I'm not sure what it says about us, relatively, that I've never been bothered about what I have done to a character. I did nearly make myself cry while writing a certain scene in Sea Change, but that was a matter of having wound myself up so tight in the story (that was during my "write a manuscript in a month" phase) that I was along for the ride in a way I associate with reading a novel in a day.

Ultimately? The story is my concern, and in my fiction that requires a good deal of brutality.