In the previous two installments of this unplanned series, I talked about figuring out why you wanted to write in a furry world, and how to go about the worldbuilding. In this installment I’ll talk about writing furry characters: what sliders you can use to make them more or less furry, how often you should remind the reader of their species, and how to engage with the cultural assumptions about certain species.
As I talked about previously, we’re privileged to be part of a community that thrives on art and includes hundreds (if not thousands) of talented artists. It’s very helpful to figure out what your characters look like and then get an artist to render them (support furry artists!), so you have a visual reference while you’re writing. A lot of writing is about details, and knowing what details to tell your reader about will help your character feel more real.
Everyone’s conception of what their furry characters look like is different and unique. There’s no “world bible” that we all draw from. Some like digitigrade, some plantigrade; some like generally similar humanoid forms for all species, while some prefer the species be reflected in the body proportions and relative sizes.
However you imagine your characters, you’ll have to describe them for the reader, and here the age-old author’s problem of “how to tell the reader what the character looks like” is magnified. In a non-furry book, the reader can safely assume that a character is human (unless otherwise specified), and, most crucially, the point of view character is almost always human, even in fantasy and science fiction. There are a few solid details you can give someone to get a picture of a human character: skin color, hair color, height, build. In a furry book, however, the point of view character is most often not human, so aside from fur color and height and build, you need to tell the reader more about the character’s body type. This can get awkward, and leads to a lot of furry stories starting with the character looking into a mirror (do not do this; it stalls the story and feels like the author telling the reader what the character looks like).
Your character will likely reflect the amount of “furriness” in your world. If you’re imagining your wolves living in communal packs, your otters in aquatic homes, your squirrels in rickety treehouses, then your characters might skew more toward the animalistic shape. If you’re writing a modern world that happens to be populated with furries, they’ll look more human.
And just as it is with any character, or any setting, description is most effective when it’s revealed through action or interaction. You don’t want to stop the story to describe your character looking into the mirror; instead, figure out a way to show the reader what they look like as they move through their world. The first book in the Calatians series, The Tower and the Fox, begins with Kip demanding to be let in to the sorcerers’ college. He’s denied because he’s a fox-person, which tells you as much about him as it does about the world he lives in.
But once you’ve told your reader that your main character is a fox standing on two legs, with a muzzle and bushy tail and clothes, how often do you need to remind them of that? I’ve read stories in which I was told the character’s species once and then it was never mentioned again, and at some point in the story I realized I’d forgotten it. You can of course refer to your character by their species, a common practice in furry writing, but you can also remind your reader of their furriness in other ways. Fortunately, the standout differences between furries and humans are also important to the ways furries (or at least the animals they’re based on) express emotions. Your character’s ears can perk or flatten or cup toward someone; their tail can curl, wag, lash, or arch. This accomplishes the dual goal of showing the reader what your character is feeling and reminding the reader that they’re a furry.
A side note: if you want your stories to be accessible outside the furry fandom, you might have to explain some of these reactions the first few times. We all know what it means when a character flattens their ears or curls their tail between their legs, and people familiar with dogs and cats might also pick up on it, but some people might not.
You should also remind the reader occasionally what it means to be this character’s species in your world, another two-for-one opportunity. In the Calatians series, the Calatians (animal-people) are a minority, and so anytime Kip is in contact with humans, his species is important. He has to navigate the prejudices and expectations of the other; in fact, that is largely the obstacle of each of the books. In a fully furry world, you will have to think about how each of the species thinks about other species. We have those divisions in our world, and they are malleable: two people might consider themselves part of the same community because they belong to the same church, then find out that they live in different towns or hold different political beliefs or root for different sports teams, and that creates a division between them. In-group/out-group behaviors are believed to be some of the oldest in our history, and so you can only imagine how those would play out in a world where there is such a visible delineation between certain people.
Here you will have to take into account the cultural associations with different species in your world, if only because your readers are going to have them in their heads. If you are aiming at the furry community, you can play off stereotypes of species in the community, but a wider audience has perceptions formed more by Disney and Aesop than by furry artists and writers. Foxes are clever and sneaky; rabbits are tricksters with large families; bears are generally good-natured and hungry, and so on. If you want to play into those types, you can. Often a fun way to play with characters is to accept those cultural associations, but have your character not fit into them: the clumsy, naive fox, or the loner bunny, or the grumpy fitness-obsessed bear. That sets up tension between their nature and the expectations put on them and can make for some good story movement.
The great thing about writing in furry worlds is that you can define everything about the world. Make it yours, and then remember that you have to bring the reader into this world you’ve made. Show them your characters and help them relate to the way they move through the world. We write furry characters and worlds because we love them, so let that love show on the page, and your readers will fall in love with them too.