Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Characterization in furry

General Writing Discussion
#1

As of late, I’ve found myself writing a lot of nonfiction furry work. I find a lot of my work barely falls within the furry subgenre. The people I talk about could be any such people. I’m not so sure furry is any different in that respect. The characters I write as furries aren’t very different from other types of people. A hallmark of my stories is that most of the characters are human, or could be turned into humans and there would be only minor effects on the story.

Then again, I’m very much of the mindset that the people that categorize themselves as furries are a different type of person than you would find normally. That’s what I try to tell my mate anyway. We argue about it all the time. Are people in the fandom any different from people outside the fandom? I think so. I think they’re a lot more open minded and odd than you might get elseware. Whether that translates into most fiction, however, is another story.

My question for you all is, isn’t part of character design to describe some part of the human condition? In that case, even if a character is furry, doesn’t it have to have very human traits to be relatable? I suppose disneyfied or cartoonish fantasy a different thing in some respects, but aren’t they all just human underneath the fur or am I just doing furry writing wrong?

#2

(Peppermint, I split this post to its own topic out of “Is furry a genre?” just because getting into how animal-like or human-like a character should be, or how important those elements are to the story, is kind of its own delightful minefield among furry writers :slight_smile: and I didn’t want to sidetrack the other thread. Also, if you want the thread called something else, let me know and I think I can change it; the current title was just off the top of my head.)

#3

Furries are anthropomorphised animals so they should have human characteristics by the very definition. When writing furry fiction though you should be taking into account what makes them not human, what makes their world different than ours and how can you create a story around that. Things like senses is an easy one. You’re dealing with creatures with enhanced sense or smell or night vision. This changes the way they perceive the world and the settings they are in. You can also use different species on a deeper level to explore human issues we already have. Explore racism with one species being an outcast for example. If done correctly, if you removed all your characters “fur”, and by that I mean if you went and changed all your characters to regular humans, the story would be missing something and not complete.

#4

(we talked about this in Episode 1 of Fangs and Fonts if you are curious, however it’s in regards to fiction)

Anyone who saw my twitter convo with a number of other writers knows I feel that any furry (meaning anthropormorphic) character SHOULD have animalistic traits and characteristics alongside their human mannerisms.

Reason being is that if you don’t, then you are just using furry as a window dressing and if they are just humans with ears and a tail, why make them furry in the first place? Not making them animalistic means you are missing out on a large chunk of potential storytelling.

However, I noticed you are talking about NONFICTION, so I am curious as to what kind of nonfiction you are writing, as that definitely means a different viewpoint and can ignore all I stated above as I am talking fiction.

#5

I think Peppermint’s talking about American Fur (which I enjoyed reading, by the way) – I’d call it creative nonfiction or a series of personal essays:

In that case, the characters represent (or possibly are composites of?) actual people in the furry fandom, so of course there’s no way they could be anything other than human.

#6

Because the author wants to have that window dressing.

No one makes artists justify why they’re drawing furries. They don’t have to go through special hoops just to be able to say they’re drawing furries. And they can make it as little animalistic as possible and still it’s called furry.

I’m getting really tired of “It’s not furry unless ____”. At this point, all that’s been done is saying “I don’t think you’re writing to my standards.” And considering how everyone has their definition of what makes it furry (I.e. a certain author who says it’s not furry unless the work involves an origin story or in-story explanation as to why everyone is an anthro) it’s not all that useful.

Yeah, anthropomorphism works as a tool, a dimension you can use, but it doesn’t deserve the judgmental “well if you don’t than it’s not furry and that’s bad, get out”. Why must an author care if it’s not up to the furry standard of some people?

