Can Someone Tell Me What Counts As ‘Dark’ Fiction?

Because I think my scale is broken…

Cee R.
1 min readJan 13, 2023
Single window in a dark room
Photo by Josh Nuttall on Unsplash

I recently had a short fiction story declined from a publication for being too ‘dark.’

I’m NOT complaining about that — editors can decline things that don’t fit in with their publications. That’s absolutely fine.

But… I still don’t know why it was ‘dark’ — now I’m second-guessing my own writing and ‘darkness’-scale.

The story mentioned murder, violence, and sex.

None of those things happened ‘on-page’ though, and weren’t graphic.

There was a lot more swearing than I normally use. Apparently my normal inability to swear without *’s doesn’t extend to fictional characters.

Other than that… it was gothic? But, that’s just my tone sometimes, y’know?

Maybe I’m overthinking. It didn’t fit with the pub. and that’s OK. I’ve submitted it elsewhere, so we’ll see what comes of that. I’ll self-publish if this one declines too.

Still… I would like to know what counts as ‘dark’ fiction — because my scale clearly doesn’t match other people’s on this!

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Cee R.

Writer, poet, (book) blogger @ dorareads.co.uk , Queer, weird, & a tad peculiar. Bookish rebel. Welsh as a tractor on the M4. Buy me a coffee @ ko-fi.com/ceearr