Interesting piece on writing animal stories - I’ll have to check out the author’s books, too (water voles, aww).
The best animal stories pluck you from your everyday life and immerse you in a world that’s a bit like ours but strangely, almost magically, different. Here Tom Moorhouse, author of animal adventure capers The Rising and The River Singers, offers his five top tips for writing furry fantasies…
So…this isn’t going to teach my cat how to revise my novel?
I like his approach! Especially focusing on the different points of view. Also, wow, those book covers O_O
Shamelessly self promoting (is this uncouth?) I wrote a similar post awhile back ()
http://jessowen.com/2013/05/5-tips-for-writing-animals/
scampers away
Jess, that post would be a great piece for the FWG blog if you wouldn’t mind me reprinting it (with full credit and a link back to the original post, of course). 
Nice - especially the tip about names. I’m currently struggling with five different species of anthropomorphic dog and their various naming conventions. It’s a major headache!
I suspect nobody will ever do it as well as Richard Adams in Watership Down, with his mix of straightforward plant-based names (Hazel, Holly), descriptive rabbit names translated into English (Pipkin, Bigwig) and names left in Lapine to sound exotic (Hyzenthlay, Nildro-hain). But then I don’t think anyone will ever write another animal story as good as Watership Down.
I always loved the Lapine names. They’re so beautiful. I think I even made one up for myself using the root words in the Lapine glossary back when I was ten and first read it. There weren’t a whole lot of words to work with…
http://watershipdown.wikia.com/wiki/Lapine_Glossary
So, I suspect it was something like Inle-hain (moon-song). Now I’d probably prefer Pfeffarah (cat-lord).
‘Pfeffarah’! Brilliant.
My friend Loganberry has written more about Lapine than anyone could possibly need, including a beginners’ language course called Frithaes!:
http://bitsnbobstones.watershipdown.org/lapine/overview.html
Oh my gosh, I’d have gone crazy for that when I was ten. I would have learned to speak in Lapine, no question.
Oh, thank you! (sorry for the slow reply). Absolutely you can use it :))
And yes… you can’t get much better than Watership Down. I’m always impressed with people who play with language. O_O