Dale Hurst – Author - Dale Hurst is an author, journalist and broadcaster.
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Dale Hurst – Author - Dale Hurst is an author, journalist and broadcaster.
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The Spirit Animal — A Useful Descriptive Device?

11 May 2020 No Comments

We’re all animals when it comes down to it. But is the use of animal comparisons in description and character development useful and effective? Or just lazy and unimaginative?

One of my absolute favourite parties that I went to was animal-themed, which I attended as a flamingo, as the photo above evidences. Since then, I adopted the animal as part of my persona – flamboyant and decidedly elegant when it suits. One thing I have never done in any of my work (so far) is compare a character to a flamingo. A wealth of other animals do feature, however.

Animals are great descriptive devices. Not just for the looks and movements of a character, but also for their thought processes and to an extent, even their overall personalities and the reasons why they interact with other characters a certain way. A lot of what I call “Literary Snobs” deem this as lazy and unimaginative, but I think it works beautifully if used creatively, rather than the same old clichés that you come to learn at school.

A few of my favourite authors use it to varying degrees. Victor Hugo has a lovely, considerably-sized passage in Les Misérables that muses on how everyone has some form of animal in their nature. It comes as he introduces the novel’s primary (misguided) antagonist, Inspector Javert.

Granted the supposition that in every man there is contained a species of the animal kingdom, we may at once place Inspector Javert. The Asturian peasants believe that in every wolf-litter there is a dog-whelp which the mother kills, because otherwise when it grows larger it will devour the rest of her young. Endow this dog with a human face, and you have Javert.

Les Misérables, Part 1, Book Five, Chapter IV

Jean Valjean, the protagonist of the novel, is likened to a wolf, on a number of occasions throughout the story, primarily to symbolise the criminal (and you can read more about that in this article).

The wolf is a pretty easy one to go to – you hear of lone wolves all the time in real life. But what about other mammals? Or birds? Or shellfish? J.K. Rowling memorably compares Severus Snape (my favourite character) to an overgrown bat more than once, while her librarian Irma Pince is likened to “an underfed vulture.” It works superbly, especially when used so creatively. You can immediately picture what these characters are supposed to look like.

Philip Pullman takes the use of animalistic imagery to the next level in the His Dark Materials books, wherein every human (or witch) is partnered with a daemon – an animal familiar that embodies their personality. I expect the flamingo would come into play again for me here if we started assigning daemons to our own friends and family…

Animals are also prevalent in Dickens’ work, which is, as you may know, one of the key inspirations to my own novels. In Little Dorrit, fearsome antagonist Jeremiah Flintwinch is referred to more than once as “crab-like”. More specifically, “…the little keen-eyed crablike old man.”

The main anti-hero for the upcoming The Berylford Scandals: Sin & Secrecy – Abel Stirkwhistle – is partly inspired by Flintwinch. In this novel, we find Abel approaching his sixties and still suffering the disastrous effects of a stroke, including an awkward and jagged way of movement. So, as a partial homage to Dickens and Flintwinch, I decided to really play up the crab comparison. As time goes on, you may see this description evolve, and he becomes less of your beach variety of crab and more of a sea monster.

Abel isn’t the only character to get the animal treatment in some form. When we first get re-introduced to Lady Vyrrington, she is compared to a slightly rheumatic swan, while Mrs Haffisidge retains her mouse-like qualities from the first book.

There is also a degree of “hunter and hunted” about this story, so I have used a lot of predator and prey-based imagery. Mice and cats or hawks, rabbits and foxes, flies and spiders.

What do you think? Are spirit animals a great way to envisage a character? Or is it unimaginitive? What animal would you liken yourself to? Let me know in the comments below. And for more news and content or to get in touch, please follow my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.

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Reading time: 3 min
Written by: Dale Hurst
Journalism Lifestyle

From the Archives — Feature | The Real Risks of Public Sex

7 May 2020 No Comments

Time to revisit the journalism archives and find another favourite feature of mine…

I have been scouring my old articles from my earlier freelance days and found that the online sex and lifestyle magazine, Sauce, has since been afflicted by invasive pop-ups. I can’t actually stay on the site itself for more than three seconds without McAfee telling me to turn back for my own safety. Fortunately the Word document with the finished draft still survives, so I’m immortalising it here for your reading pleasure. An in-depth examination into the risks of having sex in public.

Whether it’s a clumsy fumble on a beach (clichéd), a spontaneous spit-roast in a moonlit park (romantic), or a quickie in the elevator en route to the hotel room (impatient), where and how couples choose to have sex in public can be seen as a matter of taste. True, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but some get a bang out of the danger factor (if you’ll pardon the pun). With others, it’s more living in the moment.

22-year-old Liam Ellery is one of these people. “I most often did it in a car. But if I had to choose anywhere else it would have to be somewhere secluded like the woods. I know that sounds a bit rapey, but I hate the idea of anyone walking in, so club bathrooms, etcetera, would be a no-go. The living-in-the-moment factor used to play a massive part in it, but I wouldn’t say it did anymore.”

Could this be maturity speaking, and the preference of comfort and privacy? “In a way, yes…” Liam answers, “A couple of years ago it was about sleeping with girls and getting the best stories to tell people. I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy the thrill of sleeping around anymore; I’m just more open to relationships and keeping the sexual side to myself. It might also be because I’m bored of the clubbing environment now.”

But aside from the chance of getting caught in the act, and getting sand and worse in inconvenient places, there are notorious risks – both health and society-wise – in bringing the bedroom outside. Next to hotels, which can hardly be considered ‘public’, an online survey called The Icebreak Report found that the majority of their answerers preferred to have public sex “in nature”, i.e. on the beach or at the park.

It may all be fun and games for the couples, but those who are less private with their privates can cause trouble for the rest of us. For example, last summer, Amany Bedoui, a hotel receptionist originally from Italy, was subjected to a nude, lewd, rude awakening when she heard sexual sounds from outside her flat. After going to her window, she discovered three men midway through sex in the communal courtyard of her apartment block.

“One of them completely naked,” she explained, “I could not believe my eyes. The naked guy, who also seemed to be the youngest, was giving and receiving at the same time. Then they moved, with difficulty as they were very drunk, up against a wall. It’s a shame I didn’t think about throwing cold water over them. I slammed my window shut instead, and then they ran away.”

Having only been living at her flat for seven months, Amany said she had not experienced an incident that she described as “disrespectful behaviour” like this before, but that her neighbour, who had been living there for nine years, had.

“He told me yesterday that he experienced this sort of things on two or three occasions”, she explained, “One of them was a couple having sex next to his door.”

In order to protect people like Amany who may be offended by this kind of thing, in the UK, having sex in public is actually a criminal offence. From the obvious public indecency and indecent exposure charges that may apply, there could be a two-year jail sentence for being caught in a sexual act in public. You could also face other punishments, like a recent case where a couple caught having oral sex in a shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush were banned from London for two months. Yeah, not just Shepherd’s Bush – the whole city of London!

And while we don’t encourage the behaviour, for any criminal conviction to be brought forward, the couples in question have to be witnessed or able to be witnessed.

For those who find the danger factor of public sex a real turn-on, then I give you two choices: wait until it’s dark, or find a really good hiding place. You may be able to bring up some amazing stories during the latest game of, “I Have Never”, but against all these risks you have to ask – is it really worth it?

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Reading time: 4 min
Written by: Dale Hurst
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About me

Dale Hurst is an author specialising in historical fiction, mystery, crime and black comedy.

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