Title: My Mafia Alpha Prince [Mature 18+]
Starring
Sweetie Ingenue
Mangry Dominic
Lots of violence
Lots of sex
Devlin Mafioso
Trigger Warnings
The Dark Romance Summary
Sweetie Ingenue gets tangled up in the world of mafia Alpha Prince Mangry Dominic. He's the hottest, darkest, most-tattooed guy she's ever seen and he speaks Italian and uses guns. His ties to the Familia puts her life in danger because... mafia.
Due to toxic romance rules, Mangry's the only one who can protect her. When he treats her worse than a brood mare, she's turned on so much, she devotes her entire life to him. But then he crosses the line, and she leaves him... then forgives him and they make up by the next chapter.
Somehow, rival wolfpack alpha, Devlin Mafioso, kidnaps her and nearly kills her due to some vengeance plot that she's oddly at the center of... even though she just started dating said prince. So, Sweetie is in deep now, fully committed to her prince and his mafia. She's willing to sacrifice herself for Mangry, who storms in right on time with the Familia in tow to save her.
She's now a princessa. We get a cute epilogue where Mangry's still a possessive, jealous a🤯🤯hole but... less, so his character arc's complete. And now he's married to Sweetie, they have a future wolfbaby on the way, and their love will withstand the test of time.
The End
Unless the story's hugely popular. Then you better get a sequel ready.
Author's Note: There are a handful of newly-created subgenres of Romance that fit into this... subgenre. I've been around the block a few times and have come to find they've become wildly popular only in the last 10 years. We can all trace this trend to two (arguably three) publications that possessed the minds, hearts, spirits, and lady parts of many women around the world. I won't name them but if you've written or read Dark Romance recently, then you've read those series.
Dark Romance Subgenres
The aforementioned, Billionaire.
Who can forget the Mafia, dolce amore?
The Werewolf stories and their wily alphas. You better not get on his bad side or else!
The Kidnapped (a.k.a. Stockholm Syndrome) stories. Hey, if Belle can fall for Beast...
The Arranged Marriage stories. I'm gonna leave that alone.
The everyday YA and Adult Fiction stories where you wonder why's this girl still with this loser?
The Dom/Sub Erotica that romanticizes abuse.
The DDLG that romanticizes abuse.
Tips on Dark Romance
🤯 Trigger Warnings are a must. Use them in your description, Author's Note chapter, at the end of the chapter preceding the triggering chapter, at the beginning of the trigging chapter, and at the end of the triggering chapter.
🤯 Your male lead should be as two-dimensional as possible but really hot if he's the romantic lead.
🤯 Don't romanticize abuse but definitely make sure your MC's turned on by his disturbing possessive behavior... but not getting punched in the face.
Next up: Teen Fiction
Author Commentary on this subgenre
Because Dark Romance is a hugely popular category on Wattpad that many have issues with, I'd like to share some additional thoughts on it that folks may not expect. These are my opinions on the matter so if you're here to just learn how to write a cliché dark romance, feel free to skip over this section and head to the next chapter.
Let's process
Danger is appealing in fiction. It's unpredictable. It yields the dramz. It's scary, and fear can be intoxicating to readers. Because many readers don't know larger-than-life characters like this— the super-hot AND super-toxic (some know the super-toxic ones, though)— we gravitate towards them, especially young women readers. Those super-hot/toxic guys have got to be more than violent and emotionally unavailable. And if she's the one who can fix him, then the fantasy of all dark romance has begun.
This young woman's fantasy is pretty bold considering the self-sacrifice she's chosen. Maybe one day, he'll wake up and instantly be less toxic, less bitter about everything. He'll hold her in his arms, and she'll never feel like she's in danger again because her love will have transformed him. Because somewhere deep down beneath all those gray and bloody and violent layers is a fluffy teddy bear who likes to Netflix and chill.
