Human or non-human POV. Which is more difficult to write?

We tend to anthropomorphize animals or other-being creatures, either give them human traits or try to derive human traits from them. This is as easy as you can do with any person, if not easier because readers are more accepting of certain simplistic traits. Look at my avatar. I bet you tried to appoint a human expression to the dog's 'face', didn't you?

If you avoid connecting the actions of animals and humans, then that can be far more difficult.

I haven't ever written any non-human or alien characters so I probably shouldn't be in this thread, but I've managed to write fairly convincing villains despite being something of a pacifist in real life. It's part of being a writer. While writing about someone like you can be like sliding into a favorite pair of jeans, sometimes it's liberating to try a disguise. Me, despite my pacifism, I seem to be torn between two very different impulses. Part of me wants to be a Bodhisattva and rescue humanity while the other part thinks God should have stopped with Chimpanzees and that humans should die. Fiction gives me the chance to explore both those sides of me.

Again, I don't know if writing alien or non-human characters works the same way, but I imagine it does.

Writing a realistic animal POV would be incredibly difficult because non-human animals are (mostly) nonverbal, and writing is, well, words. You'd have to really focus on sensory impressions, and that can feel limiting.

That said, animal brains have a lot in common with human brains. We have a big fancy neocortex, but our deeper machinery is the same as theirs; we share the same emotions. So it's not impossible.

With partially anthropomorphized animals like the rabbits in Watership Down, I'd say if you're doing it right, you're essentially writing an alien species. It's kind of like saying, "What if rabbits had language and culture like humans? How would they interact? What would they do?" If you're doing a lazy job, then they'll probably come across like humans in furry suits. I appreciate writers who imbue intelligent animals characters with a uniquely animal way of looking at the world. A canine, for instance, will be focused on smells a lot more than humans would.

Tazlima said:

In drawing and painting, they say that it's more difficult for an artist to depict a realistic human than a realistic animal..

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It's worth noting that the earliest preserved realistic human art is depictions of animals, in particular the famous and remarkable cave wall paintings at Lascaux, France. Depictions of humanoid figures in prehistoric art are universally stylized (the ancient alien/UFO enthusiasts really love this). The earliest depictions of individual humans might have been the Olmec heads found in Mexico, all individual, and strangely reminiscent of Polynesian facial characteristics. The terracotta warriors found in China back in the 1970s had individual forms, no two alike, but the general theory now is that they were artistic renderings, rather than individual portraiture. Nobody will really know for sure. The fabulous golden death mask of young Pharaoh Tutankhamen is a remarkable and certainly portrait-like image.

But it did take a long time for human art to evolve far enough for such portraiture. It's a lot easier to depict an antelope or a giraffe, because they all pretty much look alike to us.

In terms of writing, I think we are trapped into writing human or human-like POV, no matter how hard we try to do the latter as non-human. We are trapped into evoking human emotions, anger, love, hatred, greed, fear, etc., in ways that a non-human might not possess. One of the best examples of a good writer using a non-human POV character is the novel Grendel, by John Gardner, which is a re-telling of the Beowulf legend from the antagonist monster's point-of-view. Even there, the story ends powerfully with the expression of an essentially human emotion (a curse, for revenge).

caw

Bob Bakker published 'Raptor Red' in 1995: a fairly vivid third-person extrapolation of a dinosaur's life.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553575619/?tag=absowrit-20

It informed some of my non-human characterizations.

Filigree said:

Bob Bakker published 'Raptor Red' in 1995: a fairly vivid third-person extrapolation of a dinosaur's life.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553575619/?tag=absowrit-20

It informed some of my non-human characterizations.

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As an aside, Robert Bakker has some iconoclastic ideas about the behavior of dinosaurs. He deserves to have those, as he is one of the premier paleontologists researching the beasts, but not every dinosaur paleontologist shares his ideas (google "Jack Horner"). That's not to be considered a knock on Bakker. I am a paleontologist by profession, though not working with dinosaurs, and I admire both him and Horner a lot.

caw

I like watching the sparks of any discussion involving both Horner and Bakker. I don't take either of them as perfectly correct. Some of what Bakker did in 'Raptor' was sheer speculation and anthropomorphic fantasy.

But oh, wait - that's what we're writing, no?

Might be similar to how Jean Auel, in her Clan of the Cave Bear series, was credited with creating a realistic portrayal of prehistoric man, but I imagine science has disproved most of her books because science improves in leaps and bounds while a book, once written, remains the same for the most part. To say nothing as to how Auel's series basically degenerated into Mary Sue fantasies as the series went on.

In short, if you want to try to write from the perspective of an extinct animal, research, use what works for you, and don't sweat the small details too much. Focus on writing a Damn entertaining story above all else.

If a human writes it, it's a human POV, no matter what else it pretends to be. Having said this, how can it be difficult to write something where no one can prove you wrong? Well, unless they are a member of that species that has somehow learned to write or speak. It is pure pretentiousness to believe we can write any POV other than human.

It's probably pretentious to think we can accurately write a POV of another human perfectly.

Science has absolutely disproven Jean Auel. We now know that rather than being a lot less gender equal than anatomically modern man, Neanderthals were actually a lot more.

Neanderthal female skeletons have many more injuries that would be associated with hunting than modern female skeletons of the same vintage. If anything, she had things the wrong way around.

I only tried it once. A cat. So much fun.
Short short titled Devil Child.