Having a mid life crisis or something here. Anyway, as much as I joke about my stories being edgy, that's honestly the last thing that I want my stories to be called. My question is, what makes a darker story edgy? I always believed it was tone and purpose. If the story uses dark themes to seem cool and interesting, I deem it edgy, while a story that treats dark themes properly to leave it's narrative's message is deemed mature. How do you deem something edgy vs mature? How can you tell?
Going until you've written right off the paper and onto the table huhuhu er... well I don't know if I've ever really thought about writing as being edgy or not, I guess things are edgy in content more than written style, unless you mean like "that's lit fam!" edgy slang? haha
honestly i've always thought dark and sensitive topics and dark tones make "edgy" writing. in that case i've had quite a few "edgy" stories. oh well.
Well, yes, but I think there is a difference between a mature, bleak story, and something that is edgy. Something that is edgy (which I use synonymously with cringy) is needlessly dark, with characters that are so negative they almost seem whiny or emo instead of appropriately flawed characters. The scene is probably representative of some grimdark tale where everything is awful all the time. In an edgy story, I feel that nothing is happy, but there's not enough cause to justify it. In a more mature dark fiction though, you see characters which have happy and sad facets, and even facets that they hide from other characters. Even if the world is bleak, surely there is something that they can find happiness in, and what little happiness they have makes the suffering they endure shine brighter. There is pain, fear, sorrow, but there is also a crucial resistance against those feelings and the things that cause them wihch I believe make a story more mature in its dark undertones.
I'm not sure how much help I can give especially since I have no idea what edgy means and I don't want to know. I hate labeling things. However, I would say that a mature story for me, is one that is geared to an older audience. This doesn't make it good. From what your definition, I would give an example that both uses dark themes to be cool and interesting and treats its dark themes properly. That example would be Fallout: Equestria. This fanfic uses the horrifying and dark world of fallout to be cool and interesting but also plays with you idea of morality. The interesting way it handles its themes and how it used its dark world is what made me quickly fall in love with the story. I think that their is no such thing as edgy, just good and bad writing.
In my opinion, using dark or mature themes purely for the sake of using them rather than because it suits the story makes a work 'edgy'. The actual definition is, apparently: "at the forefront of a trend; experimental or avant-garde." Which I suppose does make sense, as dark and gritty does appear to be a current trend (e.g. look at every DC movie released since Batman Begins). In this case, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with 'edgy' writing, just as long as the darkness and grittiness is justified and handled well.
