Writing as the monster

[scottchegg]

As title states, I plan on writing a story in first person as a monster in a fantasy setting. I've never written in first person before especially not as one with non-human traits, and I was wondering if anyone would have any ideas or advice?

 

[TulipMama]

I have written in first person quite a bit, and it can be very fun to really 'be' the character instead of being the narrative.

The thing I'd suggest to keep in mind is that nobody is the villain in their own story. If this is the story of a manticore who is clearly sentient enough to have an internal narrative, they've got their own problems. They have to deal with the hierarchy of needs (food/water, shelter etc) and all of the problems that comes with the acquisition of such. Is their a social demand on this character? Does it have a society that it needs to mesh with?

Just try to avoid 'oh, ya, a hero. I was getting snacky and I love murdering!' since that infers a lot of very flat characterization and isn't all that interesting.

Unfortunately, while I would like to delve a smidge more into this topic, I am in a bit of a time crunch at the moment and will have to come back to it. This is very much a 'shoot from the hip' post.

Actual first person advice will come later on, but the big ones are to read/listen to first person stuff, and have some fun writing conversations between yourself and the character. It's a fun writing exercise to get into the head of the characters.

 

[mrsmig]

Read books with first-person non-human narratives, to see how those authors handled it. First one that pops to mind is John Gardner's Grendel, which is written from the point of view of the mythic monster from the epic poem "Beowulf."

 

[lizmonster]

First person is prone to filtering: I felt, I thought, etc. This is common, especially if you're used to writing in third person, but it's distancing. If you're telling the story as if your narrator is speaking to someone else, you can get away with more of it, but if it's really supposed to be your narrator's internal monologue, those are phrases to comb out as you revise. (Personally, I wouldn't worry too much in a first draft.)

As for monsters? The thing about any narrative is that it has to be relatable to your readers, and all your readers are going to be human. You can set up different motivations and actions/consequences in your worldbuilding, but your readers have to be able to feel something for your narrtor. Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time isn't first person, but he's done a wonderful job creating a non-human intelligent species that's still relatable enough for the reader to get emotionally involved.

 

[scottchegg]

I have written in first person quite a bit, and it can be very fun to really 'be' the character instead of being the narrative.

The thing I'd suggest to keep in mind is that nobody is the villain in their own story. If this is the story of a manticore who is clearly sentient enough to have an internal narrative, they've got their own problems. They have to deal with the hierarchy of needs (food/water, shelter etc) and all of the problems that comes with the acquisition of such. Is their a social demand on this character? Does it have a society that it needs to mesh with?

Just try to avoid 'oh, ya, a hero. I was getting snacky and I love murdering!' since that infers a lot of very flat characterization and isn't all that interesting.

Unfortunately, while I would like to delve a smidge more into this topic, I am in a bit of a time crunch at the moment and will have to come back to it. This is very much a 'shoot from the hip' post.

Actual first person advice will come later on, but the big ones are to read/listen to first person stuff, and have some fun writing conversations between yourself and the character. It's a fun writing exercise to get into the head of the characters.

Thanks. For the monster in question she's from a species that are apex predators, where they are mildly sexually dimorphic to where the female is stronger than the male, and the male has to dominate the female in order to form a family unit. Think of the "I'll only marry someone who can beat me," trope but it's based on hormones instead of honour, and there's a lot more biting involved. Once of age the kids are either supposed to leave to establish territory or kill their parents for theirs, so the species are basically completely amoral, and while intelligent they are unknowledgeable, and while capable of sympathy are completely unempathetic.

Her needs are all basically met, so her main problem ends up being her hormonal drive to fight things stronger than herself, and the unfortunate fact that she keeps winning, leading to escalating issues with her own species, human hunters, and a growing faction of other monster species that want to overthrow humanity, and her interactions with them.

For the voice I want to keep it analytical mostly. In my mind she's kind of like a tiger, a solitary stalking predator, whilst also having a desire for combat and the barest modicum of social intuition. For combat I'm thinking of keeping it purely to what she does, senses and feels, in short sentences or sometimes just individual words, without including much in the way of active thought. The rest of the time will be her personal train of thought while she does other things, such as stalking prey, observing the other groups or engaging non-violently with them.

 

[scottchegg]

Read books with first-person non-human narratives, to see how those authors handled it. First one that pops to mind is John Gardner's Grendel, which is written from the point of view of the mythic monster from the epic poem "Beowulf."

Thanks, I'll take a look at it. Been a while since I interacted with anything Beowulf, I'll see how much I remember. Likely nothing.

