There’s a great blog by Karin Tabke over at Murder She Writes about killing off a pet to show the depths of an evil person’s depravity.
I posted there, but it got me thinking not only about killing off pets and children in books, but what it means in the larger context of the times, and also what it means to the craft of writing in general.
Like a lot of kids, I grew up with OLD YELLER, BAMBI, and THE YEARLING. These were the life lessons kids needed to hear. Animals die. And if you’ve grown up with a pet, you learn that in quick order. Some of these stories came out of a time (I’m thinking, THE YEARLING) when what we ate came right from the pen out back. You couldn’t afford to get attached to an animal who might end up on your mother’s lace-draped sideboard. There was also a “toughness” thing: You need to learn this because I say you do.
A lot of books I read came from that mindset. Now I’m grown up and I read for fun, for escape, and sometimes for deeper meanings, but I’m not a kid anymore and I get to choose what I want to read. Fact is, I don’t want to be torn up about a little helpless kitten being stomped to death by some asshole like Tommy Lee. I don’t want to put that in my Salad Shooter, and see how many tears come out. That’s not what I read for.
I know bad endings are there for a reason, and they do elevate the story, they do add depth and importance. Sometimes deaths are necessary, as in the James Herriott books. Plenty of death there—the guy was a country vet. Death is, after all, a part of life.
Maybe it’s cruelty I can’t take. I don’t like it. I don’t want it in my head. I don’t want to think about it. I choose not to read about wanton cruelty to animals or cute little kids. Or even uncute little kids. I choose not to write about it, either.
I have rules. I use them in my writing, and I use them in my reading.
It’s okay to kill a kid or an animal if we haven’t met them first.
It’s okay to reference the death of a kid or an animal. Offstage.
It’s not okay to spend half the book with an animal and then have the heroine (or hero) find it stuck on a spike of the wrought iron fence that wraps the garden.
Sorry, these are my rules. If someone does that, I put down the book right there. I never read that author again. (There are exceptions. I haven’t read Harry Potter, but I’m guessing that could be the exception. Sometimes it does come down to context.)
But there are other good reasons, writerly reasons, for not killing a child or animal you know.
1) It’s a cliché. How many times have you read a book where the only way to show how depraved and evil someone is is to have them kill the heroine’s pet? It’s over-used and gratuitous, so I don’t think that makes for good, or even interesting, writing.
2) It’s expected. A woman has a cat. Someone is stalking her. She stupidly lets the cat out. The reader expects something to happen to the cat. I think that makes for false tension. The reader’s mind is focused on the cat, thinking, “God, I hope she doesn’t kill Chuckles.”
3) It takes the reader out of the story. You’re in the story, you’re there with the heroine, and then she lets the cat out. And suddenly, you pull back. If you’re me, you think: that bitch isn’t going to kill that poor cat, is she? (Bitch, being the author.)
4) Laziness. There are much better ways to show an evil character. Subtler, smarter, even more digusting ways. But it takes work, and it takes imagination. Killing the animal is lazy.
5) You will lose a good portion of your audience. It’s hard enough to get an audience in this biz, you want to lose half? Uh-uh. Not me.
6) You fall sway to a false directive (channeled directly to you from the many times you read The Yearling) telling you, “You have to do it.”
My question is simple. Why?
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