Writing the Shadows: Embracing the Dark Corners of Your Stories

Stepping Into the Places That Give Stories Their Power

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

Let’s begin here: A room with no windows. The air is thick, unmoving. You’ve known this room exists, though maybe you’ve pretended otherwise. It’s the place where the things you don’t want to look at live—the regrets, the old wounds, the truths too sharp to touch. You stand at the threshold, hand on the doorframe.

You don’t want to step inside. But you know the story is in there.

Every writer carries a shadow. Every story has its dark corners. The parts we hesitate to explore are often the ones most worth writing.

---

The Stories Beneath the Stories

There’s the story you think you’re writing, and then there’s the story underneath—the one pressing at the edges, waiting for you to acknowledge it.

We all have our locked rooms. The places in our psyches where we store what we’d rather not face. It’s easier, safer, to write around them. To stay on the surface, where the air is clear, where the stories don’t require too much of us.

But if you want your writing to resonate—to really resonate—you have to be willing to step into the dark. You have to ask:

• What am I avoiding?

• What am I afraid this story will reveal?

• What happens if I go deeper?

The best writing doesn’t happen in the well-lit places. It happens in the rooms we’re afraid to enter.

---

Writing in the Shadows

You don’t have to live in darkness to write from it. But you do have to be willing to sit with it, to let it speak, to follow it where it wants to go.

Here’s your invitation:

1. Name the Shadow – What’s the part of your writing that makes you uncomfortable? The scene, the theme, the character that presses too close? Name it.

2. Step Inside – Write into the discomfort. Describe the emotion, the tension, the physical sensation of standing in that place. Let it exist on the page before you try to shape it.

3. Don’t Look Away – The instinct will be to pull back, to soften it, to turn on a light. Resist. Stay in the moment. See what happens when you let the darkness speak.

---

Play Invitation

Set a timer for 15 minutes. Start with this line:

"There was a room I never entered."

• Write about the room. What’s inside? What’s waiting in the corners? What does it feel like to stand there?

• Don’t rationalize it. Don’t explain it away. Just write.

When the timer stops, read what you’ve written. Notice where you wanted to pull back. That’s the place to dig deeper.

---

The Power of Writing the Dark

Readers don’t need perfect characters. They don’t need tidy endings. They need honesty. They need the rawness of what it means to be human—the contradictions, the unspoken fears, the things we keep buried but can’t quite forget.

Writing the shadows doesn’t mean writing trauma for the sake of it. It means recognizing that the most compelling stories live in the spaces between light and dark. It means allowing complexity, contradiction, and depth.

The locked room exists whether we write about it or not. The question is: will we step inside?

---

The Reader’s Role

When we write from the shadows, we give readers permission to face their own. We say: You’re not alone in this. You’re not the only one who has stood in that room.

And that’s what makes a story linger. Not just the words, but the way they make someone feel seen.

---

Your Turn

The door is open. The room is waiting.

• What happens when you step inside?

• What part of your story have you been afraid to write?

• What happens when you stop avoiding it?

Take a breath. Cross the threshold. Write.

---

About Me

I’m Rena—a writer, teacher, and explorer of the questions stories ask us to follow. My work has appeared in Brevity Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five on the Fifth, New Flash Fiction Review, Headland Literary Journal, and more. Along the way, I’ve collected more rejection letters than I care to count—a badge of honor for any writer hunting the next story.

I’m also the Founder and Director of an International K–12 school in Costa Rica, where my love for learning and storytelling collide. My work is about helping writers stay curious, stay wild, and stay open to what they don’t yet know.

Let’s dig deep, howl loud, and keep the chase alive.