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Reasons to use talking animals in your stories
4 years ago
General
After deciding to use human characters instead of anthros in my concept for a fantasy story taking place in the colonial Americas, I had a discussion on discord as to why I felt I couldn’t use anthro characters. My opinion is that using anthros didn’t fit the tone or message I kind of want to get across, but then I questioned, “can you really not write a serious story featuring talking animals then”? That’s not entirely true, is it? But what makes them work? So last night I compiled this creative writing list about why a story would work with talking animals. This is largely my own opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.
- Unique psychology, ethics, and/or environments of animals. These stories, under the literary genre of xenofiction, are meant to explore the thoughts and emotions of non-human creatures and the environments they live in. Typically these stories avoid humanizing the animal characters too much in favor of creating a unique animal “society,” often just limiting their anthropomorphism to talking in the same language as the author. However, in more cartoonish stories, the characters may as well be people in four legs, which can be rather jarring.
- Greater focus on fantasy and science fiction. Talking animals may result from magic or experimentation, or they may just be magical or alien races featuring non-human sapients that happen to resemble anthros. However, these speculative aspects shouldn’t be treated as a mere Hand Wave to explain their existence. When the story represents something explicitly not within the natural order, it should be a distinct trait within the setting. Satisfy the reader’s curiosity in some way. (The exception is if you’re deliberately invoking surrealism. See below.)
- Fables. Anthropomorphic animals can be used to symbolize issues that impact human society, often exploring themes of morality, psychology, sociology, and justice through animal-shaped allegories. This goes back to ancient times, with animals being used to drive home a particular message, but postmodern stories take it a step further and explore ways in which animals symbolically reflect society’s faults in terms of equality and social justice. Fables can risk becoming too heavy-handed, with analogies that are too obvious, so this should be treated with care. Fables can be explicitly allegorical with humans and human concepts, but I personally wouldn’t recommend it for long-term storytelling, because it starts to lose subtlety. Sometimes fables can combine Xenofiction to create an additional level of verisimilitude by exploring specific problems that result from the characters being animals, anthropomorphic or not. Usually this comes in form of nature vs. nurture themes.
- Surrealism. Anthropomorphic animals can be played simply for strangeness in an otherwise mundane setting (otherwise known as magic realism), intentionally toying with the willing suspension of disbelief. The setting (not necessarily the characters) subtly questions the existence of anthros, but without really explaining it too much, instead being just enough to feel “off” or even somewhat comedic. The surreal aspect can even be used to create a contrast in tone in a more serious narrative or a theme that doesn’t require animal symbolism, but it needs to be done carefully and purposefully (be sure to have some internal, hidden logic to your own weirdness so that things don’t end up too incoherent).
- Aesthetics. Sometimes, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the characters being animals, neither in a storytelling or worldbuilding sense. In visual media, animals can be used to create more diverse and colorful character design, usually in lighthearted or adventure-oriented works. Sometimes the anthro aspect is only skin deep and the characters are functionally human, with their animal appearances being a reflection of who they are. You can even invoke another careful tonal contrast by having said anthros engage in adult topics. However, in this case, the art and character design have to be decent enough to make the look feel justified and that the artist knows what they’re doing. For instance, if you just want a cop-out to get out of drawing humans, even if a more serious narrative would prefer a more justified reason to use animals instead of humans, the design of the anthros would ideally need to compensate for it. Don’t accidentally create too much tonal contrast because your art is just a little too mediocre (ouch, but people who aren’t in the furry fandom want better quality).
I felt that, even though it’s a very loose WIP in my head, the planned fantasy story I had planned didn’t fit any of this criteria. I was hoping to try to turn it into a fable, but the themes I wanted to communicate didn’t seem to fit the style that well, and the story was starting to lose subtlety (even if it’s going to contain very clear themes about colonialism). The more I thought about it, anthros would’ve been just looked a bit too strange and distracting to use in this setting, and using humans would actually work better in communicating that this is an alternate history of the colonial era where magic exists.
