A lighter shade of darkness

I recently did a sort-out of some of my bookshelves, and found myself giving away a few young adult  series.  The common factor in every case was that I'd only half-read the book, or had managed to struggle through to the end of it but knew I would never read it again.

One series of books was hailed by commentators as a brilliant portrayal of the fear and darkness of ancient times, an accurate representation of how humans lived then.  This was a book aimed at twelve year olds, and that claim of accurate darkness worried me.  Yes, it may well have been like that in those times, but we are writing for people in 2015.  Most of us don't live in fear of supernatural monsters, and most of us don't live short, nasty, brutish lives.  And part of what civilised us is stories.

You might well argue, as many gamers do, that this is pretend violence, and that people can tell the difference between make-believe killing and the real thing.  I'm not convinced by that argument.  I do think that constant exposure to make-believe violence shapes  our life scripts as much as exposure to real violence,

I believe I have a moral responsibility inherent in everything I write, a responsibility to show a better way of being in the universe.  My stories aim to teach respect for the natural world and its creatures, and I don't intend to do that with a thrill-ride side-order of violence.  My writer friend Carol Westron once described me as the most moral writer she'd ever met.  She said she always felt confident that my stories wouldn't be filled with unnecessary evil.

For me that lighter shade or darkness means that I don't give my characters the biggest guns they can find, and let them blast everything around them in glorious technicolor.  Our current TV news channels do that every day, and I don't watch that violence.  My lighter shade of darkness means I put the violence off the page.  People do get killed in my books, but not on-stage.  My story is about the consequences of those deaths, showing the loss and devastation that others feel when a person or wild animal dies an untimely death.

I see it as my responsibility not to add to the evil in the world, so If you're looking for a tale that revels in gratuitous violence, move along there.  I'm not for you.