From one of my favorite fellow writers, Karen Lingefelt. (She’s one of the most hilarious people you’ll ever meet!)

Her guest blog on the Plot Monkeys is not only inspiring to writers, but to anyone. I’m constantly amazed by her.

Recently, I read the book Repossessed, by A.M. Jenkins. Good book. Highly recommend.

Anyway, afterwards, I was curious about the author, so I did a little Googling, and came across this Suite 101 interview with her, wherein she says (amongst other things):

What opened up another world for me was talking with other writers about editorial advice, and seeing that when editors tell you something that’s not working, they almost always are pointing out a valid problem–but they aren’t always pointing to the right way to fix it. I learned that it’s better for your writing if you can pick out what is bothering the editor, and then feel out a way to address it that seems right for the characters and the ms. It’s a mistake to blow off an editor’s advice just because you don’t agree with their fix.

I’m currently working on not one, but two editorial letters, for Rampant and SSG3. One question I get asked all the time is whether or not I “have to” take the advice given to me by my editors. I don’t like the framing of this question because it casts my relationship with my editors in an adversarial light, as if the draft I turned in is somehow the Platonic form of the novel and any editing that occurs is a bastardization of my vision. I think people have this assumption because of horror stories about “bad editors” who try to change the book to fit their vision of it, and not the vision of the writer. There are also a couple of very famous writers out that that balk at the idea of anyone touching their masterpieces, and so aren’t edited at all.

I’m not going to say the editing process is utterly without pain — it’s not. That’s why we have terms like “kill your darlings” and why we have friends and loved ones and agents to moan and groan and whinge to. But it’s painful like getting an injection is painful, or “feeling the burn” of exercise. Revision is the hard part of writing for me, but it’s also the part that tempers the book.

My favorite part of revision is working out possible solutions with my editors. Because I recognize what Jenkins does — that yes, there is a problem, but what the solution is may be up for discussion. Sometimes, my editor will suggest something and it will sound great, but when we try it, it doesn’t work out so well, and it’s back to the drawing board. Sometimes, she’ll suggest something that I’m not fond of, and we’ll work together to try something else. In that case, you have to overcome the reflex of thinking there’s no problem, just because you don’t like the sound of the solution.

Recently, my editor brought up a problem with one of my favorite scenes in my draft — a real “darling.” Not only did I think the scene was fine as is, I thought it was great. It was actually a solution to a problem that I’d had in the course of writing the draft, and I was incredibly fond of it. And yet, I hadn’t thought of this problem. My editor wanted to brainstorm possible solutions to the problem, but I had a bit of a mental block about it, because solving the problem she had with the scene would rob it of my favorite elements. We each floated several ideas, trying to keep that element I adored, but none packed any particular punch (this was a big emotional scene), and I knew I hadn’t found “it” — until my editor rather radically suggested an entirely different take — one which would wipe the slate clean of EVERYTHING I thought was important in the scene, including the presence of a pivotal character.

Oddly enough, I loved it. Although it trashed my darling altogether, it packed one hell of a punch, enough that it made the darling pale in comparison. And it quickened the pace. And strengthened other facets of the novel, and recycled and helped little old ladies cross the street and reduced our dependence on foreign oil and all sorts of other goodies. I’m very pleased with it. And I’m very in awe of my editor.

So sometimes revisions can be fun. (Sometimes…) But I’m learning that it’s important to think of this as a team effort. It can be difficult to break out of the “corrections on a student paper” mindset at first, but it’s so worth it.

Sailor Boy and I have our plane tickets all booked. Thanks to a massive sale at British Airways, we’re spending his Winter Break on a research trip to Europe. A couple days (think: super-long layover) in London and then on to Rome, the setting for Rampant, for me to indulge all my unicornish tendencies.

We don’t know much about roaming around England at all, and we still don’t have a place to stay in Rome (though we’ve both been thre before, and I have a pretty good idea of our itinerary), so any advice would be much appreciated!

(Yes, I also posted this to Fangs, Fur, Fey. What can I say? Blog readers give great advice!)

