Creating Stories That Elevate Animal Rights

Animals in Fiction, Pt. 2

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

—Peter Drucker

Immersion

When I consume fiction, I have to set aside a part of myself—the (overly sensitive) vegan part—so I can still enjoy the stories and empathize with the characters. Admittedly, it’s hard to do. I can’t swoon when the lovers in a romcom sit down to a candlelit steak dinner because all I can think is, Barf! How can you find this romantic, you disgusting cretins?!

But anyway…

I love fiction because it’s a means of escapism. While I have grown to appreciate nonfiction, it’s not the same as delving into a made-up world where I can forget about the horrors of reality for a little while (or a long, long while). But when I’m immersed in a fictive reality and something like the aforementioned steak dinner comes up, it brings me right out of the experience. By crafting vegan fiction, we can create fiction that is inclusive of not only vegans and animal advocates but the animals themselves.

What is vegan fiction?

I consider vegan fiction to be any type of story that is anti-speciesist. While stories like this would most often be created by vegans, as we write from an anti-speciesist framework, that isn’t always necessary. As long as the stories don’t include or promote the use of animals without plot-related reasons, anyone can write vegan fiction.

Notice that this type of story is not about substance, plot, or genre. It’s not necessarily about animals or vegans. It’s about how it’s produced.

For instance, vegan fiction doesn’t include anti-animal language (such as “he’s a pig”). It doesn’t include violence toward animals. It doesn’t include characters consuming animal products or services in any way.

Of course, these all come with the major caveat of plot-necessitated speciesism. Some of the stories I write include violence to animals because it’s an allegory for the real-world abuses animals face. That’s where the foundation of anti-speciesism comes in, because any abuses animals face will come around to serve the overall story. Rather than animals simply being used as puppets in a speciesist plot, violence toward them is treated with just as much care as violence toward humans.

Additionally, in vegan fiction, animal characters aren’t necessarily precious little flowers; they have a right to joy and suffering as much as the human characters. Animals in fiction often fall into the trap of being one-dimensional avatars. They exist solely to perform specific actions before being relegated to the background. Vegan fiction recognizes animals as individuals, characters with their own likes, dislikes, wants, and needs.

Accidentally vegan

There are occasional stories that are exclusively anthropocentric and feature no animals or animal referents in any capacity. These are like the Oreos of fiction; while they don’t actively harm animals, they don’t do any good either. The purpose of intentionally vegan fiction is the normalization of anti-speciesism and the creation of a safe fictional environment for animals to inhabit.

Disrupting the norms

Because most people aren’t vegan or anti-speciesist, most stories aren’t either. Therefore, animal rights is rarely woven into the fiction we consume, perpetuating speciesism as the dominant, “normal” belief system. Whether we know it or not, the stories we consume greatly influence us, and they’re currently influencing us to maintain the speciesist status quo.

Vegan fiction gives us the opportunity to change this dynamic. Incorporating animal rights into the foundations of the fiction we consume will normalize the idea, thus promoting positive change in its audience.

Core elements

The essence of every story—fiction or nonfiction—boils down to two elements: character and conflict. The overarching conflict of every (good) story ties into the character’s inner emotional struggles, forcing them to confront their own faults and come out the other side, for better or worse.

Let’s first look at the characters.

Characters

I used to wring my hands over the idea of writing non-vegan characters, because, surely, it would be undesirable to readers if every character were vegan. But then I had an epiphany: I don’t have to give a reason for my characters to be vegan. They just are.

Non-vegan writers don’t explain why all their characters aren’t vegan, so I can do the same. That’s when I made the decision that all my characters, at least on the page, would be vegan (unless—repeat after me—there are plot-related reasons for them not to be). The food they eat will be all plant-based; they won’t wear leather jackets or ride horses; they will go to sanctuaries instead of zoos; and so on.

Characters, particularly protagonists, shouldn’t be screaming in every scene about animal rights; they can quietly move through the plot as anti-speciesists. Secondary characters and subplots, however, are fertile ground for planting vegan seeds, as the audience is not viewing the story from their perspective.

The writer as a character

When I say that my characters are vegan, I don’t mean that they all literally identify as vegans. But when they exist on the page, they embody veganism, because that’s how I choose to write them. As the author, I refer to animals as he/she/they rather than it, while the protagonist may not actually be thinking that. While they eat plant-based on the page, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are exclusively plant-based.

As the writer, I’m communicating—perhaps subconsciously—an anti-speciesist message without overtly saying anything. In these subtle ways, I hope readers will begin to internalize the anti-speciesist mindset from which I write.

Conflict

Because vegan fiction isn’t strictly concerned with plot, the conflict in an anti-speciesist story can be about virtually anything. However, conflict is not limited to only the main plotline carrying the protagonist through the story. On every level, from individual beats within a scene to the overall universal story, the protagonist is facing conflict. It can be as simple as where the protagonist sits in the cafeteria (and what they do/don’t eat once they find a spot).

The way the protagonist faces these myriad conflicts tells the audience about their character and shows how much progress they make between the beginning and the end of their story.

Conclusion

Stories define our culture; they shape society. By incorporating anti-speciesism into stories’ characters and conflicts, the audience can passively explore anti-speciesism in the safety of their own imagination. It’s my hope that this will help reshape the dominant perception of animals as objects, commodities, and usable others into one that regards them as individuals worthy of autonomy.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan