Your style will never be suited to women’s magazines?
Is it that your story doesn’t have that happy an ending, or it isn’t uplifting? Perhaps it isn’t quite PC. Maybe the apparent message isn’t truly what you mean AND you don’t want the reader to believe it’s what you mean. You may have your tongue in your cheek. You may have a cheek. Or you may have an unreliable narrator. The thing is, you want to write the story and you want it read. Going against the grain means taking a risk. Risks are edgy.
It’s a shame that ‘edgy’ can now refer to a hairstyle with long straight bits covering one eye, or the inclusion of full sex in YA. In fact it’s an adjective referring to a feeling of unease, a risk-taking. This could be social, intellectual, artistic.
Let me suggest alternative imaginings of ‘edginess’ to those of hairstyles or urban sex. Here are some images that may prompt a writing response in you: I’m deliberately not putting my own spin on them.
STACKED EDGES:
Or even more abstract: LAYERS OF MEANING
The following one, though, is more obvious. Suppose it was sent as a greetings card? Wouldn’t you have a sense of unease about the sender. The inevitable Will he fall? reaction does not sit well with any good wishes expressed on the card.
Finally, an anecdote. I don’t know the artist’s intention, but a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition a few years ago left me with a memorable feeling of distinct unease. It showed a beautifully dressed child of about eight years with an expression suited to a disenchanted thirty-year-old. No descriptions or explanations under these portraits, the artist may invite you to make up your own story . . .