Q: "Have
you ever killed an animal in your stories? Would you?"
Good heavens, are you
serious? Do you think I’m a suicidal author who would set fire to her own
meager career, who would jeopardize her position on Facebook, call down the
wrath of the Twitter troll colonies, cause her agent to faint and her editor to
cancel any shred of a book tour if said editor had even a slight willingness to
offer a tour in the first place?
Do you think I’m crazy?
Dani O’Rourke has a cat named
Fever, who tolerates her but is enamored of Yvette, the Canadian woman who
lives downstairs and doesn’t like cats. While there is no fan club dedicated to
Fever, I dare to say the few readers I have would notice if Dani let him escape
from her apartment, run into the street, and get smooshed. Or if Yvette, tired
of cat-sitting an animal who left hair all over her pant legs when he professed
his affection by brushing up against her, threw him out the window. Even
writing that makes me twitch.
I think the line writers
cross is defined on one side by butterflies and on the other by worms, and I’m
not even sure in these environmentally conscious days, that I would have
someone – unless it was a particularly evil villain – step on a worm trying to
cross a wet sidewalk.
Easier to write about a
brilliant young artist pushed out a window, or a socialite garroted in her
office, or any of the normal havoc that ends human life than to turn to the
sweet, innocent face on the couch next to me and say, “Sweetheart, you’re for
the chopper in my next book.”
In real life, I have read,
children who torture and kill animals are, sadly, giving warning that they are
damaged mentally or emotionally, and may well turn out to be equally cruel to
humans during their lives. If I were ever to consider having a fictional animal
come to harm in a story, it would be to make that very real and frightening
point. But I don’t think I could write convincingly about a person like that,
so animals are safe between the covers of my books.
Submitted with the approval of Saffron and Pumpkin.
Good piece, Susan. And I'm glad to see it has the Seal of Approval from Saffron and Pumpkin :)
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, I just read an interview with Margaret Maron (over on Jungle Red) where she says that she killed two cats in her novels and never received one letter of complaint. I tend to agree with her that if it is necessary for the story, most readers are going to accept it as part of the story (they may not like it, but hopefully, they don't like much of the killing in crime fiction).
ReplyDeleteKristopher, that is interesting. Maybe the impression that readers will rise like the Furies is a myth. Margaret Maron is definitely the the woman brave enough to test the theory. I've never come up against a plot point where killing an animal is required or even suggested. My imagination doesn't go there, I guess!
ReplyDeletePaul, no surprise: Cats rule in my house.
Like you, Susan, I've always thought it one of the taboo's of writing, the same way a writer isn't supposed to kill a child. Good blog.
ReplyDelete