Let’s talk about Animal Companions, the best part of any book.
First of all, what is an animal companion? An animal companion is an animal who accompanies the main character throughout the story. They can be there for part of the time. They can be there for all of the time, but I want to talk about what makes an animal companion good, and then why is it a super-effective writing tool in an author’s quiver.
Let’s start by talking about what makes them awesome. Animal companions are awesome because they’re usually funny. They’re usually cute. They’re usually there to add a bit of joy and levity to an otherwise hard situation. One of the biggest problems that a main character can have in a fantasy or a science fiction and a speculative fiction work is that they become isolated from the world around them because of their circumstances, whether that is physically isolated, i.e. they are cast off into some part of the world where there’s nobody else around, or they maybe have to go on a journey, whether they are emotionally isolated because there’s something that’s blocking them from being relational with other people, whether they are mentally isolated because maybe they’re battling through some mental trauma and they feel like they’re isolated even if they’re not.
It is really hard to write a good character who stays in one of those places of isolation for a long period of time because readers hate it. Readers just hate it. Loneliness is one of the most terrifying feelings, and it brings with it an existential dread that people just can’t deal with. And at the end of the day, the longer you isolate your protagonist, the less likely somebody is to read your book. It just, like, I don’t know why, well, no, I do know why. I know exactly why that particular problem just undermines people’s interest, and it’s because they don’t want to experience it themselves. And if you’re a good writer, your reader is going to do some level of living vicariously through the protagonist, which means that the longer they’re isolated, the harder it is for the reader because it produces a similar discomfort in them.
An animal companion cuts through all of that. The animal companion can accompany your main character, providing them with a sense of support, whether it is physical, emotional, or mental. The animal companion acts as a proxy for some sort of good in that space, right? That’s why animal companions have become so popular. They’re good, and readers really like them because they provide a sense of relief. Not necessarily for your character, but for the reader. They are not alone in this.
The amazing thing is that you don’t need a lot of companionship, but everybody needs SOME companionship. By adding an animal companion, you can completely eliminate the unconscious fear or discomfort a reader might have about the loneliness or isolation of your main character.
Now, let’s talk about why animal companions are also a secret magic trick for authors. Whenever you create a character, they are defined as much by what you say about them as what you don’t say about them. However, most often your characters are actually defined by how they relate to other characters. This proves to be a problem when your character is alone. The problem with isolation is that it’s impossible for them to react to another character or have another character react to them if they’re alone. Of course, they can react to themselves, but navel gazing is incredibly tiring. After a little bit of it, people tend to get bored.
So, if we introduce an animal companion, we get the best of both worlds. We get to set our main character apart by juxtaposing their personality with that of the animal companion. This is why if you have a happy-go-lucky main character, you’ll probably have a snarky or sarcastic animal companion. On the other hand, if your character has a bit of darkness to them, chances are you’re going to have a bright and bubbly animal companion. Having that juxtaposition gives you the opportunity to put your character’s character in sharp relief for the reader. They get to see the character very clearly because they’re seeing the opposite, and they play off of each other.
Additionally, you’re able to set up that interaction and response that’s going to help you define who your character is, and even more importantly, help define how your character changes over time. That’s the other really hard thing. If you have a character who is on a mostly solo adventure, it becomes very hard for the reader to understand the journey that your character is going on. But if your main character is going on this journey and has an animal companion, then all of a sudden, based on the way they are interacting with that companion throughout the journey, the reader gets a glimpse into how the character is evolving and changing.
I do have one word of caution, which is that you shouldn’t make your animal companion the main character. This means that you need to leave them off screen for anything that they are not vital to. That doesn’t mean you leave them at home, it’s just that you don’t have to mention them when they’re not important. In a lot of ways, you should be treating them as an extension of the main character, something to juxtapose the character against, as opposed to a full-blown character in their own right.
Now, there are some caveats to that, but I would say that if you’re finding that your animal companion needs to be a bigger character in the story, then they are not an animal companion. They are a character in their own right. They just happen to be an animal, and that requires different treatment. An animal companion is intrinsically tied to the main character in a way that can’t be separated.
So I hope this is helpful as you build your animal companions. Let me know down in the comments below, if you had a real-life animal companion, what kind of animal would it be? And what would their name be?
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/d7NpmN3fGEc
Thanks for reading and watching.
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