If you have horses in your books or stories, I’m sure you’ve encountered the topic I’m discussing here: writing realistic horses. It can be hard to accurately represent horses in writing, especially if your horses have some fantasy elements about them. So, here are a few ways to make sure your horses are realistically written!
Realistic Behavior
Make sure your equine characters are acting the way they would in real life. This translates over to fantasy horses as well – even if they have wings or elemental powers, they will still act like horses.
For instance, horses aren’t overly vocal (most of the time). They do greet each other – and sometimes their favorite people – and can neigh if lonely or distressed. They can also be vocal when in pain, but aren’t always. In addition, horses often snort at things that they’re a little scared of, but also snort when they’re relaxing. So, basically, idle, relaxed horses that have no one new to greet don’t make much noise. Horse movies often show horses neighing and making other sounds all the time, but in real life, most horses don’t! Some are much more vocal than others, but as a species, they aren’t neighing, whinnying, and nickering all the time.
Horses need to be warmed up. Just like people, if you skip warming up and go straight into sprinting (or in the case of horses, galloping), you might encounter some problems. Horses need to be warmed up by going through the slower gaits first (walking, trotting, and loping), and should be cooled out at the end by doing the same thing, or at least walking them out for a while. If needed, horses could jump straight into galloping, but it’s best to warm them up and cool them out properly. So, save your characters jumping on their horses and immediately galloping away for when it’s necessary.
Last, horses do need to eat and sleep. They don’t sleep much, and they can do a lot of it standing up, but they do need to lay down and sleep some. Otherwise, they can get sleep deprived. Horses are also grazers, so they should graze at least every few hours (if left alone, though, they choose to eat just about all the time). They can go longer without eating, but it’s not good for them to do that consistently. Horses also need a lot of water per day. Essentially, when your characters find water, have their horses drink, too!
Realistic Riding
Your characters (and you) don’t need to have a super advanced grasp on riding, but there are some things that are important to know. First, snapping the reins doesn’t make horses go faster – for most horses, it would do basically nothing. Instead, have your characters give vocal cues (like clucking) and nudge or kick the horses’ sides with their heels to speed up. Most real-life horses are trained to stop at the word “whoa”, so you may have your characters say that when they want their horses to stop, and they can also pull on the reins. Those two things are enough for your characters to get by, and riding more realistically just adds another layer of depth to your characters! If you wanted your characters to be more advanced riders, you could have the horses respond to shifts in weight, or be steered using only the character’s legs.
Ultimately, these are just a couple pointers, so I hope they’re helpful! I also contributed to a panel discussion on Equine on the Mind a while back that has a lot of great perspectives on writing realistic horses (the link is on the guest posts page), so feel free to check that out! There are a lot of realistically-written horses out there, including fantasy horses, so it’s always good to take tips from those as well. I’m always learning new ways to make the horses in my writing feel more realistic!