11/9/22
When writing stories I really don't think anything should necessarily be off the table as far as subject matter. Stories are means of exploring the vast array of human experience and uncomfortably topics should certainly be touched on in the process.
That said there's some stuff I truly don't enjoy reading about. I absolutely hate when harm comes to animals in stories, especially cute furry ones. I could care less about humans. Chop 'em up, torture them, kill them all off. Okay, that's not entirely true, but I can much better stomach bad things happening to humans than to animals. I recently read The Pillars of the Earth, a book which I really enjoyed, but there was one sequence that went into fairly graphic detail about a fight (that was set up for entertainment of humans) between like six dogs and a bear. I just had to sort of grit my way through that part.
In my own writing I try to avoid this subject. I do have a line in my book Doorways to Everywhere where the villain talks about strangling a puppy and watching the light fade from its eyes. The only reason I included this was that I wanted to establish that this character was pure evil and that was one of the most heinous things I could think of. I want to make clear he does not actually go through with this act in the narrative, he just mentions wanting to do it. As far as I'm concerned he's never actually done it, it's just something he dreams about because he's a horrible, terrible person. It's probably one of my least favorite lines I ever wrote, but it fit the loathsome character.
I'm going to take a never say never stance here, because if some story I was writing absolutely demanded that harm or death befall an innocent animal, I don't want to shortchange the story. But at this point in time I can't imagine writing a story like that and I will do everything in my power to not have that be an event that happens in any story I write.
There are a couple reasons for this. Mostly, I just don't enjoy reading about it and I also don't enjoy writing about it. I don't really want my mind to occupy that headspace.
The other reason is I sort of feel like when we write we're actually channeling other realities. If there are an infinite number of universes out there, than any story we write could actually be happening somewhere in some other universe or dimension or who knows. In a way writers have strange god-like powers. I don't like the idea that there's even the tiniest percentage of a chance that I'm calling into existence a reality where some poor innocent doggy or kitty has to suffer. I'm sure enough of that goes on in this reality and I don't like it and I'm not going to contribute to putting that energy out into the universe or multiverse or whatever.
I'm also aware that I feature some slapstick style harm coming to talking animals at a few points in the Tourist Trap series, but I see them as kind of animal-human hybrids and that makes a world of difference. Also no serious permanent harm really comes to anyone. I see it more like Wile E. Coyote getting himself blown up by TNT and being fine a few seconds later. That sort of thing is okay because ultimately he's pretty much impervious to harm.
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