I had a very odd experience yesterday. As I posted last week, I’ve been making some changes to my lifestyle, including starting several exercise classes, adjusting my diet, and working on a few other aspects of my life. I suppose I’ve been reading Robin Brande’s blog so much it’s rubbed off on me.

Anyway, one of the things I’m doing is taking a class in Yoga Nidra, which is a type of meditation. I thought it would be a good idea because my favorite part of my regular yoga class is Shavasana (I hope I’m spelling that right) at the end. I actually blogged about that last winter. I’m not very good at it, but I love it. So when I walked into this sample yoga nidra class a few weeks ago, and the instructor announced that it was “the dessert of yoga” and we could all lie down and shut our eyes, I signed right up. Nap time! Fun!

Except… weird. The instructor admitted that the first time she attended at yoga nidra class she thought it was B.S. That made me relieved, because I’m a pretty skeptical person in general, and I was kinda thinking that myself. So she talked a bit more about the practice and I’m sitting there under my blankets with my little eye pillow over my face and I’m thinking I don’t even need the instructions, I’m already falling asleep. (Yoga Nidra means Yogic Sleep.) So then she starts talking about how my hands feel heavy and my feet feel heavy and etc. and then it’s an hour later and I don’t remember a thing. So I think: I fell asleep. And the people around me are totally snoring, which reaffirms my theory that I was asleep.

But the teacher says that’s “not unusual” and that we won’t always remember what happened until we become more experienced in the practice, blah blah blah. And of course, all along, my B.S. meter is going off and I’m convinced I fell asleep. Still, I sign up for the course and I go a few more times and each time it’s like BAM! Asleep. BAM! Asleep. BAM! Asleep. Except the weird thing is, that I do wake up when she’s telling everyone to start waking up. So maybe she’s right about there being this continuum between awakeness and asleepness, because I remember how I used to totally fall asleep on public transportation (like the Metro or Metro North or the bus) and I would still wake up at my stop, as if I somehow knew.

Anyway, Monday afternoon I go to the class and I get all set up and I’m thinking to myself that I wonder what happens when she talks to us when we’re all asleep or in a meditative trance or whatever (and of course, the storyteller in me is thinking “Manchurian Candidate,” right?). So we start, and since I’ve been working hard on my revisions and all the other stuff going on in my life, my head is totally full of that. Weddings and Amy and unicorns and all of it. I can’t seem to even concentrate on what she’s saying. But I do remember being able to hear her instructions and follow them on a conscious level for much longer than usual, since I had to keep forcing myself to pay attention to her. But then the next thing I remember is her talking as if we were all sitting up in cross-legged prayer pose. I’d totally missed the part where she tells us all to start waking up! So I shoot up off my blankets and I open my eyes and…

I can’t see.

I mean, I see shapes and colors and stuff, but it’s all completely blurry. I can’t focus my eyes. So I try not to freak out and I “Namaste” with the rest of them and then start folding up the blankets while the next yoga class comes in and the whole time I can’t see. I keep bumping into people and I’m trying to see the writing on the far wall or the face of the clock but it’s all blurry, blurry, blurry….

And I stumble into the changing room and the instructor is there chatting with the other students and I’m all, “Hi, I can’t focus my eyes, is that a problem?”

So we chat for a while and her theory is apparently that I was very deep into my yogic sleep trance and came out of it too quickly (which, in retrospect, duh me) and that in the future, I shouldn’t feel required to match the rest of the class. So it was sort of the equivalent of one’s foot going to sleep, except it was my eyes. Still incredibly scary. And after a few minutes (in which the instructor and I chatted and did little exercises to wake up my brain such as describing the shoes in my closet (quoth the yoga instructor: “wow, you are a writer! Listen to those descriptions!”), I could see again.

But it’s made me nervous about continuing the practice. I don’t know if I like that these sorts of things can happen. They’ve never happened in regular yoga class. I just get flexible and energetic with the deep breathing and such. And of course, the fact that having my eyes stop working for a few minutes scares me a heck of a lot more than having, say, my foot stop working has not escaped me. Clearly I rely on my eyes much more. My editor would kill me if I couldn’t see her edit marks. She might even hunt down my yoga nidra instructor.

