History PoorCommunicationKills / Literature

** Sirius can't even communicate well enough to explain to a bunch of frightened children that he's not actually going to murder them, he somehow failed to say the words "I didn't kill those people, here, check my wand", and the entire disaster in Order of the Phoenix would have been avoided if he'd simply outright said to Harry [[spoiler: "Hey, here's this two way mirror your dad used to own, you can use it to talk to me any time."]]
*** The first instance can be excused by the fact that he's not thinking clearly and that the kids might not believe him in any case, and it's possible he said the second one (or words to that effect) but nobody listened, since he didn't have a trial. But the last one makes no sense and almost comes off as him being "mysterious" on purpose, with devastating consequences.

* ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', where the excessively gentlemanly heroes deliberately choose not to tell Mina Harker about their vampire hunt so as not to distress her, thus making her the [[DistressedDamsel perfect target]]. Ironically, once the damage is done and they must let her in on it, she copes rather better than her husband did.
** And it's also the reason that Lucy and her mother died; if Van Helsing (who was the only guy who had any inkling of what was going on with Lucy at that point) had been upfront with the women, then there would be no plot.

* In the Creator/AgathaChristie novel ''Sparkling Cyanide'', Sandra Farraday knows that her husband Stephan is having an affair with Rosemary Barton, is afraid Stephan will leave her for Rosemary, and is prepared to kill Rosemary to prevent that from happening. Stephan, on the other hand, has grown tired of Rosemary and realized that Sandra is his real true love, but he's afraid that Sandra will leave him when she finds out about it, and is prepared to kill Rosemary to prevent the affair from becoming public. [[spoiler:Technically, poor communication didn't actually ''kill'' in this case, since neither Stephan nor Sandra was the murderer, but it very easily could have.]]
** Played heartbreakingly straight in ''A Murder is Announced''. Remembering the scene of the crime, [[spoiler:Miss Murgatroyd]] finally realizes something was wrong, but, not being very quick-minded, she only gets to work out that [[spoiler:"She wasn't ''there''!"]] instead of saying directly that [[spoiler:Letitia Blacklock]] must be guilty. Her friend decides that the matter can be discussed later and goes away, leaving her alone in the house. Since the murderer has been eavesdropping, there is no "later" for poor [[spoiler:Miss Murgatroyd]].

* Creator/SimonaAhrnstedt gives us a really painful example of CanNotSpitItOut in her debut novel, ''Literature/{{Overenskommelser}}''. It's the story about young Beatrice, who's bullied and pressured by her abusive and tyrannical uncle into an engagement with a man. A man who's not only like forty years older than her, but he also treats women like they're dirt under his shoes. So what does she do? Of course, she tells nobody the truth about why she agreed to marry this man (he would get her beautiful but weak cousin instead, if she didn't sacrifice herself). To be fair, she really is in a crappy situation, but still, yikes... And unfortunately, her love interest Seth is no better. Since he thinks that she willingly rejected him to marry an old disgusting aristocrat, stupid pride keeps him from admitting that he loves her. Several misunderstandings between them (sigh...) leads to much misery for them both (including that Beatrice gets [[spoiler:brutally raped and battered on her wedding night)]].
* A lot of the tragedy in ''Literature/TheReynardCycle'' could have been avoided if Persephone had only made it clearer to Reynard that, though she finds him charming, she would never seriously consider having a relationship with him.

* Ava believes this is what happened when she reports on Countess Elinor in ''Literature/KingdomOfLittleWounds''. All she said was the woman had a lover, and then Elinor was arrested for high treason.

* In Creator/TimothyZahn's ''Literature/{{TheConquerorsTrilogy}}'''s trilogy, when humans had First Contact with an alien race, they sent a peaceful first contact radio communication. Unfortunately, the aliens perceived it as [[spoiler:one of their dreaded Elderdeath weapons]]. So, the aliens immediately opened fire, quickly shredding the human battle fleet in minutes and starting a nasty war, based on mutual misunderstandings.

* In Creator/TimothyZahn's ''Literature/{{Conqueror}}'''s trilogy, when humans had First Contact with an alien race, they sent a peaceful first contact radio communication. Unfortunately, the aliens perceived it as [[spoiler:one of their dreaded Elderdeath weapons]]. So, the aliens immediately opened fire, quickly shredding the human battle fleet in minutes and starting a nasty war, based on mutual misunderstandings.