#7

The furry fandom is, basically, a subset of geek culture. In that the types of people who are involved in Star Trek cons or go to LARPs are pretty identical to furries. Go to any other sort of fan-con - Anime cons, SF/F cons, you name it - and you’ll find the same types of behavior, the same dispositions. People make jokes about furries being socially awkward and unhygenic - those same symptoms are in the larger geek populace too. So I really think there are very few things unique to furries as people, compared to other subcultures or the population as a whole…

Are furries as a whole more open-minded? It really, really depends. They are more comfortable with Openly Sexual talk/materials, in that they have fewer qualms about making off-color jokes or talking about adult subjects. But when it comes to tolerance? It’s really narrow. They’re possibly more open-minded to gay and bisexuals, because of the fandom’s demographics (20% gay, 40% straight, 40% bi). But I’ve been told from multiple sources that, for instance, tolerance of Trans people is not as widespread as you would think in such an open-minded community.

My question for you all is, isn't part of character design to describe some part of the human condition? In that case, even if a character is furry, doesn't it have to have very human traits to be relatable? I suppose disneyfied or cartoonish fantasy a different thing in some respects, but aren't they all just human underneath the fur or am I just doing furry writing wrong?
Your [i]reader[/i] is going to be human, so you have to at least speak to something that will resonate with the human experience in some fashion. If you write something where the characters have no emotions/conditions/thought processes that humans share, then they are going to be so alien that it will likely push the reader away. That's not all that useful.
#8

I didn’t say it wasn’t furry, I said it was wasted potential.

#9

Wait what? I’m pretty sure if an artist drew a human character and called it furry art, people would complain.

#10

Unless they believe themselves to be therian, but that’s something different.

yeah sorry, missed the non fiction part. In the end we are just humans.

#11

(thanks for splitting the topic for me!)

However, I noticed you are talking about NONFICTION, so I am curious as to what kind of nonfiction you are writing, as that definitely means a different viewpoint and can ignore all I stated above as I am talking fiction.
I think Peppermint's talking about American Fur (which I enjoyed reading, by the way) -- I'd call it creative nonfiction or a series of personal essays: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12827081/ In that case, the characters represent (or possibly are composites of?) actual people in the furry fandom, so of course there's no way they could be anything other than human.
I was being somewhat ambiguous, sorry. I have written stories with furry people as characters and stories, like American fur, which are composites of actual people within the furry fandom. A lot of my stories that involve furry people, however, have only included some minor stipulations of animalistic behavior: Noises they can hear that others cannot--Cold blooded concepts--Darty tails and puppy dog eyes--Emotions that differ in the way a character's face looks--Specism (Thinking hard about it kind of shows me that I probably was too quick to judge my work as "not including these things"); otherwise, I could easily rewrite the stories with humans as the mains. I'm wondering if that's a bad thing or not.
Reason being is that if you don't, then you are just using furry as a window dressing and if they are just humans with ears and a tail, why make them furry in the first place? Not making them animalistic means you are missing out on a large chunk of potential storytelling.
You can also use different species on a deeper level to explore human issues we already have. Explore racism with one species being an outcast for example.
I think I like these concepts. I do not mind the idea of using "furry" as a window dressing, no more so than someone using an alien species as a window dressing, but I think if you're going to include furries you really should include at least some minor beast features. I think if I continue into the future that's how I'll treat it.
#12

Because visual art is a different medium from fiction. It’s not apples to apples. Everything in visual art is an aesthetic. People read fiction to get inside the heads and experiences and worlds of characters; it’s not quite the same as a picture or even storytelling via a graphic novel or comic.

At the risk of repeating what others have already said – my question back to “who cares if it’s just references to ears and tails,” is, why write a nonhuman character and then have their nonhumanness play no role in the story? It’s not like having human characters of various races or genders, where you could argue that you’re representing the diversity that’s realistically present in human life. Why make a character an alien, or a vampire, or half-elf, or a German shepherd unless it influences the character and/or the story in some way?