So I’m going to read more about yoga nidra, and I’m going to think about it. What do you all think? Anyone have experience with this kind of thing? Eatrawfish, any advice from young Bogie? Robin, you were a yoga instructor?

In other news, I got a sneak peek at my newest cover. V. Exciting, as certain Brit chick lit heroines would say…

So I was chatting with an agent at one of the industry events I’ve attended this year, and she admitted she occasionally dreads those “ask us anything” panels and sessions. It wasn’t the people who asked honest questions that bothered her, but the ones who had, in this agent’s opinion, already decided on their particular brand of “the publishing industry hates me” conspiracy theory and were just looking for affirmation.

Some of the other writers and industry types present (who are clearly too nice) argued that you couldn’t tell that type of question on sight. Others, including me, insisted that they’d seen it in action. The agent argued that it was very obvious when writers had somehow gotten hold of the completely wrong end of the stick somewhere and decided to run with it. These questions usually take the form of “What are my chances…” “I heard that you can’t get an agent if you’re new/old/young/etc.” or similar.

Asking “what your chances” are is a completely useless question. I know I’ve posted about it half a dozen times already, but it always bears repeating this great quote from Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Aspiring writers are forever asking what the odds are that they’ll [sell their books]. That’s the wrong question. If you’ve written a book that surprises, amuses, and delights the readers, and gives them a strong incentive to read all the pages in order, your chances are very good indeed. If not, your chances are poor.

This is a perennial favorite at the industry Q& A. But if you look at a situation like Carrie Ryan’s, you’ll see the difference. She had a bunch of agent offers on her manuscript in a couple of weeks. Because when you have the right book at the right time, getting an agent is pretty straightforward: you send out queries, they request the book, you send the book, they make an offer. If you don’t have that right book/right time combo, all the little tricks and whatnot aren’t going to help you. To my knowledge, no one ever asked her how old she was.

But back to that “wrong end of the stick” question. I was at one of those Q&As recently where a writer asked the following question:

“If agencies’ lists are getting full, why don’t they just hire more agents to make money off new writers?”

I think this is just the kind of question that agent up at the top of the post is talking about. To pose this question, this writer seems to be assuming the following misconceptions:

1) That an agent with an established list won’t take on a book they love.
2) That there is some massive body of incredible books that an agent would love to take on, if only they had enough hours in the day.
3) That someone can walk in off the street and be a good agent.
4) That agents “make money off of” writers, and could sell more books that way.

Let’s take this one at a time.

1) If your books is something that an agent really loves and thinks they can sell very well, they’ll take it on. Yes, even if you’re new. Even if they’re from a big agency. Even if they have half a dozen NYT Best-sellers on their list. The trick of course is that you’re not as likely to get the attention of an agent who doesn’t have much room on their list. They aren’t looking for new clients. They are probably not even accepting query letters. If they sign on someone new, it’s more likely to be a very established author looking to change agencies, a recommendation from one of their clients, or one of those other alternate means.

However, this doesn’t really matter because there are many, MANY great agents who are established, have a proven success record, bestsellers, etc., and ARE looking for new clients. Lots. The idea that there is only one agent out there for you is false. The idea that you must have the agent that Famous-Author-X has or bust is equally false. A lot of the biggest bestsellers out there are with the same agents they had when they started — agents who grew with them. And I can think of a lot of other newly-minted bestsellers or big deals made by agents that were totally under the radar until that deal came to pass.

Now, please note that above I said “not as likely.” This is very different than “not at all.” Query widely — some big stars. some mid-sized established folks with strong track records, some hungry and respectable newbies (at established agencies) building their lists. You never know who will get into your stuff, and you never know, after thinking about it, who you will want to be into it. You may find that you get offers from the little guys and from the big guys and you aren’t feeling the vibe from the big guy. You may find that you get the offer from the little guy and the big guy doesn’t seem to care at all.

2) Now, understanding the above, it’s not as if it’s time keeping agents from taking on scores of new writers. It’s not as if, if there were suddenly 40 hours in a day rather than 24, an agent would reduce their rejection rate from 98% to 45%. There is still a very small and limited number of good projects that an agent sees. This is why, when you get one offer, another one usually comes in (also because an offer from an agent is like a recommendation from someone in the industry that a project is worthwhile). This is why agents sometimes ask for exclusives. Because the projects with real promise are thin on the ground, and if one comes along that an agent loves, they are going to try to make time for it.