* In ''Literature/TheAndromedaStrain'', some crucial information fails to get the the Wildfire team in time because of a [[FailsafeFailure torn piece of paper jamming the alarm bell on a teletype machine]] (remember, [[TechnologyMarchesOn this was SOTA technology]] in 1966).

* Also, the main plot of ''Literature/SpeakerForTheDead'' occurs because no one stops to ask the Piggies "Say, why exactly did you kill those two people and ritually disembowel them?" Seemingly, neither of the people who got disemboweled thought to say anything along the lines of [[spoiler: "Why are you doing this?...What's the third life?...Oh, I see. Uh, humans don't do that. It'll just kill us horribly. Please don't."]]

** There have been some ''terrible'' cases of this trope occurring across the StarWars Expanded Universe. One of the biggest ones was the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. It turns out that a number of people like Palpatine/Sidious, Vergere, Thrawn, and Darth Krayt ''knew'' about their existence and simply did not tell the galaxy at large - and giving vague hints to only a few people at the most. Sure, most of these people were villains and some of them were neutral, but a lot of grief (among other things) could have spared if people were simply told about it. The same things can be applied to Jacen and Abeloth, as well as Darth Bane's Sith Order and the Jedi Order.

** In the second half of ''The New Prophecy'' series, Brambleclaw befriends his half-brother Hawkfrost, whom Squirrelflight openly distrusts due to his arrogance and overly ambitious nature. Brambleclaw doesn't really explain why he wants to be friends with Hawkfrost and refuses to listen to Squirrelfight's warnings not to trust him, believing it be a sign of the [[ASharedSuffering discrimination that he and his half-brother endured as the evil Tigerstar's sons]]. [[spoiler:Though she ultimately turns out to be right about Hawkfrost]], Squirrelflight doesn't handle the situation much better; she expresses her suspicions of Hawkfrost rather tactlessly, [[YouHaveToBelieveMe doesn't provide any real evidence]], or make any real effort to understand Brambleclaw's desire to be friends with him, and jumps to the somewhat irrational conclusion that Brambleclaw not listening to her about Hawkfrost means that he doesn't trust, respect or love her. They eventually reconcile, and settle their disagreement by talking about it for perhaps the ''only'' time in the series.

* Discussed and averted in ''Tender'' by Belinda [=McKeon=]. The main character has grown steadily more obsessed with her gay best friend, culminating in her going to his boyfriend [[spoiler: and saying they’re sleeping together in an attempt to break them up.]] Her now-ex-friend later asks her (during a well-deserved WhatTheHellHero) if she seriously thought his boyfriend was just going to believe her without reservation and go haring off instead of talking to him about it.

* ''Literature/ALionInTheMeadow'': The lion, at one point, says that the boy and his mother should have left him alone as he only eats apples... but the thing is, he never ''told'' them that he ate only apples and that would be a strange thing to assume without being told.

* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': This is the Achilles' Heel in Bramblestar and Squirrelflight's relationship, causing a great number of quarrels/falling outs that arguably could have been easily avoided if they had only ''talked things out''.
** In the second half of ''The New Prophecy'' series, Brambleclaw befriends his half-brother Hawkfrost, whom Squirrelflight openly distrusts due to his arrogance and overly ambitious nature. Brambleclaw doesn't really explain why he wants to be friends with Hawkfrost and refuses to listen to Squirrelfight's warnings not to trust him, believing it be a sign of the [[ASharedSuffering discrimination that he and his half-brother endured as the evil Tigerstar's sons]]. [[spoiler:Though she ultimately turns out to be right about Hawkfrost]], Squirrelflight doesn't handle the situation much better; she expresses her suspicions of Hawkfrost rather tactlessly, [[YouHaveToBelieveMe doesn't provide any real evidence]], and jumps to the somewhat irrational conclusion that Brambleclaw not listening to her about Hawkfrost means that he doesn't trust, respect or love her.
** In the ''Omen of the Stars'', it turns out that even after [[spoiler:Brambleclaw killed Hawkfrost to stop him from murdering Firestar]], Squirrelflight chose not to [[spoiler:trust him with the secret of Jayfeather, Lionblaze and Hollyleaf not being their biological children]], which causes Brambleclaw to break up with her.
** In ''Squirrelflight's Hope'', Squirrelflight wants to have a second litter of kits and rather impulsively makes a major suggestion to the other Clans without speaking to Bramblestar about it first. Bramblestar doesn't agree with Squirrelflight's suggestion, as he thinks she's undermining him, and doesn't want kits as much as she does. Squirrelflight assumes this means Bramblestar doesn't respect or love her anymore. They spend the rest of book arguing most of the time, each believing the other is being unreasonable...until the end where they make up ''again'', apologizing to each other but without really discussing the problems that plagued them. Bramblestar asks Squirrelflight to promise him that they'll always talk things out...instead Squirrelflight essentially insists that Bramblestar has to trust her unconditionally, which Bramblestar accepts without further argument.

