Cruelirony518

I'm trying to come up with an idea where the characters are animals. Not where they are metaphoricle for people, but when they actually live as animals.

Has anyone else written stories with characters like this? If so how true to the actual nature of the characters species did you stay? Or any other tips for stories with these sort of characters? Even if you have not attempted stories like this, I'd still like advice or suggestions.

Talia_Brie

Disney does it all the time. I hope that answers your question.

You need to consider what kind of market you're writing for.

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Cruelirony518

Well my story is meant to be more fantasy genre, and not meant to be nescisaryily for children.

Ozmandius

A couple of years back I did a novel based on western mythology and this was a similar concern of mine since many deities, spirits, etc are animals. The route I chose to take was to treat every character, no matter how strange or animalistic, as human first. This meant that each character had to have a fully realized set of emotions, goals, and weaknesses that the reader could identify with. Without that human connection, the character will just never seem real.

After that foundation was laid I began layering in the different animal traits that were needed. For the dragons (the mythical ones, not the fantasy type) I concentrated on very reptilian traits when describing their locomotion and habits. More specifically I studied crocodiles and alligators, as they are the biggest reptiles available to study. I paid close attention to how they would catch prey and gulp it down with chomping swallows and their habits of sunning themselves on rocks for warmth. They move in a sort of sliding, lurching gait, intercut with sudden bursts of speed. The end product was an intelligent and identifiable creature that nevertheless remained locked to its reptillian roots.

For the Crow character I decided to play down its human side and show that aspect only through small expressions and hints. The core thought and emotions were still there, but they were buried more deeply. The reason for this was that the Crow character was symbolic and I wanted his animal nature to dominate as a kind of totem for what he represented. That his actions were motivated by human feelings was meant to represent how closely tied our emotions are to our animal selves.

In the end you have to decide what each of your characters represent in us and work from there.

Oz

Talia_Brie

There was a discusson a little while ago about when human characters were required, and I think the consensus was that they aren't as long as the emotions and motivations are human. The reader needs to be able to connect with the characters in order for the book to work.

Look for Watership Down, which is a book about rabbits, with no human characters (I think, it's been a while).

One pet hate I have about people writing stories from an animal's perspective, is how they refer to people and other animals. "Colourful two legs" etc. That just annoys the crap out of him. If you're going to refer to people, call them people. Think that what you're doing is translating the animal's language. So they'll have a word for people, but it means people.

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Cruelirony518

Well I understand about giving human traits for personalities, but also the story focuses on a pack of wolves, and I was wondering if the main character should stay with his pack for most of the story to reflect wolf family and social patterns, or should he go alone.

As for not calling people, people, it only bothers me when they are cliche about it. So many books from animal perspectives call humans "monsters," or "hairless demons," actually even though this is still corny I was thinking of calling humans "fire weilders." (Although people only play a small part.)

Talia_Brie

I suppose I could live with that.

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Havoc

At the moment Im writing a story thats not all animal, but they are a verry big part of the story. Im talking about tigers ofcourse .
The story im writing at the moment feature's a boy who can talk to 'big cats' by a call of fate. As the story develops and the boy free's two more tigers from captivity thats where it got complicated becouse from that point it realy became more about the animals rather then the boy.

What I did is just write everything down as normal, but going back and add those tiger habbits and special words later. For instance, at one part its one of the tigers who says: 'Il just go scare some children.'
which ofcourse can easely be changed to: 'Il just go scare some human cubs.'

Becouse the animals are talking in most of the cases in books like this (since I asume the wolfs are able to talk to each other, you can't have an entire book without dialog) you have to draw the line between Human and Animal mostly in the way they talk. And ofcourse remind the reader they are in fact still wolfes by putting in little line's like: He wagged his tail.
Just to keep a good focus on the story.
I could go on with advice but im kinda losing track on what the heck Im saying so Im just gonna stop now ^_^
Good luck on it