Never Hurt a Dog

 by Thomas Kies

My wife has one rule for when I write.  I can kill as many people as I want in any gruesome way my imagination can conjure up. 

“Yes,” she said, “but you can never, ever hurt a dog.”

“But, sweetheart, it’s a wonderful way to show how despicable a villain can be.  Remember the first episode of House of Cards, when Kevin Spacey’s character, Frank Underwood, cradled a dog that he found in the middle of street after it was hit by a car?  We thought he’d comfort the poor pooch until help arrived.  But then, just when you least expected it, he snapped the dog’s neck with cold resolve, without an ounce of regret.  We knew right then and there, he was truly a bad guy.”

“That was disturbing,” she responded, closing her eyes as if trying to erase the memory.

Then I said, “And how about the John Wick series of movies?”

“What about it?”

“They all started when John Wick, content to retire from his life as an assassin, goes on a murderous rampage of vengeance when the son of a mobster kills his dog.  Without that, the entire franchise would never have gotten its start.”

She put her hands on her hips and sneered, “You know I’ve never seen one of those movies.  Much too violent. And now that you told me about the dog, those movies are dead to me.”

Why is it such an emotional no-no in fiction?  I think it’s because dogs represent unconditional loyalty and love.  Canines are dependent on humans and offer simple, pure, and predictable relationships. We think of them as both protectors and furballs that we need to protect. 

I’ve read that on a human scale; dogs have an intelligence level to toddlers.  They love to play, and they cuddle, and they have those sad eyes when they’re begging for a treat. Only the worst kind of villain can hurt a dog. 

This subject came up in discussion a few years ago at a mystery conference in Scottsdale, Arizona where Ian Rankin was the keynote speaker. He had never hurt a dog in any of his wonderful books, but there was one instance where a cat was murdered. 

He chuckled and said in his soft Scottish burr, “I never heard the end of it. People were genuinely pissed. You know I’ll never do that again.”

If anyone is in doubt as to the emotions that can be dredged up, I recall crying my eyes out when I read Old Yeller and then, like a true masochist, saw the movie.  They both end the same way.  Absolutely heartbreaking. 

So, in my mysteries, I’ve hacked up people with a samurai sword, buried them in a shallow grave in the woods, drowned victims by chaining them to the prongs of a giant forklift and dropping them into icy water, shot them, blew them up in fiery explosions, and suffocated them. 

My wife laughs that my imagination is such that she sleeps with one eye open.  But because I will always abide by that one rule, we will continue to stay married.  Never hurt a dog.  

By the way, the pup in the picture above is our girl, Annie.  She’s a sucker for tummy rubs. 

Where are we all headed?

By “we” I mean writers. And by “headed” I mean, What will the future of professional writing look like?

This is a topic I’ve found myself discussing often recently. I mentor writing teachers often, and when we talk about how to best prepare student writers for the future, I keep coming back to NetFlix.

Crazy for a book lover to say that? Maybe. But maybe not.

I live in a house connected to a dorm that is home to 180 teenagers, and I teach and work with these students eight to 12 hours a day. I know their interests and have a pretty good handle on what makes this group of next-generation professional writers tick. And as a writing instructor and literature teacher, I need to meet students where they are as I create curricula (for students) and design workshops (for writing instructors).

This is where it gets interesting: where are student writers learning the art of narrative?

When teaching Dickens or Conan Doyle, we talk about serial publications and discuss how readers eagerly awaited the next – weekly – installment of the story. Recently, I found myself in conversations where I said, Kids are learning narrative structure and the uses of narrative tension from shows they watch (or “binge watch”) on Netflix. (Admittedly, as someone trying hopelessly to catch up to the upcoming season of House of Cards, I know where they’re coming from.)

Would I rather students actually read Dickens’s novels or all of Conan Doyle’s work (or even the Harry Potter books instead of viewing the films)? No doubt. But I have reason to be hopeful. This spring, I offered my Crime Literature students an alternative to our term paper: Create an NPR-style podcast. S-Town is popular among them. Not all, but maybe a third of the class took me up on it. They produced detailed scripts (complete with background music, street sounds, etc), researched widely and deeply (the paper topic is Discuss the symbiotic relationship between crime and society, so it’s wide open), and produced 8-minute podcasts. And these were terrific, impressing peer students, my English department colleagues, and blowing me away.

The assignment didn’t introduce them to television writing per se, but it did expose them to the digital form – and just maybe to the place where narrative and technology will intersect in their futures.

A Shaken Snow Globe

There are days when it hits the fan, when life leaves you feeling like your head is a shaken snow globe, and you want nothing more than a quiet corner and a blank computer screen.

These are the days when you know you’re a writer –– when at the end of a long day you don’t want a drink, you don’t want to exercise, or even to curl up with a good novel, but, rather, to fill a blank screen.

I had one of these days recently: a long meeting that ended at 8 p.m., followed by a debrief. I came home and watched the first episode of House of Cards with my wife Lisa. When she went to bed, I stayed up to write. Needed to do so. Just 45 minutes. Just needed to clear my head by filling it with the novel I’m working on. Then off to bed, and I slept like the dead.

All of this makes me think about what writing means to me. Billy Collins, in his poem “Driving Myself to a Poetry Reading,” writes, “There is a part of me that wants / to let go of the wheel, climb over the seat / and fall asleep curled in the back.” This makes me think of the complex relationship writers have with writing. The thought, for instance, of everything this new book (and its author) will endure on its way to publication –– feedback, revisions, submission, rejection, contract negotiations –– is like staring at Mt. Everest before attempting the climb. It makes no sense to do so. Later in the poem, Collins writes, “Another part of me wants to be up on the hood, / a chrome ornament in the shape of a bird / leaning aerodynamically into the wind.” There is a push-pull relationship with this craft that most writers experience. The personal insecurities (will people like this?) that we all have and the business frustrations (promotion, reviews, advances) are often at odds with the love we all have for the craft, the I-need-to-do-this aspect of writing. When the latter wins, you know you’re in this for the right reasons.

The physical, mental, and spiritual act of writing keeps me going. I don’t write full time. So it’s not and never has been a job. It’s what I do –– most days at 4 a.m. when I push the plot forward –– but also late at night on the heels of month-long days when I need to clear my head by filling it.