** In the second half of ''The New Prophecy'' series, Brambleclaw befriends his half-brother Hawkfrost, whom Squirrelflight openly distrusts due to his arrogance and overly ambitious nature. Brambleclaw doesn't really explain why he wants to be friends with Hawkfrost and refuses to listen to Squirrelfight's warnings not to trust him, believing it be a sign of the [[ASharedSuffering discrimination that he and his half-brother endured as the evil Tigerstar's sons]]. [[spoiler:Though she ultimately turns out to be right about Hawkfrost]], Squirrelflight doesn't handle the situation much better; she expresses her suspicions of Hawkfrost rather tactlessly,[[YouHaveToBelieveMe doesn't provide any real evidence]], and jumps to the somewhat irrational conclusion that Brambleclaw not listening to her about Hawkfrost means that he doesn't trust, respect or love her.

** In the second half of ''The New Prophecy'' series, Brambleclaw befriends his half-brother Hawkfrost, whom Squirrelflight openly distrusts due to his arrogance and overly ambitious nature. Brambleclaw doesn't really explain why he wants to be friends with Hawkfrost and refuses to listen to Squirrelfight's warnings not to trust him, believing it be a sign of the discrimination that he and his half brother endured as the evil Tigerstar's sons. However, Squirrelflight doesn't handle the situation much better; she expresses her suspicions of Hawkfrost rather tactlessly, doesn't provide any real evidence, and jumps to the somewhat irrational conclusion that Brambleclaw not listening to her about Hawkfrost means that he doesn't trust, respect or love her.
** In the ''Omen of the Stars'', it turns that even after Brambleclaw killed Hawkfrost to stop him from murdering Firestar, Squirrelflight chose not to [[spoiler:trust him with the secret of Jayfeather, Lionblaze and Hollyleaf not being their biological children]], which causes Brambleclaw to break up with her
** In ''Squirrelflight's Hope'', Squirrelflight wants to have a second litter of kits and rather impulsively makes a major suggestion to the other Clans without speaking to Bramblestar about it first. Bramblestar doesn't agree with Squirrelflight's suggestion, as he thinks she's undermining him, and doesn't want kits as much as she does. Squirrelflight assumes this means Bramblestar doesn't respect or love her anymore.

* ''Literature/Warrior Cats'':
** This is the Achilles' Heel in Bramblestar and Squirrelflight's relationship, causing a great number of quarrels/falling outs that arguably could have been easily avoided if they had only commuicated properly. If Brambleclaw had explained why he wanted to be friends with his half-brother Hawkfrost, or if Squirrelflight has asked instead of jumping to conclusions, their quarrel in the second half of ''The New Prophecy'' would never have happened. If Squirrelflight had simply [[spoiler:trusted him with the secret of Jayfeather, Lionblaze and Hollyleaf not being their biological children]], their break-up in ''Omen of the Stars'' would never have happened. If she hadn't assumed Bramblestar not wanting more kits as much as she does in ''Squirrelflight's Hope'' means he doesn't love her, their fight ''there'' wouldn't have happened...

*** Even ignoring that mistake, Dalinar's visions are not very clear. Part of this is because his mind wasn't ready to accept the visions in the beginning, so when he woke up from the first one (which clearly outlined what was coming and what he needed to do) it was just a muddled dream. Fortunately, they're on repeat. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:since they're just pre-recorded messages, the one who made them in the first place doesn't know what context Dalinar needs. He's thrust into fierce battles against enemies he's never heard of, and sees the powers of the Knights Radiant without being given more than a single clue as to how to bring them back]].

