Do Content Warnings Get On Your [REDACTED]

About two months before B of the Bang hit the shelves I was pecking Julie Gibson’s head about content warnings in books. Incidentally, if you don’t know Julie, she’s the head honcho, supremo and mastermind of The End of the World Reading Club and one of the most genuine, smart and hard-working people out there. BTW, a subscription to TEOTWRC is a brilliant Christmas gift for anyone you know who likes zombies, books, apocalypses and cool little survival gifts - i.e. anyone amazing.

The idea I was bouncing off Julie’s head was putting a content warning in BOTB. This was the one that I’d written for the book. I thought it was kind of funny in its excess, but also potentially instructive for anyone who does appreciate a warning about these things. Although I like to traumatise readers, I prefer to fall short of actual psychological scarring.

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In my experience the only content that people genuinely want a warning about is if anything happens to an animal. You can kill grandmas, middle class women of a certain age by the score, even children, and no one will bat an eyelid. Harm the eyelid of a bat and you’ve got major problems, buddy. I’ve written some pretty messed up things in stories but the only thing I’ve ever had people shout at me for is when they thought I was going to hurt an animal. Even the merest hint. This is why there’s a website called “Does The Dog Die?” and not one called “Does the Middle Class Woman of a Certain Age Die?”. As an aside, I outlined the premise of Gerald’s Game for my wife the other day and she had to sit down for a few minutes to recover. That’s the sort of thing that writers yearn for - a premise that knocks the wind out of a reader, it makes writing the bloody thing relatively easy.

Julie’s considered response was that in her opinion content warnings are surprisingly divisive. Those who need them, really appreciate them and would like them in more books. Those who have less need for them feel like they telegraph the story or ruin jokes. I think there’s another group beyond that who feel that content warnings are spoon-feeding those who should toughen up. This latter group see it as a slippery slope from content warnings to age ratings on books. There is also the argument that unlike films where the images are chosen for you and forced into your mind, books always have the option of toning your imagination down.

Pennywise

I’m not going to pretend that I have an answer to the question, or a view on what’s right - although I don’t believe that showing compassion is ever a bad thing. In the end for BOTB I decided that if I was going to put a content warning in then I’d add it at the end so people could find it if they wanted it and not if they didn’t. Then, in the final edits we needed to lose a page when the book was being set, so I had to cast the content warnings adrift. My hope was that the cover is the sort of garish warning that nature often gives: bright vibrant colours = danger.

Lobsters beware.

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