 

[scottchegg]

First person is prone to filtering: I felt, I thought, etc. This is common, especially if you're used to writing in third person, but it's distancing. If you're telling the story as if your narrator is speaking to someone else, you can get away with more of it, but if it's really supposed to be your narrator's internal monologue, those are phrases to comb out as you revise. (Personally, I wouldn't worry too much in a first draft.)

As for monsters? The thing about any narrative is that it has to be relatable to your readers, and all your readers are going to be human. You can set up different motivations and actions/consequences in your worldbuilding, but your readers have to be able to feel something for your narrtor. Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time isn't first person, but he's done a wonderful job creating a non-human intelligent species that's still relatable enough for the reader to get emotionally involved.

Thanks, that's a good point about filtering, I tried to avoid it but I can think of one instance already where I may have forgotten that. For relatability I spoke about the idea with someone else and they said the character is one of my more relatable ones because her primary emotion when having to interact with other creatures is annoyance.

 

[lizmonster]

Thanks, that's a good point about filtering, I tried to avoid it but I can think of one instance already where I may have forgotten that. For relatability I spoke about the idea with someone else and they said the character is one of my more relatable ones because her primary emotion when having to interact with other creatures is annoyance.

Annoyance is fine, but what does it get her?

Portia's motivation in Children of Time is the survival of her species. She gets a lot of things wrong as the story goes, but that's behind all of her emotional reactions, including annoyance.

I'm a big introvert, and interacting with other creatures often annoys me, too. But there's always a reason: I'm over-peopled, they're interrupting the schedule in my head, we're misunderstanding each other, etc. My annoyance is a result of those people getting between me and a goal that's important to me.

 

[scottchegg]

Annoyance is fine, but what does it get her?

Portia's motivation in Children of Time is the survival of her species. She gets a lot of things wrong as the story goes, but that's behind all of her emotional reactions, including annoyance.

I'm a big introvert, and interacting with other creatures often annoys me, too. But there's always a reason: I'm over-peopled, they're interrupting the schedule in my head, we're misunderstanding each other, etc. My annoyance is a result of those people getting between me and a goal that's important to me.

It's purely when she wants something and can't just kill them to get it. I plan to have a conversation where between every line is her fantasising about how she could kill the creature speaking at her.

 

[lizmonster]

It's purely when she wants something and can't just kill them to get it. I plan to have a conversation where between every line is her fantasising about how she could kill the creature speaking at her.

It's all in the execution. As a reader, I'd want to know why she wanted those things so badly, why she didn't terminate the conversation, why she didn't indeed just kill them, etc.

 

[kinokonoronin]

For the voice I want to keep it analytical mostly. In my mind she's kind of like a tiger, a solitary stalking predator, whilst also having a desire for combat and the barest modicum of social intuition. For combat I'm thinking of keeping it purely to what she does, senses and feels, in short sentences or sometimes just individual words, without including much in the way of active thought. The rest of the time will be her personal train of thought while she does other things, such as stalking prey, observing the other groups or engaging non-violently with them.

Sounds tedious for a long-form work. I don't get a sense of where the reader's emotional engagement would come from, and I can't imagine myself reading such a detached perspective for more than the length of a short.

That said, writers are magicians. Perhaps you've just the spells to work such a miracle.

 

[scottchegg]

Sounds tedious for a long-form work. I don't get a sense of where the reader's emotional engagement would come from, and I can't imagine myself reading such a detached perspective for more than the length of a short.

That said, writers are magicians. Perhaps you've just the spells to work such a miracle.

Well I don't know how long it will ultimately be but it won't be tremendous, and I'm going to skip any point where nothing is happening or she's repeating behaviour, so there will always be something for her to be doing, either actively or reactively. Also I know I said she was a solitary predator, but she is going to be dragged into world politics via the ongoing war, making her have to actually interact with other monsters, while she herself tries to find enjoyment in the process and becoming increasingly tense.

 

[scottchegg]

It's all in the execution. As a reader, I'd want to know why she wanted those things so badly, why she didn't terminate the conversation, why she didn't indeed just kill them, etc.

Well that's all context, I could give specific examples but as a general statement she doesn't like interacting and would rather kill people if she could.

 

[Unimportant]

Every POV has its strengths and weaknesses, both from the point of storytelling capability and from the effect on/experience of the reader. Perhaps defining for yourself why you have chosen this POV for this particular story will aid you in strengthening the first person effect while avoiding its pitfalls.

 

[scottchegg]

Every POV has its strengths and weaknesses, both from the point of storytelling capability and from the effect on/experience of the reader. Perhaps defining for yourself why you have chosen this POV for this particular story will aid you in strengthening the first person effect while avoiding its pitfalls.

