Also: I don’t think making it a coma dream makes it darker. If anything, it lightens/softens it, since the whole world isn’t gone – just his. Amendment poster is right. All in the head is softball, unless the story is really hopeful and wonderful and it turns out that it’s all in the character s head because their reality is actual hellish.
Work-around:
Create a dark, post-apocalyptic world, with only one survivor, only to have it be entirely a dream. The survivor wakes up in a hellscape a thousand times worse.
.
The dream world was actually the safe place. The isolation was their brain protecting them from the horrors of the people in their waking hell.
Create a dark, post-apocalyptic world, with only one survivor, only to have it be entirely a dream. The survivor wakes up in a hellscape a thousand times worse.
.
The dream world was actually the safe place. The isolation was their brain protecting them from the horrors of the people in their waking hell.