* Examined in the first written ''Literature/HoratioHornblower'' novel, not as a consequence of bad judgment but because transoceanic communication in 1812 was incredibly dodgy. Before leaving England, Hornblower was given orders to sail to the west coast of Nicaragua without sighting land and support a tinpot dictator fighting the Spanish. Though the order not to sight land is incredibly unrealistic, Hornblower manages it, provides materiel to El Supremo, and hands a captured Spanish frigate to him because he's still acting under orders to assist the rebels. Then he's visited by a Spanish ship which provides the happy news that England and Spain are allies! So Hornblower has to go and get the frigate back, nearly losing his own ship in the process, because otherwise his career would be destroyed for following his orders exactly.

* ''Literature/{{Digitesque}}'': Much of the series could have been avoided if Ada and Isavel just sat down and talked to each other. In fairness, it's not until about two-thirds of the way through the second book before they realize that they are both involved, but even then they avoid talking as much as they should because they assume they'll be enemies and would really prefer not to ruin their burgeoning friendship. It doesn't help that Ada is a {{Jerkass}} who is terrible at communicating on a good day and Isavel has an advisor who is telling her lies about the nature of the world and what Ada is trying to do.

* In ''[[Literature/TheDarkProfitSaga Orconomics]]'', the protagonists encounter a party of orcs, whose leader is abrasive, insulting, threatens them with weapons, takes them prisoner, separates them and marches them through the streets of their town, and then the tribe's chief offers to "honor" the prisoners with his axe. Before things get too bloody, though, the goblin among the protagonists intervenes and explains that this particular tribe of orcs are merchants, not warriors, and the perceived hostility was, in fact, an aggressive attempt to sell the protagonists the orcs' goods (namely, weapons). When the chief learns of the mix-up, he apologizes to the protagonists and berates his son (the orc party leader) for failing to make s[=McKeon=]. The main character has grown steadily more obsessed with her gay best friend, culminating in her going to his boyfriend [[spoiler: and saying they’re sleeping together in an attempt to break them up.]] Her now-ex-friend later asks her if she seriously thought his boyfriend was just going to go haring off instead of having an actual conversation with him about what happened.

** It gets ''really'' bad in ''Literature/PeaceTalks,'' as Ebenezer [=McCoy=] is aghast at the fact that Thomas knows about [[spoiler:Maggie, Harry's daughter]] and believes Harry is being stupid to the point of suicide in letting a White Court vampire get so close to him and his family. The thing is, Ebenezer doesn't know that Thomas is also Harry's brother [[spoiler:and thus his own ''grandson'']] and Harry doesn't see fit to tell him for ages, leading to all kinds of conflict.

** It gets ''really'' bad in ''Literature/PeaceTalks,'' as Ebenezer [=McCoy=] is aghast at the fact that Thomas knows about [[spoiler:Maggie, Harry's daughter]] and believes Harry is being stupid to the point of suicide in letting a White Court vampire get so close to him and his family. The thing is, Ebenezer doesn't know that Thomas is also Harry's brother [[spoiler:and thus his own ''grandson'']] and Harry never sees fit to tell him, leading to all kinds of conflict.

** It gets ''really'' bad in ''Literature/PeaceTalks,'' as Ebenezer [[=McCoy=]] is aghast at the fact that Thomas knows about [[spoiler:Maggie, Harry's daughter]] and believes Harry is being suicidally stupid in letting a White Court vampire get so close to him. The thing is, Ebenezer doesn't know that Thomas is also Harry's brother [[spoiler:and thus his own ''grandson'']] and Harry never sees fit to tell him, leading to all kinds of conflict.

** It gets ''really'' bad in ''Literature/PeaceTalks,'' as Ebenezer {{McCoy}} is aghast at the fact that Thomas knows about [[spoiler:Maggie, Harry's daughter]] and believes Harry is being suicidally stupid in letting a White Court vampire get so close to him. The thing is, Ebenezer doesn't know that Thomas is also Harry's brother [[spoiler:and thus his own ''grandson'']] and Harry never sees fit to tell him, leading to all kinds of conflict.

