Advice to Young Writers · 10:25pm May 25th, 2016

Advice to young, starting writers I've addressed this before, but I feel it's important:

Darkness and maturity can co-exist. But they are NOT the same thing.

Light and immaturity can co-exist, but they are NOT the same thing.

To mistake one for the other say 'my work is childfriendly BECAUSE it's light' or 'my work is adult BECAUSE it's dark' is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.

An example of a dark AND mature work: Digimon Tamers. Adult themes, more mature issues with a darker tone.

An example of a LIGHT and mature work: My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. Light hearted, fun tone, but issues and ideas valuable to both kids and adults, watchable by all ages.

An example of a dark and IMMATURE work: Teen Titans Go. This series, love it or hate it, THRIVES on immature humor (no surprise, given it's made by the people who made MAD TV), but goes VERY dark places with a great deal of frequency. Such as the episode where everyone dies horrible deaths, or the one where Raven let's the others, after they're turned into old people, die of old age for her own reasons, then brings them back as Zombies.

An example of a light AND immature work: a lot of children's programming. This isn't always a BAD thing, just it reflects this thought pattern.

An example of a show that BLENDS light and darkness but is mature: Steven Universe: has light moments and dark moments, light episodes and dark episodes, but keeps an over all air of things that both kids and adults can learn from and need to hear.

But ASSUMING that darkness is INHERENTLY mature or lightness is INHERENTLY immature is bad writing.

I encourage starting out writers: if the ONLY way you can think to make your work more mature is making it darker, give it more thought. Think of the THEMES, LESSONS, IDEAS, and MORALS before you think of TONE. Because light and darkness are TONES, not measures of maturity.

Maturity is treating your audience like they're intelligent and not talking down to them. Giving ideas and morals that both kids and adults can make use of and learn from. THAT is more important than lightness and darkness.