(As an aside, I know I’ve been misinterpreted on this point by others before, so I’m just going to stop here and explain: My preference in furry fiction – reading and writing – is for stories where the anthro nature of the characters adds something to the story. That’s not the same as saying it has to be essential to the plot. Sometimes it can be as simple as adding a fable-like feeling to the story, even if the plot would work with humans. I also don’t think you have to explain where the anthros came from, unless that’s somehow important to the story you’re telling. As an egotistic example, I never explained where the anthro cats of “Best of Breed” came from, and personally I think it still works just fine – and still couldn’t be told with humans while remaining the same story.)

At this point, all that's been done is saying "I don't think you're writing to my standards."

I’m with Voice on this one. I’m not saying it isn’t furry when it’s just animal costumes. I am saying it’s not necessarily furry literature at its best – which in this case I’d define as, most creative and reaching its fullest potential.

If the consensus is that furry is a genre (or insert whatever word best fits), then naturally, as with any other genre, there are going to be works that push the envelope and aim for using anthropomorphics (the key element that makes furry fiction furry fiction) as something more than just window dressing, to explore aspects of character and world and story that can’t be easily explored another way, and then there are going to be works that do use it just as window dressing.* And there are plenty of readers in the fandom who are perfectly fine with what I call the fox-in-Starbucks stories that are just our regular human world with animal heads on everybody, where the story wouldn’t change a bit with humans besides having to edit out minor references to muzzles and tails and such. Just like there are readers who are fine with putting a character on a spaceship and calling it science fiction, when maybe the story could just as easily take place in the middle of Nebraska. And then there are other readers who are pickier and want more from whatever their preferred genre is.

So, as far as why an author should care, I guess it boils down to what audience they’re writing for.

*(And to be fair, there’s probably kind of a spectrum here; it’s not just nonessential vs essential – the same way there’s a spectrum from very animal-like characters to very human-like characters.)

#13

This conversation closely mirrors a conversation that my critique group has been having lately. We’ve been reading and discussing the short stories and novelettes nominated for Nebula Awards this year, and a lot of them have minimal or sort of unnecessary speculative elements. A few of them arguably aren’t sci-fi or fantasy at all. However, they’ve all been nominated for one of the top awards for science-fiction and fantasy. So, this conversation can happen in any genre.

Coming directly to the question of furry as window-dressing, I think it’s unfair to write it off as not reaching its full potential. Sometimes, there are important stories that are hard to tell, and the distance from the real world created by throwing in a spaceship or animal characters brings the story back to being accessible. A few examples – I know that Maus is a graphic novel, but I don’t think that the artifice of making the characters into cats and mice is a visual necessity. I do think it’s necessary for making such an incredibly painful and upsetting story into one that’s significantly more accessible. Similarly, the classic Star Trek episode with the aliens who hate each other because they’re both black-on-one-side-and-white-on-the-other but in mirror image versions of each other. Obviously, that’s just a metaphor for how humans with differently colored skin treat each other. It could be reworked and told on Earth, but the science-fiction window dressing is absolutely necessary for giving it the distance necessary to have an impact.

People can see things when they look at someone else that they can’t see looking at themselves. Turning characters into animals is a way to make them someone else, and, sometimes, that’s all that’s needed.

#14

In both your examples, though, the nonhuman characters are being used in an allegorical/social commentary situation, which to my mind is worthwhile use. It may look superficial, but there is at least a purpose to it in terms of the theme. I’m talking about the fiction where the only reason the writer’s using furry characters is because… well, because the writer’s furry, or because they’re writing for furries, or because they think it’s cool, but it doesn’t serve any aspect of the story. (And of course, which stories fit that sort of definition and which don’t is always going to be something of a subjective call.)

#15

Hm. This has been an issue I’ve been arguing with people over. My thoughts are: Avoid confusing the reader, as that’s the easiest way to get them to put down a story. Having the character be an anthro animal is a pretty good way to confuse a normal reader, so work to mitigate that. Secondly, to the average reader, having the characters be anthro might feel like a Chekov’s gun. They’ll expect you to do things to justify that style choice. If you don’t, they’ll leave the story feeling confused, and will be less likely to read future things by you.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to writing for furry markets, but for me, this is generally the thing I judge furry stories most harshly on. I want to know why.

