# A Dragon's Point of View?



## Fallenfeather (Sep 10, 2009)

I've been searching for this alot, since I'm hoping to write a story from a dragons point of view. However there seems to be a very very small resource pool out there that actually into any detail on what its like through a dragons eye.

How would it describe humans?
How would it see itself?
How would it describe it's action?
How would it describe its prey?

All of these questions are bouncing around in my head, and the internet so far is not helping one bit, so a ask writer's of FA, Is there any tips you can offer me? or link me to something that might be of use to get a better insight on what its like through a dragon's eyes?

Thank you^^


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 10, 2009)

The lack of such information means that you should be using your imagination as much as possible.  See, dealing with fantasy creatures is nice, because you can literally do whatever you want (well... within reason, anyway) and no one can question it.  Research is not necessary (although it would help to spark ideas and make it more believable).
So my advice is, go wild, and don't constrain yourself to popular ideas.  Maybe your dragon can see 5% more colors than humans can, giving him a more vibrant visual world.  Maybe he can see 5% fewer, making his world duller and dimmer.  Maybe his tongue can sense subtle changes in temperature.  Maybe, if the wind's blowing right, he can smell a three-day-old campfire from four miles away.  I don't know: it's your blank canvas to work with.
Same goes for personality.  What's dragon culture like?  How do they view other species?  Do they care about things like money, power, imagination, beauty, etc.?  How emotional are they, or do they have different emotions than humans?
Just gotta' ask yourself a lot of questions and then make up answers for them.  Play around.  You'll find that it's a lot more fun than trying to stick to some kind of canonical dragon mythology that may or may not exist.


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## Fallenfeather (Sep 10, 2009)

Awesome great advice thank you ^^
I think tomorrow at school I'm gonna right down a bunch of those question, and answer them to see if i can get ideas flowing that way, thank you^^


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## ScottyDM (Sep 11, 2009)

The site has been up, and it's been down. Several times. The site owner has reuploaded the stories so they are under her name and not those of the original author.

However, if you want to see imagination cast into words, get inside the head of a top predator, then read SimbaW's story _Conversation with a Killer_.


You need to do the same when you create your dragons.

Who are your dragons? What kind of world do they live in? What is their place in that world in relationship to humans (and other intelligent species, if they exist)? Once you've figured out the basics then you can begin to imagine the details.



S-


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## Ieatcrackersandjumpcliffs (Sep 16, 2009)

An otter would find humans illogical because they like chopping down trees for tables, when they have perfectly good tummies to eat on, but I don't know how a dragon would see it.


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## CryoScales (Sep 16, 2009)

Non human characters are always the most difficult to portray and distinguish. It is very important to distance your own voice from the character as much as possible.

Dragons in most cliche'd media often portray them as wise vindicaor's who are among the oldest living species on the planet. Try to distance yourself from repetitive dragon cliche's and make the story far more interesting to the reader.


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## Atrak (Sep 19, 2009)

Ieatcrackersandjumpcliffs said:


> An otter would find humans illogical because they like chopping down trees for tables, when they have perfectly good tummies to eat on, but I don't know how a dragon would see it.


 
Heh heh. I see you like South Park. Anyway, FallenFeather, I'm not going to give you specific details, but I will give a few tips that might make it easier and better  .
First, work from the ground up. What is at the base of all societies? The people. What is at the base of all people? Their instincts. Start with the base instincts of one dragon, your protaginist, and build around that.
Second, as was previously mentioned, the whole 'stupid lizard that eats people' is too cliched for a very interesting story. If you want to really make the reader get into your story, add some kind of twist to the standard stereotype, or, even better, just forget the common dragon description, and make your own classification of dragons.
I mean, I see 'the blood-thirsty dragon opened his maw and poured a deadly stream of fire into the knight, roasting him alive' and think, *yawn*. However, if I saw this: 'The dragon watched the knight approach him with deadly intent in the set of his lance, and sagged slightly with sadness. To think that he was the last of the dragons, and it was all because of a simple misunderstanding...' I think, must...read...MORE!!
That story would probably be a framed story, with it mostly consisting of a flashback to the beginning, when humans and dragons first met, and what went wrong.
Hope that helps  .


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## ScottyDM (Sep 20, 2009)

atrakaj said:


> I mean, I see 'the blood-thirsty dragon opened his maw and poured a deadly stream of fire into the knight, roasting him alive' and think, *yawn*. However, if I saw this: 'The dragon watched the knight approach him with deadly intent in the set of his lance, and sagged slightly with sadness. To think that he was the last of the dragons, and it was all because of a simple misunderstanding...' I think, must...read...MORE!!


