Everything's a Writing Prompt Part 6: Pets
I’m definitely a cat person; there’s no denying it when you own four of them. For the most part, I try not to be one of those annoying pet parents that always finds a reason to show off pictures of the furbabies or work them into conversations.
That said, pets can be a very useful tool for a writer. The animals a character owns—and how they view and treat them—can do a lot to characterize them for the reader. Pets can be characters in their own right, too, or can serve nicely as symbols to reinforce the themes or imagery you’re playing with. They can also be a great way to introduce movement and sensory details like touch, smell, and sound, not to mention emotions—depending on the situation, they can be a catalyst for grief, frustration, and fear, or a source of comic relief from them.
In that spirit, here are three pet-based prompts that can help you play with ways to utilize pets in your writing.
Exercise 1: Same space, different eyes.
The things a person notices looking around a room are likely very different than what a dog, cat, or other critter would pick up on when observing a space. For one thing, there’d probably be a lot less “looking around” and a lot more use of other senses—and they’d likely pick up scents, sound frequencies, or other details people can’t detect.
This prompt will practice inhabiting a pet and perceiving the world the way they do. Here are the steps:
Choose a space you know extremely well, like your home, or workplace.
Pick a pet that lives in this space. It could be a real pet you or a friend own (or used to own) or an invented one. You don’t have to stick to cats and dogs, either—it could be the office fish, another caged critter like a hamster, lizard, or bird, etc.
Do some brief research into how this particular species of pet interacts with and observes its environment. Even if you own that type of pet, you might learn some new, useful things about their senses that can inspire your writing.
Set a timer for 10-15 minutes and freewrite a passage where the pet is describing their environment. What things in the space attract their attention the most? What things might be confusing to them? What would they ignore completely? How would things see, sound, smell, or feel different to them than they do to you?
Exercise 2: Freakout forensics.
One of the annoying things about owning pets: most of them are adept at making a mess, especially when their humans aren’t around to stop it from happening.
That’s the setup for this prompt. Your human narrator comes home to find their pet has gone berzerk. To start, decide what kind of pet is responsible for the mayhem. A free-ranging pet like a cat or dog is probably easiest, but maybe the parrot figured out how to open its cage door, or you forgot to secure the rabbit hutch after feeding them.
Once you’ve picked an animal:
Map out the space (visually, mentally, or in writing, whatever suits your brain). Indicate where the pet started, their path through the house, and what messes they made along the way.
Figure out what prompted the rampage. Maybe another dog walked by outside and got your pooch all excited, or the noise from the neighbors’ new deck construction scared the cat into seeking a hiding space. Or maybe it was something that happened inside the house: a chirping fire alarm, or a mouse that needed chasing.
Write a scene where the human characters try to piece together what took place based on the mess their pet has left behind. Aim to convey what happened to the reader without directly stating what caused the pet to freak out or what specific actions they took along the way.
This exercise can be great practice in using description to imply action, which is helpful for working more energy into descriptive passages, and can also be an excellent way to convey background information to the reader without relying on straight exposition.
Exercise 3: Unexpected visitor.
Sometimes, you choose the animals that come into your life—and, sometimes, they choose you. In this prompt, your character comes home to find a pet (that isn’t theirs) outside their house. Before you start writing, figure out:
Who your character is. What’s their relationship to pets? Do they have one already? Do they want one? Or maybe they’re allergic, or have a phobia, that makes the arrival of an animal more of a complication.
What type of pet it is. What does it look like? Does it have a collar? Does it look well-groomed or messy? Well-fed or malnourished?
Now, set a timer for 10-15 minutes and freewrite the character discovering the animal. What do they do next? Do they bring it inside? Try to find the owner? Do they want to find the owner, or do they hope they get to keep it? What memories or emotions does the pet bring up for them? How is the animal acting—is it affectionate or wary? What does it see as the best case scenario for how things play out—does it want to go back to its old owner, or did it run away for a reason? Explore whichever of those questions feel like they have the most energy for you.
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