Don't Pet That Dog

I love Mr. Robot. I should probably do a post in the future about the emotional shortcuts the show does to keep those businessmen so mustache-twirly, and those hackers so holier-than-thou. I mean, really, when you think about it, how do the hackers think destroying the banking system is going to do anything but impoverish the middle class and eradicate democracy?? It's a child-logic fever-dream! And yet I love that show, because--

No, wait, this isn't a post about Mr. Robot. So why did I bring it up? Because the show uses dogs to establish moral clarity. See that guy lifting a dog off the ground by its leash, hangman-style? Yeah, the hackers can destroy him without losing our sympathies. Oh, look at the hackers free all those dogs from the animal shelter. Awwwwww! They're TOTALLY the good guys even though they're trying to wipe out my life savings and pension! Dogs, man: They are a powerful story roofie to take your audience immediately to places they wouldn't otherwise go.

Please stop using them to introduce your main protagonist.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, "pet the dog" and its Blake Snyder equivalent, "save the cat" (you must have found this blog by accident, right? How does a writer not know this stuff?),  these terms of art capture how we can make characters likable by metaphorically or literally being nice to animals. Doesn't actually HAVE to be an animal. There's a great pet the dog in Sea of Love, where Al Pacino is running a sting operation, rounding up dozens of criminals with some sort of fake prize offer. One of the criminals brings along his son to collect his prize, and Al Pacino deftly shows his badge so that the child can't see it, then informs the criminal that they ran out of prizes. Awww! Pacino let the criminal go so that the boy wouldn't have to see his dad get arrested. Hey, I like this guy!

So why do I say stop using this technique to introduce your protagonist? Because it's lazy. It's bad for you as a writer. Rather, you should be introducing your protagonist with her/his big want, and/or her/his excellence. Notice in Sea of Love, the pet the dog isn't really the introduction of the protagonist. The sting is: We meet Pacino being excellent at catching dozens of bad guys with a con. Now imagine that some other cop catches all those bad guys, then we meet Pacino letting a criminal go to preserve a child's innocence. Maybe we like Pacino, but wouldn't we rather watch the other cop's movie?

It's easy to think up pet the dog scenes. It's harder to really know what your main protagonist wants, and make her/him awesome in its pursuit. Don't rely on pet the dog.

And please don't be lazy in the way you use it! Don't have your protagonist on the way to her important job interview, but she stops to buy a homeless guy a sandwich. Have her waiting in the lobby with another candidate whose zipper is down, giving her a moral choice to pet the dog at her own peril: Does she help this candidate with his own interview, possibly costing her the job? THAT'S a dog petting that would really reveal character, putting a big want in conflict with excellence.

To be fair to Mr. Robot, it IS smart with the way it pets its literal dogs. The dog hung by its leash is saved, to then function later as a plot device. The dogs released at the shelter are a metaphor for the hackers releasing the world from debt.

In conclusion, I just randomly bought a homeless guy a sandwich. Watch Mr. Robot!