.

It’s all in what you’re used to/what’s around it.

So, what does this have to do with writing?

Well, someone in a discord group quoted someone saying that tragedy was always “more serious” and meaningful than comedy.

<sighs.

They’re not wrong, but they’re not right either.

Of course murder or death or whatever is experienced as much more serious. It is the nature of it, you see.It’s final.

In your life, you’ll hopefully have a lot of fun dinners with family, or nice Christmas eves. But you’ll only experience the death of a relative or friend once per relative or friend. (Hopefully. We don’t want to hear about your vampiric aunt.)

So those events will stand out and have a greater gravity. Of course.

But you’ll also only experience the birth of your child once per child. And if you think that doesn’t have metaphorical narrative weight, you’re deluding yourself.

While tragedies are hefty in narrative sense, and can be used as a cudgel to beat a point home — and therefore lend themselves to certain points of view — it’s quite possible to make a strong impact in comedy or in tragedy wrapped in comedy. If you don’t think so, you have never read Terry Pratchett.

The point is comedic writers that are nothing but comedy, or as I call it, cross the road to run over a joke because it was there grow tedious and cloying. Kind of like sugar, when you’ve been low carb too long.

And writers who are nothing but tragedy create grey goo. You couldn’t care less about their characters, or their world, because they’re unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. You get tired of their drama, and you want something fun or happy or…

Probably my most popular work is the very silly Daring Finds murder mysteries. Yes, there are murders. And fairly horrible things happen. But around them there are moments of family closeness and silliness, and —

In reading them recently to write the next one, I realized they’re some of the most soothing murder mysteries I’ve ever read. No, seriously, you want to go back and re-read the fun parts even after you know the murderer.

Now in those I was aiming for that. For pastel colors, and a fun overall picture. They are, after all, cozies. They still make several points I wanted to make, but they’re goofy fun.

The Darkship Thieves books are more serious. But very few people experience them as dystopia. They are, of course. But the character is still fighting, and has wins (They all do.)

So, tragedy? Comedy?

Each needs a dollop of the other to be visible and strong enough.

It’s the balance you pick that makes it feel one way or the other.

Pick the balance you want. Don’t be afraid of the dark tints. But don’t be afraid of light, either.