Writing a book from a non-human point of view can be tough. You need to make it both different enough to be non-human, but also human enough to be engaging for the reader.
To see one book that does an excellent job of this difficult task, let’s take at the gorilla from: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.
During the last stream, we took a look at the opening few chapters to The One and Only Ivan and examined it sentence by sentence.
What I really like about this opening is that is gives the reader the who/what/when/where in such an engaging way. The voice of Ivan, a gorilla, is so strong and unique. He’s succinct with his words, biting with his tone, and profound with his commentary. Plus he makes lots of comparisons/observations that we as humans wouldn’t typically make.
And, perhaps even more importantly, the author manages to do all of this without anything “happening.” There’s no explosions, chases, fights or anything, just a gorilla making observations about the world. It just shows how important it is to set the scene/tone vividly as the beginning of the story. If you can do that well, then the plot is almost irrelevant, the reader will go along for any ride you want.
Here’s a sample of the annotating that we did.
Ivan hooks your right off the bat with his strong voice.
There’s a ton of great stuff going on in this first chapter, more than I can get into in a short post. If you’re interested in leveling up your own writing, then be sure to watch the full video below.
After that the chat voted that we write this prompt: Michelangelo wasn’t gifted in the art of sculpting, he was simply friends with Medusa.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Amazon