Raith

has anyone? im trying to write about them, but its like, weird and hard..

__________________
'What we do in life echoes in eternity'

-Maximus, Gladiator

TimK

Writing about animals? Or writing characters who are animals? I once tried the latter, aeons ago. The attempt was unsuccessful at the time, but I never went back to it. The key (which I didn't understand back then) is to stress human qualities in your animal characters to make it easier for the reader to sympathize. Pat Murphy's book Nadia does this quite well, especially in the beginning.

-TimK

Tyson

Like Watership down type, or redwall series type? I haven't, but it can sometimes be overdone, so you must be careful how you do it.
Tyson

Vincent Gray

I was just thinking about doing this. With insects, specifically. Something noir-ish with predatory insects. I agree, it is weird and hard, but at least it's interesting and offers a lot of variety. You can give them varying degrees of humanity, or hell, give them none even. I remember a book I read a long time ago, Raptor Red, which followed the story of a velociraptor. It was just a regular dinosaur, couldn't talk, didn't have inner monologue or anything, but was still a fairly likable protagonist. Maybe that's just because I like dinosaurs, but also probably because he still had challenges to overcome like any protagonist. There was also that recent movie, Two Brothers, about tigers that were seperated and eventually re-unite or something. I never saw it because it looked boring. It could be because I couldn't empathize with tigers, but then again I don't think I would want to see about a movie where the entire plot is two human brothers get seperated and eventually re-unite either. But most of the animal stories I see are about ones that are basically people in animal bodies. Some of these stories seem as though the characters are animals just because if it was about people it wouldn't be interesting enough.

But hell, I bet people would read stories about inanimate objects that don't do anything and still sympathize with them. Remember that Ikea commercial where the family buys a new lamp and puts their old lamp out on the street? It shows the lamp, the kind that hunches over a bit as if it has its head hung low. It's dark and raining, and the house it was cast out of is now warm and well-lit. Then an Ikea guy says something like "Don't feel sorry for the lamp, it has no feelings. And the new lamp is much better." It was a pretty popular commercial and a lot of people I talked to felt sorry for the lamp, even though the lamp wasn't sad. I take this to mean that you don't have to make animals all that human for their stories to be compelling, but you'll definitely need some humanity. Even the lamp at least resembles a sad person with its posture. And the lamp worked as a short commercial but I imagine that "Lamp: The Movie" wouldn't hold people's interest for long.

I guess it comes down to what TimK said. But I don't think you can get away with less human-ness than is common in these stories.

Hodge

Wow, another person who's read Raptor Red... I agree, it was very good. Very unique.

I also remember a movie from my childhood that involved a dog and a cat and their adventures together. Live action. A narrator provided the only spoken parts. It's called Milo and Otis.


To write about animals you can either make them more human (like in the Redwall series or in Watership Down) or you can portray them as they really are. If you do the latter, then you should pay attention to your base feelings and instincts to better understand an animal's thought process.

__________________
Science

TimK

Here: http://www.brazenhussies.net/murphy/Rachel.html (another Pat Murphy story). Notice the things the character does and thinks in order to cause you to sympathize with her.

-TimK

Lord Raiden

I've written both, but mostly using animals as charecters with individual personalities.

__________________
My personal writing section
My Linux teaching and tech site, Raiden's Realm

Eiji Tunsinagi

I find it hard to write from an animal's POV, because then I always get to a part where there's a sign or something, and squirrels can't read!
...
Or can they?

__________________
"nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished."

"how will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

SpiffPotato

I was never really interested in writing about an animal or from an animal's perspective. That is, until a few weeks ago.

It came as a sort of a stupid pun, something that I didn't think would really work in the story. The one character I was writing was a lady who had hermit-like qualities. I gave her a hermit crab as a pet, and he was automatically named Henry because Henry is just a good name for a hermit crab. Henry quickly became my favorite character.

Henry didn’t like the rain. There was just enough wind to blow the rain directly into his bowl, and he was getting a bit nervous. His lettuce was swimming in a puddle of water that could only get deeper as the rain went on.
The window was open. This posed a number of problems, not only the dilemma of the rain getting into the house. When a window is open, there are several things that can fit through that window and not get stuck. With the right amount of effort, a human can pass through a space of that size. It was a good thing humans had learned from British comedy shows that squeezing through a window might place you in an awkward position, or else a human might have tried for it.
Cats don’t watch British comedies. In fact, they don’t watch much television at all. That being said, cats don’t know which toothpaste is recommended by four out of five dentists or even what disgusting fruit has just been added to a well-known cola. However, cats do know that rain is wet. Wet doesn’t suit cats. So cats will do most anything to get out of the rain, even jump through an open window into a perfect stranger’s house.

So, you see, animals come into play. But they're just animals with maybe a slightly higher conscious. But they don't talk or do anything weird or have loads of human emotions in them because they simply aren't human. You can have an animal character without having to overload them with humanlike qualities. Some qualities are there, but the fact that they lack some can make them all the more interesting and different.

Note: the tabbing in the passage from the story above doesn't seem to show up here. Sorry. Rest assured, I know how to separate paragraphs correctly.

TimK

I don't know whether you intended it or not, but this is very funny. For some reason, it seems reminiscent of Monty Python or Douglas Adams. What piece is this snippet from? Is it published?

-TimK

lisajane

I've never written about or from an animal's pov. My mind would be holidaying on another planet if I did. Was never interested in books with animals and most likely never will be

__________________
'Beauty stands and waits with gravity to start her death-defying leap. And he, a little charleychaplin man, who may or may not catch her fair eternal form spreadeagled in the empty air of existence.' - Laurence Felinghetti, 'The Acrobat'

lisajane

Just because I happen to like dogs, does not mean I like ALL animals and doesn't mean that I like reading stories with animals. There is a difference. I don't believe I ever particulary stated myself as a dog-lover in the first place.

Animal Farm, I was made to read in high school. Boring. Would've rather have read the same story with people.

Other two, not read, and most likely won't.

__________________
'Beauty stands and waits with gravity to start her death-defying leap. And he, a little charleychaplin man, who may or may not catch her fair eternal form spreadeagled in the empty air of existence.' - Laurence Felinghetti, 'The Acrobat'

suzakugaiden

I write furry. Not really the same thing, at all. Well, some furries will think it is, prefering to stress the animal characteristics of their characters. This strikes me as a bit silly, so the main reason I write furry is to basically do the opposite of the status quo just because I can ^^

Nickie

As it happens, I'm writing a blog right now that is about my cat Pluche. It is written in the POV of the cat, as I do have a notion of what that beast is thinking!


Nickie

__________________
At www.nickiefleming.com you can read about my books, my interviews with bestselling authors, what I can do for aspiring authors (see 'News') and lots more!
Samples of what I write are to be found at http://users.skynet.be/fa040707/index.html

shadowseer

If you want to see a book where animals are used as characters, check out George Orwell's Animal Farm. Greatest book ever.

__________________


The greatest irony in life is that no one lives through it. - Kurt Vonnegut