How Dark Is Too Dark?

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A fair warning advisement - this post will not have a resolution at the end. 

I have no clue what the answer might be to the question "How dark is too dark?"  I'm not even sure there is an answer, because human taste is so subjective.  

That subjectivity is both the good news and the bad news.  Good because it means there has got to be someone out there who will love what you write, and bad for the exact same reason in reverse.

I suppose the goal is to get more people loving what you write than not loving it.  There's no way in hell anyone can please everybody, and have everybody love what you write.

Personally, I can only take dark, sad literature in very small bites (read never).  When I got to the end of The Last Oracle by James Rollins and the ending made me cry, I felt betrayed.  I enjoyed about the first five Anita Blake novels before the dark angst got too be too much.  I avoid sad, dark anything with a passion.

Color me surprised when The Age of Stars is dark, sad, pain filled and super-emotional.  I have three broken main characters, and the novel starts out with their brokenness splayed out on the page.  There will be a happy ending for two of them, as they heal each other.  The third, not so much.  His is a tragically sad ending, and the more I get to know his brokenness, the sadder I feel for him.  I think I need him to kick a cat or something so I stop feeling sorry for him.  He is the bad guy, after all.

 People use each other, betray each other, have their hearts broken, and apparently are going to have a lot of sex.  At least, to start with.

Photo courtesy of Free Digital Photos

Quick note - the sex isn't gratuitous.  It does figure very prominently into their emotional state and achieving their goals.  Once I get into the second act, I think things will calm down.  I hope - writing sex scenes is hard.

Before I even started writing the novel, I knew it was going to be a huge challenge for me.  I knew it was going to be dark and uncomfortable, but since I knew there was going to be a happy ending and the main characters grow to a better emotional place, I was okay with it.

Then I read this excellent post by Anna Elliott on Writer Unboxed about achieving that balance between likable and unlikable characters.  My head swam as I extrapolated the post to my whole book.

Am I writing an unlikable novel?  Would people, first of which would be agents and publishers, be willing to give my characters the chance to grow to the better place, or would they toss the book into the trash because it's too sad and too dark?

I don't know.

The story compels me, though.  I want to write it as I plotted it out.  The characters are fully formed in my mind.  To change the story would be false to me.

I had a little emotional breakdown over the weekend, and I owe a huge thanks to those of you who took the time to talk me down.  I decided to just write the first draft as planned, and do it as quickly as I can.  I'll give it some time to percolate, and then I'll decide what to do with it.  When in doubt, procrastinate, right?

Where do you think that line is when a story is too dark?  Have you ever written a story you thought was too dark?