3) Even if an agent honestly has no more time to give to a client — any client — they probably aren’t going to let a good project slip away completely. I’ve seen writers get rejection slips from agents saying they can’t take on any more work at this time, but please do send this promising manuscript to their friend, Agent Other, and say Agent First recommended it. I’ve seen agents forward the work along themselves. And a lot of agents work in places with a bunch of others, so they may just pass it on to someone else in their agency. (This is one reason why, when a writer has an offer and contacts other agents, some agents pass right away, because they know that if they haven’t gotten to it but another agent is in love, they are probably the best man or woman to represent that work, and it’s in good hands.)

That being said, just as good books aren’t just lying around on the street, neither are good agents. Agents aren’t just sitting there going “Wow, if only I had more time, I could double my client list. Hey, here’s the UPS guy. I wonder if he’d like to trade in his brown uniform and be an agent!” Training to be an agent, building contacts, building a list, building a reputation is a huge amount of work. And hiring another agent at an agency is a big responsibility — you want a good person, because the reputation of your agency is riding on their performance. There isn’t a huge amount of out-of-work potential agents that can just jump onto the job and pick up the slack. It’s not how it works.

Usually, when new agents appear, they are people who 1) started out at an agency (the one they worked for or a different one) as an assistant, learning the trade, reading the slush pile, making contacts. Then they took over some other work — coordinating with subsidiary rights teams, reading contracts, etc. Then they made some deals for the agency’s clients — maybe audio or foreign or for some small work or work in a different genre than the client’s main agent handles… Finally, they got a client of their own, made some deals, etc., and started building a list. Later they may do that thing where they move to another company who offers them a promotion, OR they are promoted from the inside, OR they decide to start their own agency.

Alternately, 2) they are a refugee from the editorial side of publishing who decides to go agent. They already have a lot of experience and contacts. Either way, there aren’t scads of these people, and the training process does not occur in an afternoon. I know a bunch of people (former writers, former editors, etc.) who have tried on the agent hat, realized what a tough job it is, and escaped.

4) Agents don’t make money off of writers. Agents make money off of publishers. Yes, the writer and the manuscript is the product that they sell, but again with the supply and demand thing. More writers does not necessarily mean more money. An agent can have one writer client, and if her name is J.K. Rowling, then they already make more money than most other writers and agents on the planet. An agent can have a handful of clients who consistently land six figure deals, and thus feel free to pass on clients who would require the same amount of work, but who they only believe would net four figures. Or they may fall in love with the “little book” and go for it.

And, again with the supply and demand. Every agent has the story about the book they couldn’t sell. Even though they loved it. Even though they tried really hard. Because even if, by some miracle, there were a gazillion good manuscripts, and a gazillion agents to represent them, there still wouldn’t be a gazillion publishing spots.

See how many different variables there are? Agents aren’t going to act the same. There are agents who like having six huge clients. There are agents who like having two dozen hard working clients in a very specialized market they understand. There’s a little bit of everything.

What there isn’t is a whole bunch of untrained folks hanging around on the street that would make good agents if only they had the jobs, and huge piles of unagented manuscripts that agents would pounce on if they only had the time.

Dismal enough, Di? Yeah, yeah, what a way to start a Monday. But before you decide to drown your sorrows in the first press of autumnal apple cider, remember Theresa Nielsen Hayden’s Slushkiller, in which she gives 13 reasons your book will be rejected, and one it will be accepted. If you’re an aspiring writer, and you read only one essay about the topic of rejection, make it this one. So that when you hear stuff like “this agent got 20,000 submissions this year, and rejected all but three,” remember: a good 15k of those were cookbooks or written in crayon on the back of a receipt. And that’s exactly why statistics don’t mean anything. Because if you’ve followed the primer (I should probably add to that soon, huh?), written a book, edited it, and targeted to an agent who actually does handle that kind of book, you’re already ahead of a large majority of the other submissions.