To be 100% honest, practice. The story this follows is part of what I refer to as my practice series, where I try out something, be it genre, style or mood, and I just give it a go. The entire series is ridiculously convoluted when taken as a whole and is basically all of my daydreaming nonsense from when I was 8 crammed into a single continuity. I have no expectations for it to be good, I just want to give it a go and see what happens and what I can learn from it.

 

[Brightdreamer]

If it's just for your own practice, then start and see where it takes you.

As others have mentioned, having an understanding of the character is going to be key. Understand how they're different in their body and senses, and how this makes them different in their mindset. You can't avoid a little anthropomorphising, of course, being a human author using a human brain and human language to tell a story to a human audience, but you can be aware and take a step or two to the side.

The nonsocial nonhuman character forced to deal with pesky humans reminds me a bit of Martha Wells's Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries or even Ann Leckie's Breq from the Imperial Radch series, though both are humanoid. Murderbot is a partly-organic "security unit" drone that is irritated by the humans who own and use it; it can do great violence (hence calling itself "Murderbot"), but does not like to, and its greatest desire, especially at the start, is to be left alone to stream sappy serialized soap operas. Unfortunately, the humans around it keep doing stupid human things and need saving. Through the story, it starts figuring itself out and more of what it wants, because "just leave me alone" is not a feasible plan, and starts learning how to cope with humanity - even when humans want to "help" it, they can sometimes be more troublesome and interfering than the ones that see it as just an object or tool, and one thing it is firm about is that it doesn't want to be human but its own distinct being. Breq is the last surviving "ancillary" unit of what was a great hivelike artificial intelligence vessel that was betrayed; she intends to seek out and destroy whoever destroyed the rest of her, and finds organic humans very confusing. Breq is probably closer to the mindset you're going for, if focused on a single goal/target and not generally wanting to kill everyone.

Someone upthread mentioned Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time for a good example of a nonhuman - and nonmammalian, even - character/species done well, and it's worth a look if you want to see how he incorporated arachnid biology and "mind" into a distinct alien culture in a way that human readers can relate to and even cheer on. The second book in the trilogy (haven't gotten to it yet) has intelligent octopuses. He also wrote a series with "uplifted"/biologically modified animals created for use in war, starting with Dogs of War, that explores canine, bear, lizard, and even beehive perspectives.

An older writer, but C. J. Cherryh does some very good aliens that can be a step (or more) to the side of human thinking; Pride of Chanur features a catlike alien species encountering a fugitive human, whose actions sometimes make sense to the crew and sometimes are confusing, and touches on several other aliens whom even the Chanur struggle to fully understand, such as a species that talks in matrices. Cherryh might be a decent author to study for how to present nonhuman characters that feel nonhuman and not just like people in costumes.

 

[AnnieColleen]

Look up John Wiswell - he often writes from the monster’s POV and has talked about it in interviews.

His novel Someone You Can Build a Nest In is both horror and a sweet story, from the monster’s POV, and was just nominated for a Nebula award.

T. Kingfisher’s Thornhedge is another good one.

 

[Unimportant]

I suppose the most well known example of first person monster would be Lolita?

 

[halloweeencat]

As title states, I plan on writing a story in first person as a monster in a fantasy setting. I've never written in first person before especially not as one with non-human traits, and I was wondering if anyone would have any ideas or advice?

I just wanted to pipe in and say I think this is a super cool idea!

All I write is in first person, and it helps to read other fiction in first person. But mostly just write as if you were the character on page. How do you feel? How would that make you react? What emotions would drive you?

A lot of the time, when someone add an animalistic element to a story, they're writing as a human in that form. I dont know if that makes sense.

So if you were writing as a wolf, you'd have a strong sense of smell, keen eyesight, but as a werewolf, you'd have all of that PLUS human emotions. That's how I was go about it anyways.

 

[scottchegg]

I suppose the most well known example of first person monster would be Lolita?

A bit too monstrous for my literally inhuman sociopathic man-eating murder machine. I do not wish to even think about reading any more of that book than I already have.

 

[lizmonster]

A bit too monstrous for my literally inhuman sociopathic man-eating murder machine. I do not wish to even think about reading any more of that book than I already have.

I too am not a fan of Lolita, but it is the classic example of what you’re talking about doing. The reader is not meant to like Humbert Humbert at all.

 

[CMBright]

In my opinion, writing about a non-human character is no different from writing about a human charcter. The character needs goals, wants and needs, and obstacles to getting what they want/need in order for the story to be interesting. The underlying psychology and behavior might be different, but if you are writing for an audience of more than one, such a non-human character must be human enough for readers to relate to the non-human character. There is a reason the aliens in Star Trek are odd looking humans beyond the limits of 60s makeup.

