Werewolves are such intriguing creatures within the paranormal realm. They often get overshadowed by vampires, and people somehow find vampires more intriguing, and they usually are either with the vampires in some blood feud. I will talk to you about werewolves’ character writing, their place in the media, and why I decided to write about them. I can think of very famous portrayals of werewolves, such as Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter series.
We have Jacob, the werewolf character from Twilight. It’s interesting because all of these different representations have very different feelings. Professor Lupin goes full-on, Primal. He completely loses his humanity whenever he turns into his werewolf form and becomes a danger to everyone around him.
You’ll find this thread in almost all movies and books surrounding werewolves that they are portrayed as incredibly aggressive, dangerous creatures. Most of the time, it’s got a horror feel because of the idea in the old mythology of werewolves biting people and attacking people to spread their disease.
How to write a Werewolf character?
The term werewolf is old English for man-wolf, as in a man with all the powers of the wolf. A werewolf is a big old dog person who, on all levels, including physical, is a wolf at every full moon. They bring out their wolf side and go on a rampage as monstrous to induct other people into the fandom by giving them a love bite. Bite applies a curse to whoever receives it, forcing them to undergo the same transformation every full moon.
Technically, the curse makes those afflicted with it more worried about mauling people to death than spreading the curse around. Before describing a werewolf character, you must know about these facts, and you should not manipulate them. I will represent my 5 unique tips for writing a werewolf character perfectly. Let’s go!
1. Show your character transformation
How do you create a werewolf character? My first step is to consider how I first became a werewolf. When you begin developing your werewolf character in your book, think about how your character first became a werewolf. Were they born that way?
In many cases, a character can be turned into a werewolf by being bitten by a werewolf. Maybe they find some strange artifact or a mysterious object that turns them into a werewolf. So think about how the characters in your book could potentially become werewolves. Or is it something that is only limited to a character being born as a werewolf?
2. Keep your character secret
Underworld is well known for being an incredibly dark, gritty horror, an adventure fantasy film about the vampires versus werewolves blood feud that’s been going on for centuries. Both werewolves and vampires are hidden from the rest of society. They’re trying to keep their existence as much of a secret as possible. This blood feud that happens between them happens in the shadows. In portrayals, you’ll see that these creatures are always in the shadows.
They’re trying to keep their existence, to some degree, a secret from the rest of society. You also saw that in Twilight, the same thing where it’s a blood feud thing happening, but they’re hidden from the rest of society. It’s an idea that humans are generally removed from this supernatural world of werewolves, vampires, and who knows what else. Underworld did an excellent job of portraying the transition from human to werewolf.
3. Make a co-relation of human-wolf character
The human and the wolf characters are exciting character types to write about. When you’re writing a werewolf character, you are not only focusing on the small side but also the human side and the wolf side merged. So you must focus on writing both parts of this exciting character type in the writing process.
Consider which aspects of their personality and most prominent when they are in their human form and think about what aspects of their personality come to the surface when they become a werewolf. Also, think about how these two sides of them maybe clash or the different sides that are prominent when they are either a human or a werewolf.
4. Consider internal and external conflicts as a werewolf
Being a werewolf character would be very difficult, especially if they were originally a human, and then they would turn into a werewolf. There would be many difficulties that this character type would have to experience and go through. One of the major things you must focus on when writing them is their internal and external conflicts, the internal conflicts of what happens inside the character’s mind. So it might be how they feel about themselves, the world, and the difficulties they experience inside their minds.
In the example of a werewolf character, an internal conflict is that they feel everyone is constantly judging them for their looks or difficulties when they turn into a werewolf.
- Do they feel an internal conflict because they have to hide certain aspects of their personality as a werewolf?
They want to do certain things, but they have to try and hide that within themselves so they don’t get judged and they don’t get noticed as a werewolf. External conflicts are conflicts that happen outside of a character. So it could be arguments, bad situations, or scary moments that your character has to face physically.
For example, an external conflict as a werewolf character might be that they want to follow their wolf instincts, and when they do, they might destroy certain places around them. So, think about with your werewolf character what internal and external conflicts they may face and how they affect them in your book’s world.
5. Do research
When we think about werewolves, we think about their portrayal in big box office movies like Underworld or Twilight. There’s a vast spectrum of how werewolves have been portrayed within the media, and they haven’t been stretched far enough. The original mythology for werewolves or lycanthrope creatures comes from Indo-European mythology. There’s some reference to them in Nordic mythology, but the earliest mention comes from around 60 A.D. that far back surprised me when I was researching them.
In your earliest mythology, men can turn into wolves on a full moon and pass on the disease through their bite. They’re very primal and aggressive creatures and always paired with a vampire. These two creatures have become synonymous with each other to some degree, not that they’re the same thing, but they often go hand in hand in much media representation.
- Lycanthropy: Some folks believe themselves to be werewolves but exhibit no physical traits.
- Hexen wolves: Their transformation is controlled and triggered by a talisman in one’s possession.
- Werewolf (resulting from a curse): Afflicted is cursed by some practitioner of dark magic. They have no control over the transformation and no memory of it either.
- Werewolf (biological strain and mystical in origin): Afflicted is typically bitten and acquires the ability to transform into a wolf while retaining one’s sense of self.
- Wolfwere: A wolf that can take on human form.
Please let me know in the comments what media, books, or film you’ve been exposed to that include werewolves and how you felt about it. What are your favorite portrayals? I will keep you posted on my book and the progress.
Learn more from books:
5 Paranormal Books Like The Vampire Diaries
5 Vampire Romance Books Like Crave
More writing tips:
10 Tips To Write A Ghost Character
7 Tips To Write A Vampire Character
10 Methods To Write A Monster Story
5 Tips To Write A Dark Character
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