FA+
Shop
How to Create Quality Furry Characters in a Story
12 years ago
Greetings,
This is Part 2 of my pitch to teach classes at furry conventions. Please share and forward along if you like them!
How to Create Quality Furry Characters in a Story
An anthropomorphic story takes a little more planning than a non-anthropomorphic work.
For one, the characters are animal species.
You have to identify unique animal traits because the reader isn't going to readily visualize what a certain animal looks like at first. You can say, "This character is a gazelle," but you need to explain what a gazelle looks like. Because of sites like Wikipedia, you can type in the name of a species and get all sorts of information about them including physical and behavioral traits -- that is, assuming the characters of your story have no customization.
Anthropomorphism is essentially a creative way for humans to connect with their favorite species. Emphasis on creative. If you're commissioned to write a story involving personalized characters ("fursonas"), then you need to inform the person commissioning you about the details that they want you to convey. Does a fursona wear a silver earstud on their right ear? Are they a husky-wolf hybrid? Is the raccoon green and black-striped? Do they have any unique physical or behavior traits that differ from the traditional attributes of their species? All of these things matter.
Only offer an explanation of what a character looks like when the story calls for it. Typically, it's best to describe a character's physical characteristics around the time they're introduced. It's important to make a bullet point list of anatomical features for future reference.
Like humans, most mammals that we're familiar with have psychological complexities that are a lot of fun to touch on. It's important to touch on aspects about how a character feels at a given time -- happiness, sadness, anger, infatuation, etc. Sometimes, a species has built-in behavioral aspects that coincide with their emotions. Here, the writer has the most freedom. The more complex your characters are psychologically, the more relevant they are to the reader. This is a golden opportunity for you to make your characters live, breathe, endure and die -- yes, just like us.
Furry gay writer Kyell Gold has mastered infusing human psychology and social commentary with his characters, including Devlin and Lee from "Out of Position."
Lee is a gay fox who is an outspoken activist. He's in a relationship with Devlin, a closeted football player. The story is about a relationship with a lot that's at stake: Devlin's transition to professional football while navigating homophobia in sports and society. In "Out of Position" and his follow-up "Isolation Play," Gold is looking to advocate sexual openness and acceptance. Oh, and the sex they have is great too!
But more importantly, Gold throws both Devlin and Lee into some challenging situations, which forces the characters to act and react in a certain way. It's too easy for writers for have their characters default on cliched reactions when the going gets tough. Writers don't ask themselves, "How will my characters react to this situation?" Rather, they ask, "How do I want them to react?" That's actually the wrong question to ask.
If these characters are meant to be life-like, their responses to provocative stimuli should not be predictable. Sometimes, that lack of predictability can change the dynamic of your story entirely. It may force you to rethink the overall premise or theme of your work! That's actually a good thing.
Let's go with a hypothetical and play with the themes from "Out of Position." Let's say your character is a closeted gay athlete who just witnessed homophobic behavior from a teammate in the locker room, and later in the story, that teammate is making sexual advances toward your character. How would your character react? Would he let down his guard and consent to further advances -- possibly intercourse -- or be too repulsed by his teammate's past behavior to give him any consideration? Or none of the above?
If you don't have an answer right away, good! Let it come to you as you write the story.
Let the story write itself and be the objective camera that shows the reader everything. That way, your story will have some very personable characters that readers can strongly relate to.
This is Part 2 of my pitch to teach classes at furry conventions. Please share and forward along if you like them!
How to Create Quality Furry Characters in a Story
An anthropomorphic story takes a little more planning than a non-anthropomorphic work.
For one, the characters are animal species.
You have to identify unique animal traits because the reader isn't going to readily visualize what a certain animal looks like at first. You can say, "This character is a gazelle," but you need to explain what a gazelle looks like. Because of sites like Wikipedia, you can type in the name of a species and get all sorts of information about them including physical and behavioral traits -- that is, assuming the characters of your story have no customization.
Anthropomorphism is essentially a creative way for humans to connect with their favorite species. Emphasis on creative. If you're commissioned to write a story involving personalized characters ("fursonas"), then you need to inform the person commissioning you about the details that they want you to convey. Does a fursona wear a silver earstud on their right ear? Are they a husky-wolf hybrid? Is the raccoon green and black-striped? Do they have any unique physical or behavior traits that differ from the traditional attributes of their species? All of these things matter.
Only offer an explanation of what a character looks like when the story calls for it. Typically, it's best to describe a character's physical characteristics around the time they're introduced. It's important to make a bullet point list of anatomical features for future reference.
Like humans, most mammals that we're familiar with have psychological complexities that are a lot of fun to touch on. It's important to touch on aspects about how a character feels at a given time -- happiness, sadness, anger, infatuation, etc. Sometimes, a species has built-in behavioral aspects that coincide with their emotions. Here, the writer has the most freedom. The more complex your characters are psychologically, the more relevant they are to the reader. This is a golden opportunity for you to make your characters live, breathe, endure and die -- yes, just like us.
Furry gay writer Kyell Gold has mastered infusing human psychology and social commentary with his characters, including Devlin and Lee from "Out of Position."
Lee is a gay fox who is an outspoken activist. He's in a relationship with Devlin, a closeted football player. The story is about a relationship with a lot that's at stake: Devlin's transition to professional football while navigating homophobia in sports and society. In "Out of Position" and his follow-up "Isolation Play," Gold is looking to advocate sexual openness and acceptance. Oh, and the sex they have is great too!
But more importantly, Gold throws both Devlin and Lee into some challenging situations, which forces the characters to act and react in a certain way. It's too easy for writers for have their characters default on cliched reactions when the going gets tough. Writers don't ask themselves, "How will my characters react to this situation?" Rather, they ask, "How do I want them to react?" That's actually the wrong question to ask.
If these characters are meant to be life-like, their responses to provocative stimuli should not be predictable. Sometimes, that lack of predictability can change the dynamic of your story entirely. It may force you to rethink the overall premise or theme of your work! That's actually a good thing.
Let's go with a hypothetical and play with the themes from "Out of Position." Let's say your character is a closeted gay athlete who just witnessed homophobic behavior from a teammate in the locker room, and later in the story, that teammate is making sexual advances toward your character. How would your character react? Would he let down his guard and consent to further advances -- possibly intercourse -- or be too repulsed by his teammate's past behavior to give him any consideration? Or none of the above?
If you don't have an answer right away, good! Let it come to you as you write the story.
Let the story write itself and be the objective camera that shows the reader everything. That way, your story will have some very personable characters that readers can strongly relate to.
