 For Authors: January 15, 2025 Issue [#12930] |
This week: It's a Dog's Life Edited by: Max Griffin š³ļøāš  
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Not so long ago, I whined to The StoryMaster  that I was running out of ideas for these newsletters. He responded with a helpful list of more than twenty AI-generated newsletter topics that might be of interest to authors. Iād already done about half of them, and most of the others didnāt look all that interesting. But the first one on the list, Writing from Unconventional Perspectives, got me to thinking. |
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What's this about?
Humans have created long-standing relationships with other species, but none are longer or, arguably, deeper than our relationship with dogs. They have been our companions for at least thirty thousand years. They are often beloved members of our families, and frequently play a role in our art and literature. Sometimes, they are even the protagonists in the stories we tell each other.
This newsletter is about using dogs and other non-humans to provide the point of view in stories. We start with some examples, then discuss briefly the how of doing this, and finally end with why one should do this.
The Examples
More than one author has written from a dogās perspective. An example that comes immediately to mind is Dean Koontz in his novel Dragon Tears. Thereās one whole chapter written from a dogās point of view. The dogās world is filled with smells, and not just any smells. They are all interesting, and distracting. The dog is looking for somethingāI donāt remember whatābut keeps getting distracted by these fascinating odors. The genius of the chapter is that, while dogs have eyes and ears, their sense of smell of smell is so refined, compared to humans, that it dominates their world view. Even a cat person like me can enjoy this chapter.
Another example of an author writing from a dogās point of view is Harlan Ellisonās short story, āA Boy and His Dog.ā The dog, Blood, provides the point of view as he and his human companion, Vic, scavenge items from a post-apocalyptic Earth. In fact, Blood is smart one of the pair, who share a telepathic bond. Itās more like Vic is Bloodās pet.
I mentioned Iām a cat person, so of course I like stories where a cat provides the point of view. Fritz Leiber wrote a delightful story, āSpacetime for Springers,ā in which a super-smart kitten saves his family. I kind of ripped off Leiberās idea in my silly story, "Schrodinger's Cat" .
Science fiction offers multiple opportunities for alien points of view. Larry Niven, for example, in his short story āRescue Party,ā uses Nessus, his puppeteer alien, to provide the point of view. Other stories use the obligate carnivore species Kzin to provide the point of view.
Science fiction has long considered the possibility of intelligent machines, Asimovās R. Daneel Olivaw was a robotic detective. For me, though, one of the most memorable stories where machine intelligence provides the point of view is Roger Zelaznyās āFor a Breath I Tarry.ā The story itself blends elements from literature, and especially from the first chapter of the Book of Job. But it also has echoes of the first three chapters of Genesis and of Goetheās Faust. The title is from a phrase in A. E. Housman's collection A Shropshire Lad.
Another fascinating set of machine intelligences appears in Keith Laumerās Bolo stories. The Bolos are intelligent tanks invented by humans in a decades-long war with aliens. The story āCombat Unitā uses one of the units to provide the point of view. The plot is interesting all by itself, as the author uses events to ramp up tension and put us in the, er, mind of a Mark XXXI Combat Unit. Aliens have reanimated the unit from a long period of dormancy and hope to exploit it to win the war against humans. But the unitās cunning and latent skills win the day. At the end, the unit signals for relief and realizes it will take humans decades to arrive. What it does then is what makes the story. Itās a short read and worth the effort.
The above examples are all from speculative fiction, but literature has examples, too. Kafkaās āThe Metamorphosisā is from the point of view of Gregor Samsa, a human who wakes up one morning transformed into an insect, usually taken by readers to be a cockroach. The story starts with him in bed and stuck on his back. Of course, since heās a bug, that means he canāt get up. Rotten food is the only kind that appeals to him. The story is, of course, an extended metaphor. Wikipedia lists hundreds of other stories, movies, and works that this story inspired.
For another literary example, John Gardnerās novel Grendel is a retelling of the Old English Beowulf poem from the point of view of the monster. The novel uses the platform for exploring the search for meaning in the world, the power of literature, and the nature of good and evil.
The How
"In the writing stateāthe state of inspirationāthe fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols."
-- John Gardner, The Art of Fiction
The above is just scattered list of stories that use non-human points of view. The specific techniques the authors use are as varied as the stories themselves. But there's a more fundamental technique at work here, the "fictive dream" that Gardner speaks of. Gardner writes about the essential importance of inducing a fictive dream that plays in the readers' heads. The words on the page induce this dream-like state, in which the readers fill in all the myriad details that never make it to the page but that the words suggest. The first step in creating that dream is that the author becomes a dreamer.
Becoming a dreamer means that the author first imagines what it would be like to be this different entity. Even with human characters, this almost always involves more than being a different person. There are always differences between the self and the other. The author's dream must include physicality, gender, social context and myriad other factors. The cultural and moral context might differ, too. But for non-human characters, the entire range of sensory inputs, the reactions to those inputs, even the pace of those reactions could all be different. Truly unconventional points of view are not imitation humans. Indeed, the most interesting ones canāt be understood in human terms but are truly strange. Putting that alien, internal, and subjective experience on the page in a way that brings it to life in the readersā imaginations requires craft and art.
But the first step, the essential step, is becoming a dreamer. That can't be taught. It requires a deliberate loss of control. It's much like a meditative state from which deeper insights arise. It takes practice and imagination.
The Why
Art is not what you see. It is what you make others see.
--Edgar Degas
Every time an author writes a story, there's the necessity of being in the head of the characters, imagining how the fictional world acts to create their emotional state. It's an essential element of the fictive dream, of becoming a dreamer. The character and the dreamer become one. This requires a kind of empathy for the fictional character. That's hard enough for human characters, but if that character is non-human, it's even more challenging. Writing from a non-human perspective makes an already hard task harder, so why do it?
The reason is that it's one way to develop and deepen this necessary skill. It will stretch your writing skills and make you a better author. Like any useful exercise, it strengthens the underlying activity.
Indeed, empathy is an important life skill, one that can be a challenge in the real world, too. Empathy is probably an innate ability of humans. Alas, it's one that political, religious, cultural and other barriers often work to stifle, sometimes for nefarious ends. Developing this skill as an author can develop it in real life, too. It can make your life more meaningful and fulfilling. Empathy, in one form or another, is a foundational value for a broad range of religious and etheical systems. I've found a useful rule is to conclude that if Socrates, Buddha, Muhammed, and Jesus all agree something is worth doing, it probably is.
All of the examples I cited achieve inducing the fictional dream in the reader. Well, all but my own, which is silly. The others are worth looking at just to learn from the specific craft these skilled authors employ. But the exercise itself, writing from a non-human perspective, is worthwhile on it's own.
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| | Muse (18+)
Silence is not always golden ... 3rd place 10/2009 Quotation Inspiration Contest
#1606252 by Mara ā£ McBain  |
| | Grateful (E)
A poem about my gorgeous dog, Alfie, who I love with all my heart.
#2285110 by Choconut  |
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