Q&A for How to Write Dark Poems

Put the word "depression" in the center of a piece of paper and write a list of words that pop into your head when you think of the word "depression". You may also focus on a time where a friend or relative experienced depression or moments where you had sad thoughts.

Reading books, newspapers, other poems, and looking for new words/techniques you don't know and researching them.

One of the most commonly used one is night, but you could also use the cold, chains, cages, and silence.

Watch movies that make you cry (I personally find Inside Out and Dumbo extremely sad), and put yourself in the shoes of the character who is upset. Also, remember that sadness doesn't always have to mean tears, it can feel more like emptiness, loneliness, dread, or uncertainty.

Write about how you think it would feel, or how you would like it to feel. Write of your fantasies, and not only of experiences.

It depends on your purpose in writing. If you're trying to substantiate your feelings by setting them to words, there's no reason to rein in your emotions. If, however, you're trying to entertain or "please" an audience, you could risk displeasing them with a heavy barrage of negative thoughts and feelings.

Yes, if those are the proper words to convey the emotion you're trying to express and they're not offensive to your audience. If you can make them fit and not just sound like "I'm a dark teenager who uses bad words," then go for it!

There are many ways. You can find a word that you definitely want to use and expand from there, but it's usually best to start with an idea. What do you want to say? Anything goes, even if you just want to emphasize the beauty of language. However, after reading the poem, it must be clear why you chose the form of a poem to say this message and not, for example, a newspaper ad.

No. It can if you want it to, but it doesn’t have to. If you don’t want rhymes, try free verse or blank verse.

Try being as descriptive as you can. For example, “The blood dripped down his arm and onto the floor, his mom wasn’t expecting the massacre on the other side of the door”. Or, talk about a topic that’s already dark like suicide, mental health, murder, or school shootings.

Now this depends on what your dark poem is about. First channel all of the negative energy and emotion in you. Then if you want to write about your death, or death in general try describing the scenery. If you want to describe a murder go into every detail about the murder ( the screams, the look on the victims/murderers face, the mindset of the murderer throughout the poem, the atmosphere). An easy type of dark poem is describing all the bad things about yourself.