ETA: if you are writing for an audience of one, go as wild as you want with your non-human character. Pun not intended, but appropriate.

 

[scottchegg]

In my opinion, writing about a non-human character is no different from writing about a human charcter. The character needs goals, wants and needs, and obstacles to getting what they want/need in order for the story to be interesting. The underlying psychology and behavior might be different, but if you are writing for an audience of more than one, such a non-human character must be human enough for readers to relate to the non-human character. There is a reason the aliens in Star Trek are odd looking humans beyond the limits of 60s makeup.

ETA: if you are writing for an audience of one, go as wild as you want with your non-human character. Pun not intended, but appropriate.

The more I'm thinking about the character the more it feels like it has the personality of a very grumpy stray cat. The kind that just sits on its perch and stares at you when you walk up to it until you cross a certain threshold at which point it gives you plenty of new red lines, except for 0.1% of the time when it might decide not to, and only it really knows why.

Except it's bigger and just kills you. And the metaphor falls apart as the plot gears up.

 

[Woollybear]

As title states, I plan on writing a story in first person as a monster in a fantasy setting. I've never written in first person before especially not as one with non-human traits, and I was wondering if anyone would have any ideas or advice?

I mean, I like the idea.

Did you ever read Lolita? The narrator is a pedophile, and his opening is a defense of his proclivities to the audience, whom he more or less sees as his judge and jury.

I recommend reading this book, not because the viewpoint of a pedophile sounds fun, but rather because there will be strategies to use to make it work. Nabakov figured those out. First off: What does your monster want? (What is his story goal.)

Humbert Humbert, the pedophile, wanted forgiveness from the masses. That's the story goal. (A grumpy cat has what goal?) The story opens with that premise, and it's an ambitious task, to ask the masses to forgive such horrific acts. That's how Lolita opens, in a courtroom of public opinion. Story goal.

So, my advice, in addition to reading books about monsters as protagonists or narrators, is to identify the story goal for your monster. A vampire running around sucking blood is boring. (It's just a monster being a monster.) A vampire desperately seeking a cure for her condition is interesting. (here's a monster trying to change their own destiny.) Your monster will not get much mileage out of being a monster, but it might get mileage out of ... convincing others it is not a monster, ala Lolita; trying to be less a monster, ala many vampire novels; trying to masquerade as a non-monster, ala some sci-fi etc stories.

If you decide to simply make the monster a monster, being a monster, not questioning the monsterhood, which is also sometimes done, then my advice is to surround the monster with compelling other-characters.

Great prompt, thank you for the question.

ETA:

A bit too monstrous for my literally inhuman sociopathic man-eating murder machine. I do not wish to even think about reading any more of that book than I already have.

Yes, Humbert's a monster. How did Nabokov make his story work? What Nabokov did not do was shy away from the monster. I applaud your sensibilities about not sympathizing with a pedophile, even a fictional one.

 

[Woollybear]

Thanks. For the monster in question she's from a species that are apex predators, where they are mildly sexually dimorphic to where the female is stronger than the male, and the male has to dominate the female in order to form a family unit. Think of the "I'll only marry someone who can beat me," trope but it's based on hormones instead of honour, and there's a lot more biting involved. Once of age the kids are either supposed to leave to establish territory or kill their parents for theirs, so the species are basically completely amoral, and while intelligent they are unknowledgeable, and while capable of sympathy are completely unempathetic.

Her needs are all basically met, so her main problem ends up being her hormonal drive to fight things stronger than herself, and the unfortunate fact that she keeps winning, leading to escalating issues with her own species, human hunters, and a growing faction of other monster species that want to overthrow humanity, and her interactions with them.

For the voice I want to keep it analytical mostly. In my mind she's kind of like a tiger, a solitary stalking predator, whilst also having a desire for combat and the barest modicum of social intuition. For combat I'm thinking of keeping it purely to what she does, senses and feels, in short sentences or sometimes just individual words, without including much in the way of active thought. The rest of the time will be her personal train of thought while she does other things, such as stalking prey, observing the other groups or engaging non-violently with them.

OK, I'm now reading through the thread.

I like this, but I feel she needs some story goal, which is basically what was said in post above. How will she know when she has completed a journey? Humbert Humbert will have completed his journey when he has completed his own defense and rests, awaiting the jury's verdict.

Maybe she needs (inside) to know that her strength is for a purpose. Maybe she needs her strength to matter to a larger purpose. I'm just spitballing. Maybe she has a goal of reining in her strength because of how it alienates her from her own kind, and she has a story goal of proving to herself that something besides strength can form the basis of a bond.