The Complicated Ethics of Writing Violence in Fiction | Time

I wrestle with this issue all the time. It's a fine line to walk. On the one hand I don't want to sanitize violence-I don't like presenting murder as a parlor game, or worse, a video game in which there are no real consequences. On the other hand, I don't want to cross that thin line into what might be called the pornography of violence, a means to merely titillate the worst angels of our nature.