(Probably more meaningful to West Wing fans…)

So I spent some time yesterday talking to my editor at Bantam Dell about revisions for Rites of Spring (Break). The reason I was up at 8 a.m. this morning was not out of some desire for early-morning tai-chi (though I will admit to a love for early morning chai tea) but rather, because I want to get all the silly stuff out of the way so that I can be ready to leap into the revisions ere they come from the nice Fed Ex man.

I read with much amusement the recent blog posts of Maureen Johnson and Meg Cabot talking about the challenge of editor letters.

Maureen Johnson says:

There’s an adage that “writing is revision,” and I think it’s true. It marks the difference between merely writing something down and really writing something. I can’t take two very quick steps and say I was running. I have to make lots of quick steps in order to call it “running” and not just “quickly changing position.”

It’s sort of the same with writing. Books aren’t written once—they’re written five, a dozen, twenty, fifty times. … There is always a way to change things around. Herein lies the problem if you do this for a living.

It is a problem. Though I have it on good authority that Maureen has turned in her revisions, so I guess she found a place to stop… for now, at least.

Meg Cabot says:

But wait! Why is my old book being handed back to me? I thought I was done! I have already started a new book (some writers find this odd but do you know what I find odd? Not starting a new book as soon as you are done with an old book)! After my editor has read the manuscript, she usually has some suggestions. I hate revising more than anything in the universe. More than cleaning up cat puke. I am done with this book and do NOT want to work on it anymore.

But once I see my editor’s suggestions, I see that this book is terrible and needs tons of work. So I shut myself up and work on it, resenting that I can’t be working on the beautiful first draft of the new book I’ve started. STUPID OLD BOOK. I HATE YOU!!!!!!

This is, to be frank, precisely what I’m afraid of. Because I’ve been working on the unicorn book and it’s all bright and shiny (at least in my head) and now I have to go back to the other book. And it’s not that the other book sucks, it’s that the only parts you are focusing on are the parts that need work. So it creates this false sense that the book sucks so much more than you remember, and that of course it sucks more than the new book you’re writing all on your own with parts that are great.

Ah, the mind games art plays with us!

Ooh, Fed Ex is here. Back in a jif.

Okay, here I am. In passing, why do those debris-filled Fed Ex envelopes always explode on me? Things currently covered in tiny bits of gray recycled fluff: me, the manuscript, Pantalaimon the laptop, my teapot, my tea, and an ostensibly innocent blueberry muffin.

Grrrr….

I’m very lucky my editor is such a genius. She has really great ideas. A few have already made me giggle out loud. Also, the way she puts things is so droll. What, in particular? I can’t tell you. Spoilers, you know. But it involves the word “love machine.”

And now I’m going to have “stay on the scene, like a sex machine” in my head for the rest of the day. Thanks, Kerri.

Here goes… wonder if Sailor Boy wants to get me a new blueberry muffin?

I just had my first wedding nightmare… so it begins?

So this week, there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the genre of romance at one of my blog groups: Fangs Fur Fey. One of the members admitted a bias against romance, but in the interest of expanding her horizons, asked what books people recommend. There were a few comments that were generally negative against romance (but who can control crazy comments, right Heather?) and some people took issue with what they thought was the original poster’s derogatory phrasing.

Yawn. This kind of shit goes down all the time. I don’t step in too often on public forums, because I’ve learned over the years that most of the time it’s like walking into a pit of rabid hyenas after slathering yourself in steak sauce (especially if you write–gasp!–chick lit), but I will occasionally pipe in to point out when people are contradicting themselves. I did it in this instance because the OP said she loved Twilight. I’ve read Twilight (not the sequels) and let me tell you, from twelve years of reading romance novels (and four years of studying/trying to write one), I can say unequivocally that Twilight? She’s a romance. In tone, in plot, in characterization (gorgeous, unattainable, perfect, desirable angsty alpha male every reader can fall in love with who avoids/antagonizes but is secretly obsessed with a female the reader can identify with, and a commitment at the end of the book)? Ding ding ding, that’s a romance, folks.

Me, I love romance and always have. I read historicals in high school, categories in college, and pretty much anything I could get my hands on afterwards. I’ve read books ABOUT the genre of romance and its development. I’ve read old categories from the 1940s,50s, and 60s where the plots are pretty much exactly what I described above (sans vampires).