** In ''Literature/GravePeril,'' Harry tells Susan pretty much everything about going to the vampire's party except for one thing: he's only allowed one guest and anyone else would be considered fair game. Susan then copies his invitation without his knowledge in order to crash the party. Of it's pretty fair to blame Susan at least as much as Harry. He was insistent that he was not going to bring her, and it shouldn't be hard to figure out that a regular human crashing a Vampire party isn't going to work out well.
** Harry is more open in later books, but he still has trouble handing out critical information. It took him multiple books until he finally told Michael about Lasciel (though it turns out Michael already knew, and was just waiting for him to fess up). In ''Literature/ColdDays,'' Thomas gives him a WhatTheHellHero for not telling him that Harry was going to [[spoiler: become the Winter Knight]], because as someone used to struggling against his darker nature he could have helped. Kirby [[spoiler: might have survived]] in ''Literature/TurnCoat,'' if Harry had warned the Alphas about the naagloshii (prompting another WhatTheHellHero). This list goes on.

* ''Mycroft & Sherlock'' by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse is a {{Prequel}} set when Mycroft is an up-and-coming young civil servant and [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes his brother]] is an erratic university student. They are both looking into some strange events that seem to involve Mycroft's friend Douglas's business somehow, and which turn out to be connected to a series of killings. Since Mycroft disapproves of Sherlock's morbid fascination with murder, he glosses over this aspect for fear of encouraging it. Since Sherlock is aware of Mycroft's disapproval, he does likewise for fear of being stopped from investigating. Unfortunately, each brother has only discovered part of what's going on, and cannot make further connections without the other's information.

* ''Mycroft & Sherlock'' by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse is a {{Prequel}} set when Mycroft is an up-and-coming young civil servant and [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes his brother]] is an erratic university student. They are both looking into some strange events that seem to involve Mycroft's friend Douglas's business somehow, and which turn out to be connected to a series of killings. Since Mycroft disapproves of Sherlock's morbid fascination with murder, he glosses over this aspect for fear of encouraging it. Since Sherlock is aware of Mycroft's disapproval, he does likewise for fear of being stopped from investigating. Unfortunately, each brother has only discovered part of what's going on, and cannot make further connections without the other's information.

** Played heartbreakingly straight in ''A Murder is Announced''. Remembering the scene of the crime, [[spoiler:Miss Murgatroyd]] finally realizes something was wrong, but, not being very quick-minded, she only gets to work out that [[spoiler:"She wasn't ''there''!"]] instead of saying directly that [[spoiler:Letitia Blacklog]] must be guilty. Her friend decides that the matter can be discussed later and goes away, leaving her alone in the house. Since the murderer has been eavesdropping, there is no "later" for poor [[spoiler:Miss Murgatroyd]].

** In ''Literature/GravePeril,'' Harry tells Susan pretty much everything about the politics in going to the vampire party... except for one thing: he's only allowed to give protection to one guest. Anyone else who shows up with him is fair game. Naturally, this omission screws everything up when Susan copies his invitation without his knowledge in order to crash the party.
** Harry is more open in later books, but he still has trouble handing out critical information. It took him multiple books until he finally told Michael about Lasciel (though it turns out Michael already knew, and was just waiting for him to fess up). In ''Literature/ColdDays,'' Thomas gives him a WhatTheHellHero for not telling him that Harry was going to [[spoiler: become the Winter Knight]], because as someone used to struggling against his darker nature he could have helped. Kirby [[spoiler: wouldn't have died]] in ''Literature/TurnCoat,'' if Harry had warned the Alphas about the naagloshii (prompting another WhatTheHellHero). This list goes on.

*** Every soldier in Sadeas' army refuses to tell the bridgemen why they are not allowed shields, and are forced to run into enemy arrows completely unprotected. When Kaladin thinks of a way to use the bridge as a shield, [[spoiler:he turns the battle into a rout for his side, since the Parshendi start ignoring the bridgemen and shooting at the real soldiers]]. Though there is a good reason the bridgemen weren't told: [[spoiler:They're bait, there to get killed by the Parshendi instead of real soldiers. Sadeas is quite rightly worried that if the bridgemen knew that, they'd just kill themselves]].