*Hee hee!* But if you've seen it you'll know there's another twist.

Or you could have a little dragon, say one that's smaller than a shadow wolf.


Here's a simpler exercise. What do elephants think of us?

Sure they can bond with their mahout, but it probably gets tiring to have to watch where they step every time a human is around. But then humans keep pets who are small. I wonder if elephants think of their mahout as a pet?


Besides the exercise of size (elephants and the typical dragon are bigger than humans), there is the diet. Elephants don't eat meat, but most dragons do (Myhrad being an exception). A really good avenue to explore is: Would dragons eat each other? Or more generally: Which predators each each other, which don't, and why? It's complicated, but a great deal of the answer lies in the social structure of that particular predator species.

Generally speaking highly social predators live in groups and so have a mechanism for dealing with hunger, and frustration with their fellows. Wolves and African lions for example. On the other hand house cats can and do devour their own kind when left on their own (say in a barnyard setting). And I have some friends who love cats, but they say house cats would eat us if they were bigger. There's no loyalty with a house cat.

But sometimes there may be more than social behaviors to keep top predators from devouring each other. Many years ago I heard a fascinating story about the Bengal tigers that live in the Sundarbans: A mangrove forest on the coast of India, and a national park. There's an unnaturally high incidence of tigers attacking and eating park visitors and some savvy people will wear a mask on the back of their head. The theory is that tigers seldom attack when their victim is watching them. They prefer the stealthy approach. And so the savvy park visitor will wear a mask on the back of his head to fool the tiger into thinking he has two pairs of eyes and can see in all directions. Sometimes these savvy folk will hear a tiger roaring close by, they say in frustration.

Years later I saw a photo of some tigers lounging together in a zoo and one was turned away from the camera. I was startled by what I saw and immediately recalled that story. I finally found a photo of a tiger facing away from the camera. Take a look. What do you see?

I doubt it's foolproof, but it could reduce cannibalism amongst tigers.


*To bring this back around to dragons:*

How big? What do they eat? Solitary or social? Intelligence probably doesn't matter a lot as some claim humans are intelligent, and yet that doesn't protect other species from us. Even when our only motivation is boredom, if the victim is "only a dumb animal" then it's okay. Right? Do your dragons feel the same way about humans?

Good luck with your project.

Scotty


PS: Here's a weird bit of trivia about a highly social animal (and has nothing to do with dragons). They say that prairie dogs make excellent pets. The need to be a member of a group is so strong that it takes a wild-caught adult prairie dog only about three days to bond with it's new human family.


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## Carenath (Sep 20, 2009)

OP: Best advice I can think of, if you wish to extrapolate how a dragon sees the world... talk to otherkin dragons.. they are the closest thing to an authority on dragons as there ever will be, particularly since myths and legends about them tend to be biased, corrupted or twisted.

Inb4 FYIAD/Otherkin are batshit crazy.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 20, 2009)

I'll second that, but only in that Otherkin are people who have probably already given this kind of thing a lot of thought, and so they must have some good ideas you can borrow.  Just... I suppose maybe you'd want to ask permission to use their ideas as part of a fictional work.
Also... house cats have been known to eat each other?  This is news to me.


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## ArtemisPanthar (Sep 20, 2009)

Everyone has great advice here  The only thing I can add that hasn't already been said is that I suggest working outward in - meaning, if you're developing a story with significant focus on dragon culture and perception, work on the broadest terms first. First define general mentality - on average, are dragons highly sapient or highly feral? Are their instincts strong and pronounced or are they sublimated? How to dragons in general act around other dragons? How to dragons act around prey? How do they act around other animals that aren't prey (or do they eat everything)? Are they very religious or mystic or are they cold and clinical?

Then you work inward, designing (perhaps) different dragon societies or even different "races". How do these races interact? Do they have the same values? What separates them from other dragon races? Or, perhaps, dragons are a dying race, so what happened to the other dragons?

Then further inward, what's a specific dragon society like? Are they large social groups or more loose networks of solitary dragons? What are dragons families like? Do they dote on their young or kick them out of the nest as early as possible?

And then you design specific dragons - an individual dragon's personality is probably not like another's, so its difficult to extrapolate all about dragon culture from one dragon. Some dragons may be stupid or very feral while others are sapient and have high moral standards. What caused each individual dragon to be that way? That's the kind of thing natural story and character development will reveal, but it comes together much better when the society is more clearly drawn out for you, the author. At least, that's how I see it.

You're benefited by the fact that dragons are fictional creatures with only speculated information. They're creatures born of imagination so its entirely up to you what you want them to be. Let them run wild with that freedom and do what you feel is best.


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