More than once, I’ve been at a cocktail party where someone will sniff and say something demeaning about romance novels. I always ask what it is they LIKE to read. More than once, the answer has been “Nora Roberts.” But they don’t realize that’s romance, because in their heads, it’s not romance unless it’s a historical with Fabio half naked on the cover. They think THAT is what defines romance, not the actual content of the book. there are romances that aren’t shelved in romance. There are romances with adirondack chairs on the cover. I felt like this same kind of “I don’t read romance but Nora Roberts is my favorite author” conversation was what was going on at FFF, so I did bother to comment.

So the kerfuffle ran its course, and then — because they love nothing like they love a good kerfuffle, with the possible exception of an HEA — resurfaced on Dear Author. (Uh oh. Hide the steak sauce.) No, that’s not fair. Everyone was pretty even-keeled, I thought. Actually, what struck me about the thread comments was the absolute weariness with which all the romance writers and fans seemed to approach the conversation. There was a definite sense of “sigh, here we go again.” (I was paraphrased in Jane’s original post re: the Twilight thing. And I commented on the DA post as well.)

This weariness makes me so sad. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I think it’s because this book I’m writing, this YA urban fantasy that allowed me to join FFF in the first place? Also a romance. A romance that even dedicated romance readers like the folks on DA would approve of. I refer to the stated description of Rampant: It’s about killer unicorns that can only be defeated by virgin descendants of Alexander the Great, and the teenage huntress whose birthright is seriously messing up her social life. That last part is where the romantic conflict comes in.

The SSG books aren’t romances. They contain that lovely coinage of RWA’s: “romantic elements.” i.e., Amy thinks about her love life. (I’m really not going to talk much more about this to avoid spoilers.) But Under the Rose was called, respectively, “romantic” and “romance” by Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. And when I get fan mail, it’s almost always about Amy’s various romantic relationships, and speculations about “who she’ll end up with.” So I guess the elements are loud and clear.

I love romantic elements. I love romances. My favorite romances are, arguably, the ones that are more “elemental” in nature, though I will always say that people have it backwards. Like The Terminator. I think that’s pretty obviously a romance — what could be more romantic than the idea of a man — a dedicated soldier — who has loved you, in secret, his whole life, coming back in time to save your life and the life of your child, knowing that… well, I speculate that Kyle knows who he is at the end. But that’s me. All that killer robot and nuclear holocaust crapola is just window dressing for the romance. It’s the conflict that brings the characters together AND keeps them apart. But then my romance writing friends would all be, “but what about the HEA?” But what is Sarah Connor focusing on at the end of that movie? Killer robots? Nah, man. She’s thinking about Kyle. Sighhhh.

Anyway, I might be getting off track, here. I guess all I want to say is that I’m writing
romance that is also UF, and I hope both romance and fantasy readers can appreciate that, no matter what it says on the spine…

The other day, I was inspired to post because I was attending a loop Q&A with an agent who stated it as one of the cardinal rules: “Whatever you do, don’t kill the dog.”

I’d heard it before (it’s apparently a big deal in Hollywood, made famous by Tom Hanks after Turner and Hooch was widely reviled…), and if you Google it, you get a lot of reviews saying stuff about that Molly Shannon movie, The Year of the Dog, which I gather is about Shannon’s character recovering from the trauma of her dog’s death? Several film critics decided to be clever by starting off their reviews with some variation of “It’s a well-known axiom in Hollywood that you don’t kill the dog. Well, in this new movie…”

However, I feel like the Shannon movie, as well as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which some commenters brought up the other day, are not exactly what we’re talking about here. Both of these stories feature doggy death as the inciting incident and primary premise of the entire story. They aren’t stories about dogs who at some point happen to die (Turner & Hooch, Old Yeller) or even stories about whatever else in which dogs die at some point (The Grapes of Wrath, The Road Warrior). So I don’t really think the axiom applies there.

Another commenter started equating it with violence in general, but I think that’s the whole point. You can kill people in gruesome ways, murder whole families, annihilate whole continents, but you can’t kill the dogs. I seem to have missplaced my copy of Stephen King’s On Writing, but I think he said something to the effect that in his books, he’s murdered children, caused the extinction of the human race a few times over, and yet never got the hate mail he did when he killed a dog. It’s a hot button issue.

