{"id":610,"date":"2014-02-21T09:14:08","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T16:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=610"},"modified":"2014-02-21T09:14:08","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T16:14:08","slug":"guest-blogger-elizabeth-beechwood-write-from-an-animals-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/guest-blogger-elizabeth-beechwood-write-from-an-animals-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blogger Elizabeth Beechwood – Write From An Animal’s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Beechwood<\/a> shows how to create animal characters on her Blog<\/a>, “When I write, strange things happen.”<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

Anyone who knows me knows that I love animals. When I was a kid, I was always bringing home stray dogs and baby birds. After I got married, my husband had to deal with opossums in the backyard, baby goats running through the kitchen, and let\u2019s not forget the epic night he came home to find a loon in the bathtub!<\/p>\n

It seemed natural, then, that\u00a0when I began to write, I included animal characters in my stories. I quickly realized, however, that writing from an animal\u2019s perspective had its own particular challenges, whether my characters were cats or pigeons or griffins or giant moths. I discovered that, by focusing on four main elements, I could portray all sorts of animals \u2013 from the realistic wolf surviving in the cold north to the fantastic mouse going on a quest. If you imagine these four elements on a sliding scale with \u2018realistic\u2019 to the far left and \u2018fantastical\u2019 to the far right, where you, the writer, place these elements determines the type of animal character you will create.<\/p>\n

These elements are:<\/p>\n