It sounds like a fantasy, but aren't faeries and dragons and boy wizards that can beat the most evil wizard in the history of the world all fantasy, too? Those don't get laughed at by society, do they?
Sex, in our society, has many dangerous connotations to it as well. Sex has become synonymous with Romance since the 80s and 90s, when the fade-to-blacks were done away with and our imaginations had less sexcapades to create. In dark romance, sex is the focal point of all the danger. And because our virgin is so inexperienced in this area, there's a combination of wonder at the newness and fear at all the potential physical harm this virgin will endure. It's similar to an everyman deciding to go on an adventure because some rando told him he was the one who'll save the world. He has no powers, but he's still so certain that he'll stop the evil evildoer who'll bring about the apocalypse. Our sweet ingenue may not be saving the world but the sex sure is saving somebody in the world since the a🤯🤯hole is with her and not beating the daylights out of a guy who looked at our MC for too long.
Now, if danger boy's not slapping her around, he's definitely whipping her and calling her every filthy name in the book. It's degrading and my inner-feminist screams for something more uplifting, even the consensual erotica stuff. Sometimes, it's just too much, reading in great detail that a man of brute strength and biceps as big as boulders brings such abject humiliation and pain to a young woman. This is just me, though. To many, danger is like that candy to the baby, that WAP to that horny man, that violent videogame to an incel: it's irresistible. So going from OMG YES!! to Oh HELL NO! is becoming a thinner and thinner line.
Who knows what the next craze in pop culture will feature? We've seen just about everything else this year.
Abuse, Co-dependency, and Domestic Violence are a hot button issue on Wattpad. Any self-respecting woman like Lilliana Lovely and Rose Thornwood would be quick to denounce not only a character like Mangry but the victim, Sweetie, for being such a wimp and allowing Mangry to treat her so poorly. Then, Lilliana would denounce Rose for tolerating Derek's possessiveness and jealousy because Lilliana is perfect and knows all things. This kind of judgment, I think needs to be examined.
A character like Mangry tends to be dismissed by readers as a violent entity, a non-human, something that solely has the capacity to destroy and thus must be destroyed.
Why?
Why don't readers demand more of characters like this? Sending them to prison at the end of the story or killing them as if that somehow heals the victim of all of the abuse he or she has endured? When will the criminal do the heavy lifting to be better, instead of the victim? The victim is not the perpetrator, here. The victim did not cause the circumstance, the abuser did. The abuser needs to do everything possible to rectify all the damage done that does not include fade-to-black therapy and he's all better or one conversation and he's all better. And yet, all the onus is on the victim? Huh?
So then Sweetie has to pull herself up by the bootstraps and by a ginormous amount of inner strength go from punching bag to Lilliana Lovely in a span of a couple of chapters. Literally, everyone demands this of Sweetie, not only other characters but most readers who just cannot empathize with her struggle. They're not only demanding, they speak down to her as if she's a child, continuing the harm caused by her abuser. It's as if the mental abuse she's suffered isn't real when in actuality, the cuts and bruises of mental abuse run far deeper than any physical form. The bodily bruises victims of domestic violence have last a few days. The mental bruises last years. And so, it takes longer, for some victims to heal from those. Instead, as soon as those wounds heal, everyone demands that the victim wake up the next day and be 100% again. Where is the empathy?
I suppose because the reality of this is not as dramatic as depicting a woman who can wake up one day and immediately change her life. Maybe as a generation of Millennials and GenZers, our need for instant gratification applies to everything including the intricate and lengthy process of mental wellness. But why is it, in this generation, we extend more empathy towards monsters like serial killers (Joker) and not towards victims? How many films and books have been released where we watch Mangry do vile things to Sweetie and because he has some sob story about his mother dying, we're supposed to feel sorry for him? I bet in ten years, someone will do a retelling of Harry Potter and write it from Voldemort's perspective so that we can feel sorry for him, too... unless that fanfiction already exists... and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it did.
Next up: Teen Fiction