You must be extremely careful when including pets in your creative work.
Pets and other animals often appear in fiction, such as pets as companions to the main character or characters with animal motifs as the main characters. Although the effects of introducing pets are great, Claire Pooley, a writer with many years of experience working in the advertising industry, points out that the way pets are treated can also lead to big mistakes.
Kill the Pet, Kill the Book's Rating: The Perils of Writing Dogs in Fiction ‹ Literary Hub
From Snoopy in ' Peanuts ' to the lost Lassie in ' Lassie ,' fiction has many memorable animal characters. Our adorable pets can be symbols of calm and happiness in light-hearted stories or heartbreaking empathy in stories where they're in trouble.
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Pooley says he especially enjoys including dogs in his work, due to his exposure to these characters and the fact that he has two border terriers himself. He says about depicting dogs in fiction, 'Dogs can be a wonderful literary vehicle. You can learn a lot about a protagonist's thoughts and feelings from what they say to their dog in quiet moments. In fiction, as in real life, you can learn a lot about a person from the way they treat their dog.'
On the other hand, Pooley points out that you have to be very careful about how you treat pets in fiction. In his debut novel, The Authenticity Project , Pooley features an old mixed breed dog named Keith. Keith is adopted by one of the main characters, but eventually falls apart and becomes a lonely stray again.
The Authenticity Project became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 29 languages. As a result, within a year of publication, Pooley received about 100 emails and messages from around the world asking, 'Did Keith ever live happily ever after?' Since Keith is a fictional pet, what is depicted in the story is all that matters. However, Pooley thought it was a 'mistake' to end the story leaving Keith alone, and responded to all readers who asked how Keith was later adopted and lived happily ever after. In addition, when the paperback version was published, he added a paragraph explaining what happened to Keith after the story.
After interacting with some readers, Pooley realized that he had to be extremely careful when using pets in stories. Even if a human is dramatically or brutally killed in a story, readers will accept it as an event in the story. However, many readers feel that a story in which a pet dies is simply unforgivable. Pooley's fellow writer Beth Morley said that in her story '
Pooley points out that readers feel this way because 'pets are innocent parties.' Unlike humans, pets do not have complex interpersonal relationships, and although readers are encouraged to feel a strong bond with them, they become one-sided victims as 'emotional sacrifices' to influence the reader's feelings, Pooley says. Sensitive readers may feel stressed reading a story while worrying that 'this pet will die' when a pet appears as a companion to a main character.
Having a pet suffer or even die in the story can affect a book's ratings and sales. Nicky Smith's ' Look What you Made me Do ' was given a one-star rating with the comment, 'I loved this book until the scene where the dog dies. Can a five-star rating drop so quickly?'
Pooley says, 'My strong advice to all authors is to think carefully before killing your furry friend and, if you decide to do so, be prepared. My advice to readers is that if they're worried about the possibility of dogs or animals dying in books, films or TV, they can visit the website doesthedogdie.com , which will check if a story will include the death of a dog.'
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