We don’t think much about just passing along some tale we know, as in “tell us the story about so-and-so”. Whether or not it’s fiction or rumor, we treat it as “well, I’m just telling you that’s what happened, as far as I know”.

When the story is a joke (“that’s why you shouldn’t try that at home”) or some other rueful educational homily, we typically pick a side, from an advisory standpoint but, still, we can claim “nothing to do with me, I don’t make the rules.”

But fiction, now… that’s on us. To the degree that we want our stories to be “realistic” (people are people, not puppets), maybe we can claim we’re just showing what happens. But you know and I know… that’s not really what’s going on. We’re choosing the whole thing — the setup, the predispositions, the contingent reactions, the errors, the capricious odds, the outcomes — all of it. It’s on us.

There are authors who seem to relish beating up on their characters, while others wince when even a theoretical puppy comes to harm. But you can’t have much of a story without a problem that must be painful since it requires a solution, and an actor, who cares about the problem and must act accordingly, thereby encountering pain himself. No pain, no story. Not even in storytime for 3-year-olds, however watered-down.

Despite the “god” reference in the title of this post, deities in their instructions seem to have no hesitation about encouraging the “no pain, no gain” aspect of stories/advice, even if they add the sugar-coated reassurance of rewards for recommended behavior. But it can be hard to adopt that attitude as god-emperor of your own little fictional world, can’t it?

I’ll admit, I do enjoy some aspects of dumping my characters in the soup. I’m hard on them sometimes, not to be sadistic, but to (as it were) get their attention about what their priorities and plans should be, and how to carve their way back into the light. I make them worry, and the readers worry along with them and root for them to triumph.

I’m still enough of a softy that I loath the unnecessary sadism of G.R.R. Martin, and I’ll defend my fictional pets from harm (if not the people) because I’d rather impose pain on the people under the light directly, than thru miscellaneous innocents, just for the motivational lever.

To some degree, if I can’t keep my important characters alive, even if suffering, there’s no point to the story. The dead characters are already past worrying about things — the reader is attached to the living. But there is a point at which too much is too much, and it probably differs for all of us, like the level of heat in chili sauce.

Do you think of these things as moral responsibilities relevant to your own behavior, or just as part of the story-telling art?