For me I generally tend to use furry for a variety of purposes, but the main one is that I feel people are more likely to emotionally sympathize with an animal that’s getting hurt than a human, and that produces a much stronger reaction for what I’m looking for.

#16

This may be a tactical-level reply to a strategic-level thread, but one tool I’ve found very useful in writing furries is imperfection. All too many furs “idealize” anthros by giving them the best of both worlds. They’re both animal strong and fast and human-intelligent. Animal-beautiful, and socially human-flexible. And so on. What I’ve found effective is to realize that such an idealized being is very unlikely to occur. My protagonists will sometimes be stuck with full paws-- this forces the author to improve his or her characterization by, for example, describing picking up a letter from a desk and opening it. “There it was, the reply I’d been seeking for so long. I pawed the envelope over to the edge of my desktop, then clasped it between my front feet and gently nibbled first one end open, then all way down one side. After that I was able to use my claws to separate the contents from the container. This sometimes left a puncture or two and slobbery edges on my documents, but it was the best method I’d yet found.”

I also tend to add unpleasant character aspects as well. Mice are stuck being cowards except under the most extraordinary circumstances, for example-- it’s their nature no matter how unpleasant it is for the mice themselves. Or I’ll add social barriers; anthros may be uber-strong and intelligent and nice looking, but are by definition owned property as well.

We all have weaknesses, and expressing weaknesses is a good way to build empathy with your characters.

#17

This is a really interesting thread. I don’t have much to add I just wanted to say that I’m really enjoying everyone’s responses.

#18

Surprised I never posted my own spin on this during the entirety of the topic’s existence on the forums. XD

But I think when characterizing anthros, it’s best to emphasize animal like behaviors over the human ones. The human traits are meant to be a minor complement to the behaviors typical to the base animal; the more the human traits outshine the animal the less they believe your character is the species you claim they are. This can be a difficult thing to wrestle with because you have to ask questions like:

Where does the specie live?
How do they use tools?
What is the social structure?
What are their values?
What is the preferred environment?
etc.

Then it becomes a game of making sure these things match up with the actual behavior of the species you’re using in your story. This is also where a modern setting picks up a huge fantasy or sci-fi twist, because many species wouldn’t be able to comfortably live in cities as they are now; they are human designs with little consideration on how other species would use them. Tree dwelling animals like squirrels will design cities that would be designed around their ability to climb, with niches and lots of overhead cover; badgers and canines (with a few exceptions) will be subterranean because of their digging claws, hawks and large birds will be made with minimal obstructions with take off and landing, often onto the side of cliffs and mountains.

There’s also the manner of how much dexterity they have with their forelimbs (or hind limbs). If they can’t spread their digits wide or they’re short, their degree of manual dexterity is pretty low(canids and felids); the opposite is true if but if they have the ability to move individual digits to a moderate degree (raccoons and mice). So this affects the ways they approach even the same situation; a coyote won’t be able to hold a cup without a handle unless he uses both paws where as a mouse would. This difference obviously will affect the tools they can use, but it also affects their locomotion; something else that makes animals appear very different from humans.

It may not be difficult for some people to grasp that your anthro is indeed a great deal like the root animal if you put in enough traits that are typical of the species they’re based on. Canines have a strict social hierarchy where the alpha pair leads the pack and with occasional territory disputes with those they just don’t get along with, felines tend to live alone (with exceptions like African lion and sometimes domestic cats) often indifferent to the concerns of others and with families often raised by a single mother, mice congregate into packed communities of many families, migratory birds are nomads that travel with the civilization at large, beavers live in scattered communities on the river. This isn’t always the rule, but for the most part if you stay true to things the animal and people will believe them.

#19

I do have my character wag their tail, fold back their ears and so forth, but as for mentioning their stronger senses, it really depends on the story. I’m not going to touch on their sense of smell and/or hearing if there’s no reason to.