My werewolf idea has evolved, a lot. Now there aren't even werewolves, just intelligent wolves. The MC is male, for now lets call him Anon(ymous). Anon was stolen as a newborn pup, and from a creepy mixture of alchemy, science, and magic he was turned into a human infant. I won't go into why in case I want to publish this, but he's taken into the nobility for political/storyline reasons and is completely unaware he's not human seventeen years later. He thinks and acts exactly like a human, but when he's with some other people hunting wolves he grows very ill and becomes separated from the rest of the people. He turns back into a wolf over the course of the night as he sleeps, still lost in the forest. What happens next? I know where Anon is, and I know where I want him to go, but I'm not sure how to get him there. Fairly soon he has to encounter some other wolves, but how will that happen? And how much should he freak out after realizing he's become a wolf (again)? Do you have any ideas?
I would suggest having him freak out from the moment he wakes up as a wolf. All his senses would be sharper, he would be walking on four legs instead of two, his clothes wouldn't fit, he would have an extra appendage (a tail), and his scream would be more of a growl or howl because his jaw and voicebox have completely changed. As for how he encounters others, you could have him stumble around the forest in shock until he realizes he is being watched by a pack of wolves that smell the scent of an unfamiliar wolf.
Better still. As a human, he is drawn to wolf-kind. Being human, this means hunting wolves - which he does with great skill. THEN he finds out he's a wolf and is sickened at his own actions. -Frank
For an added twist, he could still retain some sort of human feature as a wolf. It could be that the wolves he encounters in the forest recognize him, and despise him for his actions as a human. The humans, on the other hand, could never take in a wolf. He is deserted by both sides. During the course of the story, he will have to make the decision of which side he would rather be with. The wolves, which he was born as and now is, or the humans, the society he has been a part of for his whole life.
Thank you Ellipse, for a list of excellent ideas. FrankABlissett, Thank you for the suggestion, but I'm wary of having the MC hunt many times before; the setting is a part of the trigger for him to (permanently) become a wolf again. Thank you Holden! I was thinking of something like this, where the wolves won't accept him because he's carrying his human past around, and the humans won't accept him for being a wolf. I'm currently dealing with the language issue; he can't speak English now obviously, but he has no knowledge of the wolf language. There needs to be a way for him to understand what wolves are saying. I'm leaning towards suppressed memories from before he was kidnapped; that might give him at least a basic understanding of the language when mixed with body language. I don't know...
Hmm - how about this. The transformation includes not just the muscle, bones, skin etc, but also the physiology of the brain. So, he can now (better) understand the instinctive body language of wolves. And he can build from here to understand their vocal language. -Frank
I saw a segment on TV, concerning dogs. Blind testing showed that people can indeed understand dog's vocalizations: people familiar with dogs could accurately determine which of 6 events a dog was involved in. Watching them questioned when listening to the recording, while we (the audience) did see the video too, the people described things quite well: "There is a stranger at the gate." "The owner has something he wants." "He's playing." etc. Unless this is a cartoon, they don't say much. Complex speech of abstract ideas is what separates us from the animals. For research, you can certainly track down some documentaries about wolves.
This isn't a real-world setting, I should have specified. In this version of a medieval world wolves are roughly as intelligent as humans, but with a different set of social boundaries and no thumbs. A language is needed, not just tones of bark and growl.
The wolves could be using body language, growls, howls and barks to communicate, but you could write it out as normal conversation and use those things for extra punctuation. Look at a book that has characters using sign language. Their conversations are written out normally, rather than just describing hand movements. A lanaguage doesn't have to be verbal, nor does the fact that it is not mean it's primitive or unintelligent. Well, that's my suggestion.
That's what I was planning, but I need a way for the MC to understand this language, which he was raised without. I'll just keep thinking I guess.
You've obviously never learnt a foreign language! How do you think babies learn to talk? It's a "natural" thing to do, it is a convention but which is allowed thanks to adaptive learning and a human's need of society (philosophical stuff about giving up freedom for protection is a part of this too). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Politics Basically he would naturally learn to communicate, just like I had to when I moved to France at the age of 14. It took me 3 months to be able to have conversations.
I think that even the language of highly intelligent wolves would be built on the simpler language that wolves/dogs use now, so there would probably be a good deal of body language involved. This could help him at the beginning--just the same way a human being can understand the basic body language (smiles, frowns, beckoning etc) of another human whose language he doesn't speak, only more so. Wolves, coyotes, and other members of the dog family are actually some of the most physically expressive animals there are, because they're social, pack animals and top predators at the same time, so they're in constant communication with each other, and about some pretty complex behaviors too, like group hunting. I've read that a really experienced tracker can practically tell what mood a coyote was in from its tracks--its whole body expresses its emotions to that extent. So he could probably get along on body language for awhile while he learned the more complex aspects...
Erm... Yes, I have learned (a large chunk of) a foreign language. I don't really have 4 months to make the character learn a language, so I'll be going with a large amount of body language and a smaller amount of learned language for quite a while.
Why must all the wolf-turned-humans be sickened at their actions after killing other wolves? I would like to see your werewolf story turn out this way: Human is attracted to wolves cause he was a wolf himself, so he hunts wolves. One day, he wakes up to find himself a wolf, goes apesh*t and runs everywhere yelling/howling. Then he changes back into a human, smiles with relief and goes on hunting the pathetic wolves.