Additional advice that applies to almost all of the above: be consistent! At least within canon. Are your anthros humans visually resembling animals, or animals that act human? They don’t need to be too obvious, but it’s not a good idea to leave the readers confused of their true nature. How “human” or “animal” are they supposed to be?
- Unique psychology, ethics, and/or environments of animals. These stories, under the literary genre of xenofiction, are meant to explore the thoughts and emotions of non-human creatures and the environments they live in. Typically these stories avoid humanizing the animal characters too much in favor of creating a unique animal “society,” often just limiting their anthropomorphism to talking in the same language as the author. However, in more cartoonish stories, the characters may as well be people in four legs, which can be rather jarring.
- Greater focus on fantasy and science fiction. Talking animals may result from magic or experimentation, or they may just be magical or alien races featuring non-human sapients that happen to resemble anthros. However, these speculative aspects shouldn’t be treated as a mere Hand Wave to explain their existence. When the story represents something explicitly not within the natural order, it should be a distinct trait within the setting. Satisfy the reader’s curiosity in some way. (The exception is if you’re deliberately invoking surrealism. See below.)
- Fables. Anthropomorphic animals can be used to symbolize issues that impact human society, often exploring themes of morality, psychology, sociology, and justice through animal-shaped allegories. This goes back to ancient times, with animals being used to drive home a particular message, but postmodern stories take it a step further and explore ways in which animals symbolically reflect society’s faults in terms of equality and social justice. Fables can risk becoming too heavy-handed, with analogies that are too obvious, so this should be treated with care. Fables can be explicitly allegorical with humans and human concepts, but I personally wouldn’t recommend it for long-term storytelling, because it starts to lose subtlety. Sometimes fables can combine Xenofiction to create an additional level of verisimilitude by exploring specific problems that result from the characters being animals, anthropomorphic or not. Usually this comes in form of nature vs. nurture themes.
- Surrealism. Anthropomorphic animals can be played simply for strangeness in an otherwise mundane setting (otherwise known as magic realism), intentionally toying with the willing suspension of disbelief. The setting (not necessarily the characters) subtly questions the existence of anthros, but without really explaining it too much, instead being just enough to feel “off” or even somewhat comedic. The surreal aspect can even be used to create a contrast in tone in a more serious narrative or a theme that doesn’t require animal symbolism, but it needs to be done carefully and purposefully (be sure to have some internal, hidden logic to your own weirdness so that things don’t end up too incoherent).
- Aesthetics. Sometimes, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the characters being animals, neither in a storytelling or worldbuilding sense. In visual media, animals can be used to create more diverse and colorful character design, usually in lighthearted or adventure-oriented works. Sometimes the anthro aspect is only skin deep and the characters are functionally human, with their animal appearances being a reflection of who they are. You can even invoke another careful tonal contrast by having said anthros engage in adult topics. However, in this case, the art and character design have to be decent enough to make the look feel justified and that the artist knows what they’re doing. For instance, if you just want a cop-out to get out of drawing humans, even if a more serious narrative would prefer a more justified reason to use animals instead of humans, the design of the anthros would ideally need to compensate for it. Don’t accidentally create too much tonal contrast because your art is just a little too mediocre (ouch, but people who aren’t in the furry fandom want better quality).
I felt that, even though it’s a very loose WIP in my head, the planned fantasy story I had planned didn’t fit any of this criteria. I was hoping to try to turn it into a fable, but the themes I wanted to communicate didn’t seem to fit the style that well, and the story was starting to lose subtlety (even if it’s going to contain very clear themes about colonialism). The more I thought about it, anthros would’ve been just looked a bit too strange and distracting to use in this setting, and using humans would actually work better in communicating that this is an alternate history of the colonial era where magic exists.
Additional advice that applies to almost all of the above: be consistent! At least within canon. Are your anthros humans visually resembling animals, or animals that act human? They don’t need to be too obvious, but it’s not a good idea to leave the readers confused of their true nature. How “human” or “animal” are they supposed to be?
