TVS: A.M. Burns, today’s guest, is the author of the popular Yellow Sky series. He currently lives in the Colorado mountains with his partner, and a large number of critters or all descriptions. In addition to writing, he does a lot of nature photography and hiking.
Animals have been a favorite subject of authors going back into ancient times. There have always been myths and legends about animals. Raven stole the sun. How Tiger got his stripes. The world of literature has been populated with animals. Modern writing is no exception. Years ago, books like Hawkmistress by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Dragon Quest by Anne McCaffery with their beautifully crafted critters brought me from my childhood reading of Marguerite Henry and Walter Farley to enjoying the fantasy worlds that now occupy most of my time wither it’s reading or writing.
Now over the years I’ve developed a few pet peeves when it comes to animals and their portrayal in works of fiction. I love it when they are used correctly, but being an animal person, including having a degree in biology, it gets to me when folks don’t bother to research the creatures they write about. In our modern internet-connected world, there is no excuse, except for laziness, for getting the facts wrong. A quick search online can give you any number of resources from wikis to real people to talk to. And by all means, get out and talk to some folks who have intimate knowledge about the animals you include in your stories. You can find out what more exotic animals eat. Hawks eat meat, not fish but furred and feathered prey; elephants eat several hundred pounds of vegetation a day. You can find interesting things animals do that you can incorporate in your writing. Friendly horses will but you in the back, shoulder or head; kangaroos can leap up to twenty nine feet in a single bound. Things like this, when you get them right, can be little spices that people enjoy in your writing. It helps show that the author cares about the details in their book.
If you are creating your own fantasy world full of really cool fantasy critters, you can make up your own facts about them. But even if you’re making up information about your own made up creatures keep them consistent and true to life. Again the details are what readers come back for. They help make your world interesting and different from other author’s worlds.
In our modern fiction, one of the big trends is shapeshifters, be they lycanthropes or other magical creatures. The writers that get the most out of their shifters, be they in romances, action adventures, or just good old urban fantasy mysteries, are the ones who incorporated some facts of the characters’ animal sides into their writing. That maybe why we see more werewolves than other shifters, people understand wolves more than they do bears or big cats. Again do a bit of research, have a weretiger that spends a lot of time in a swimming pool, or a werebadger that likes caving, I incorporated this into my YA novel Coyote’s Pup. These little details add spark and help liven up what are otherwise becoming flat, overused characters.
Animals, wither they are magically bonded to the main character, or the main character’s other side, bring a sense of wonder into writing. You can help open your readers to critters in a way that they might never have dreamed in the past. And you never know, through your research you might learn a lot about our wild natural world that you can bring into your writing. So reach out and bring a little nature into your writing.
TVS: Thanks, Andy. As another reader of Marguerite Henry and Walter Farley, I can say I always marveled at how much Ms. Henry knew about Chincoteague, Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, and the Arabian horses of King of the Wind, (that book plays an important part in my novel Runaway Brother) and I still own the entire Black Stallion series. In my own blogs, I’m always harping on researching. Glad to hear another writer do it, too.
Incidentally, Readers, the natural world is a scenic place, get out and enjoy it!
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