Genre : Animal Books
Meet your Animal Books Writing Coach : Dan Bar-El
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I am a children’s author, educator and storyteller. Among my sixteen published books so far are chapter books, picture books, and graphic novels. For the past thirty years, I have been working with children ages 3 to 17. I’ve been a school age childcare provider, a preschool teacher, a creative drama and a creative writing teacher. I’ve developed a multitude of creative activities for children including movie making and a radio show involving school-age childcare centres across Vancouver. As a preschool teacher, I developed Stories in Our Own Words, a program for 3 & 4 year olds based on the ideas of famed educator and author, Vivian Gussin Paley that fostered the development of the children’s own stories by recording them and then acting them as a group. |
In the past, I trained and worked professionally as an actor, have written for theatre, as well as written and performed sketch comedy across Canada. These days, when not writing or teaching writing to children through the organization CWC, I travel around the country visiting many schools and libraries.
Hiking and travelling are two of my passions. Baking and then eating the results of what I’ve baked are some of my others. I live in Vancouver, BC with my partner, artist and goldsmith, Dominique Bréchault.
Hiking and travelling are two of my passions. Baking and then eating the results of what I’ve baked are some of my others. I live in Vancouver, BC with my partner, artist and goldsmith, Dominique Bréchault.
(Some of) Dan Bar-el's Books
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Q&A with Dan Bar-el
Q: What is your favorite part about writing books with animal characters?
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A: What I love about using animal characters is the freedom it allows me. There is a lot of sensitivity these days to whose stories we are allowed or not allowed to tell. As a fellow human in this world, I understand where that concern comes from, but as a writer, nothing can be more debilitating than restrictions placed on your imagination. I writer wants to tell any story that grabs them.
Animal characters allow me to explore a range of human experiences that I believe are universal, while at the same time, informs me of what we humans share with our fellow creatures on earth. For example, in my book, Audrey (cow), the protagonist escapes from a farm to avoid going to the slaughterhouse and hides in a forest. This actually happened and was the inspiration for the story, and I’ve since learned that there are a lot of cows that have managed to escape over the years. But what caught my attention is how similar her journey is to the many people around the world who are forced to leave what they consider home in order to save their lives, and make a new home in a very different environment. |
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Q: How is writing animal characters different from human characters?
In my case, I suppose not much, because as I mentioned earlier, I use animal characters in order to tell human stories. But the degree to which my animal characters are human-like depends on the story. In The Very, Very Far North series, the animals are very human. They furnish their homes with tables and mattresses; they bake all kinds of nibbles and use scientific instruments. In my middle-grade novel, Audrey (cow), the animals may speak to each other like humans, but their physical abilities and their lives are for the most part truthful depictions of actual animals in what they can do. In my graphic novel, Dog Night at the Story Zoo, animals behave like animals in front of humans, but when we’re not looking, they have lives like ours.
Q: What kind of research goes into writing books that are focused on animals?
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A: When I was creating the characters in The Very, Very Far North, I wanted each one to be a mix of human personalities and actual elements of the animals I chose. So I researched each of the species and looked for ways to use true facts in the
stories. For example, puffins really do not get along with great black-backed gulls, and if you’ve ever seen them walk, standing up straight, chest out and body stiff, it kind of looks like marching. I looked at each animal’s behaviour, their habitat and even how they appear to my human eyes. To delve a bit deeper in this process, let’s look Handsome. A musk ox has a strange-shaped horn on its head that remind me of a bad toupee or comb-over. The obvious choice for a character that is vain and obsessed with his good looks might be a majestic eagle, for example, but it creates more story possibilities to match those personality traits with an animal perhaps not so “handsome”, like a musk ox. That horn also reminded me of a photo of a famous author and playwright named Oscar Wilde, known for saying very witty things. That led me to the idea that Handsome might have “a very expansive vocabulary”. |
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Q: Do you have any tips or advice for young writers who specifically want to write animal stories?
A: Establish what the rules are of the world you’re creating for these animal characters. Is this a realistic story in which the animals never talk like humans and behave only as actual animals do? If so, the story should reflect their actual experiences (a challenging migration, for example).
Is this a mix of realistic and fantasy, in which for the most part, the animals behave like animals (ie. Don’t stand on back legs), but they do speak like humans (but maybe not speak to humans) and have the whole range of human emotions and desires? Is this mainly a fantasy story in which not only to the animals talk and behave like humans, but do human things (ie. sit at tables, go fishing with fishing rods, toboggan down mountains)?
Once you figure that out, be consistent in your story.
Also, remember that readers may be familiar with the animals you’ve chosen to turn into characters. They may come to your story with expectations of how that animal might behave (cougar as predator, a timid mouse) which you might wish to respect if it’s a realistic story. But if it’s mainly fantasy, you could do the exact opposite (a mouse as predator, a shy vegetarian cougar).
Is this a mix of realistic and fantasy, in which for the most part, the animals behave like animals (ie. Don’t stand on back legs), but they do speak like humans (but maybe not speak to humans) and have the whole range of human emotions and desires? Is this mainly a fantasy story in which not only to the animals talk and behave like humans, but do human things (ie. sit at tables, go fishing with fishing rods, toboggan down mountains)?
Once you figure that out, be consistent in your story.
Also, remember that readers may be familiar with the animals you’ve chosen to turn into characters. They may come to your story with expectations of how that animal might behave (cougar as predator, a timid mouse) which you might wish to respect if it’s a realistic story. But if it’s mainly fantasy, you could do the exact opposite (a mouse as predator, a shy vegetarian cougar).
Q: In addition, do you have any tips or advice for young writers who are just starting out on their writing journey?
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A: One of the hardest things for a writer to do is just write. Many of us have a voice
in our head that is always critical, telling us, “This isn’t good, that makes no sense, blah, blah, blah”. That voice is still very useful, but not when you first start writing your story. So just write. Don’t stop to fix it up. Ideally, avoid the computer and just write on paper. Write in pen so you can’t erase. If you make a mistake, scratch it out and keep writing. In this way, the critical voice can’t get your attention and make you freeze up. |
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Now the hard part. Accept that whatever you did write is not the best it could be. Don’t worry, it’s not supposed to be great. It just came out of your imagination, it’s messy, it’s rough. Time to bring in that critical voice. Read what you wrote.
Read it out loud so you can actually hear the words, and catch silly mistakes. Rewrite what can be better, stronger. Maybe an adjective here? Maybe a verb with more punch to it?
Watch how your story gets better and better. This is the craft of writing. You are building sentences with words. Use words like tools. Make them do what you need them to do in order to tell your story.
Have fun.
Read it out loud so you can actually hear the words, and catch silly mistakes. Rewrite what can be better, stronger. Maybe an adjective here? Maybe a verb with more punch to it?
Watch how your story gets better and better. This is the craft of writing. You are building sentences with words. Use words like tools. Make them do what you need them to do in order to tell your story.
Have fun.
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