It’s definitely something that would push a few buttons for me. As I said in my original post, I cheered along with the rest of the movie theater when the dog in Independence Day escaped the alien firebomb. Yeah, everyone else was turned into alien toast, but the yellow lab was okay, so Earth was going to make it. (Strangely, cats do not have the same effect on me, as I had no problem with the cat-killing scene in Holly Black’s Valiant.) And yet, I also rolled with the punches when it came to the dog-killing scene in the awesomely bloody Ginger Snaps. But it was played for laughs… (which I suppose is the same as with the squished puppies in A Fish Called Wanda). So where do I draw the line? Pets of main characters, dogs I’ve been taught to identify with over the course of the storyline… I mean, I knew there was a reason I’ve never actually seen Turner & Hooch!

Phoenix New Times film critic M. V. Moorehead puts an interesting spin on it in his 1996 article “Pet Reprieve“:

Actually, the killing of dogs–that is, the killing of dog characters–is a fairly common melodramatic method of establishing degrees of evil or desperation. Old Yeller is probably the ne plus ultra of the genre, but most of the canine victims in the movies aren’t noble, tragic heroes like Yeller or Hooch. More often, mutts who get whacked are pawns of a lazy screenwriter, incidental victims used as a shortcut to our atavistic emotions.

In screenwriters’ parlance, it could be called the Puppysnuff Technique. It isn’t, of course–I just made up the term–but it sort of fits, don’t you think?

Though I’ve always been a dog lover, and can think of few things more odious than brutality toward a dog, I was never particularly squeamish about fictional depictions of this sort of behavior. I never realized how offensive, even unwatchable, many people find it, until the early Eighties, when I took a date to The Road Warrior. I had already seen it–it was then, as now, one of my favorite films–but my date had not. When one of the postapocalyptic goons shot a crossbow out of frame and sent Mel Gibson’s faithful dog to canine heaven with an off-screen yelp, my date became livid, then lost all interest in the film. The dog was dead; as far as she was concerned, no happy ending was possible. The suspense was gone.

(The whole article is worth a read, especially as it brings up the whole cats vs. dogs subject — complete with a mention of Jonesy, the kitty on the ship in Alien who does, in fact, survive.)

You know, now that I think of The Road Warrior, I’m beginning to see why I’m dead set against seeing the new Will Smith adaptation of I Am Legend until I know for sure that his loyal pooch isn’t going to snuff it. These poor post-apocalyptic heroes have enough troubles on their plates, what with the mutants and zombies and all. Let their puppies survive. (Ahem. Carrie.)

So what’s happening here? Like Moorehead, I wonder if screenwriters, knowing that doggy death will tug the heartstrings,a nd knowingly breaking this rule hoping to inject some terror, severity, etc. into their work. Need some sympathy for a protag? Have them “save the cat.” Want to convince the audience that the bad guy is really bad? Have him “kill the dog.”

Except… saving the cat is a metaphor. You aren’t really supposed to have every character rescue a kitten from a tree. That would be cheap. And so, I think, is killing a dog to get us to take it all seriously. I’m sure there are better ways. Especially since doing so is a dealbreaker for so many folks. The “dead dog” genre is one I avoid on principle, and there you have an entire work of art dedicated to the emotions one goes through at the death of a beloved animal. (Note: Do not EVER get me started on my abhorrence of Animal Farm.) So a story which is not about that, but just contains it in passing, as a cheap emotional trick? Yeah, you’re likely to piss me off big time.

And I think these other instances, the played-for-laughs, gore-free, attachment-free squishing of the puppies in A Fish Called Wanda, etc., are the exception that proves this rule.

So, remember: “don’t kill the dog.”

Is at Romancing the Blog.

Also, I think there is some confusion about what I mean by “don’t kill the dog” which has stymied discussion. I’ll be back tomorrow with more clarification on that axiom.

Unbreakable rule or room for interpretation?

Discuss.

PS: To the anonymous lurker I discovered yesterday… hey!