Characterization: Talking Animals
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Great question! I honestly don’t have any talking animals in my story, but some things I would make sure to include are:
1. Animal characteristics. Have the dog chase his tail every once in a while, and make sure the frog catches a fly here and there. I really feel like C S Lewis forgot to do this with Aslan and I always forgot he was a lion and I was even confused when I first began reading Narnia because of this.
2. Remind the reader that the animal is talking by mentioning their physical traits. Ex. ” ‘Yes I do,’ said the cat swaying her tail happily”
3. Maybe try some speaking errors. The animal can’t control himself from making the noise he’s technically supposed to make. Ex. ” ‘Yesss I do’ said Mr. Snake”
I really hope this helps!
Be weird. Be random. Be who you are. Because you ever know who would love the person you hide.
This is a good question…I get so annoyed when I think a character is a human, only to find out they’re a parrot.😄
Erynne has some good ideas, but I might add a few. Depending on how your story works, you could remind readers of animal-ness by making them have different accents or cultures.
I think something I would do most would be to pay attention to details. Animals act differently then humans, even if they have similar characteristics (C.S. Lewis’s Horse and His Boy might be a good reference for horses). A cat, for example, might pay more attention to movement, stare you in the eyes when she’s angry, flick her ears if she hears something, scratch herself with her back leg, make meowy-grunting sounds instead of saying “eh,” or “yeah,” and prefer naps in sunny spots.
I think the little things make the most difference…like remembering that eye-contact is friendly among humans (at least in North America), but animals almost always take eye-contact as aggressive.
Asking your readers if you’re being clear is also a good idea. I don’t have talking animals at the moment…but one of my stories has centaurs, which is going to be a challenge because they have human attributes as well as horse characteristics.😂
"If I'm gonna break, I'll break like the dawn." -Nightbirde
I haven’t read The Green Ember books by S.D. Smith, but one major complaint I’ve seen about them is that he refers to the rabbit characters as having hands instead of paws, and just generally uses terminology more suited to humans. So making sure to use animal terminology really helps.
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