What makes a werewolf an interesting werewolf

[Chris]

I apologize if this isn't the best place for this topic, but I couldn't think of the best place it fit and it does tie into what a werewolf would be. So..

This one's aimed at the writers/storytellers out there, though input from others is welcome.

How do you make a werewolf character interesting, insofar as keeping their lycanthropy as an important detail of the character?

To expound a bit on what I mean.. in the TV series Being Human, George is a werewolf. Every full moon he wolfs out and becomes a dangerous predator, etc. I've come to realize though, that George's lycanthropy is often an unimportant detail. There's a couple episodes where it's an important point (and this season is looking to have it play a bigger role), but for most episodes so far, all that's presented is his need to hide for one night out of about 28. He doesn't come across as particularly dangerous, either. Full moon comes, he hides, gets furry, fade to black, then come to the next day. He could just as well be a werezombie, or have a really bad case of PMS, and his story would largely play the same.

There's also the movie Dog Soldiers, where the werewolves are simply an aggressor next to the soldiers trying to survive an onslaught. It wouldn't take much work to turn the werewolves into something else and still have the same story (in fact, that's what the directory wanted to do.. make the sequel about vampires, and bring in other monsters).

Now, I'm not criticizing them.. Being Human hasn't been on all that long so there's only so much they could've done with it to this point, and it's been said that Dog Soldiers was not a werewolf movie, but a "war movie" that featured werewolves. I'm just using to illustrate how you can have awesome werewolves or werewolf characters, but still have lycanthropy be hollow.

So my question is.. how can you have an interesting werewolf character, without the character being repetitive and without diluting their lycanthropy to be almost meaningless? What kind of werewolf would work best for a continual story, and how could other types of werewolves remain interesting for longer stories?

[Berserker]

For the werewolf aspect of a character to be interesting, the story needs to be about the fact that he's a werewolf. That only seems logical. If the focus is on something else, then obviously that fact will be glossed over. Same thing with vampires. Actually, every good story about the supernatural should follow this rule.

[Chris]

For the werewolf aspect of a character to be interesting, the story needs to be about the fact that he's a werewolf. That only seems logical. If the focus is on something else, then obviously that fact will be glossed over. Same thing with vampires. Actually, every good story about the supernatural should follow this rule.

Right, but what can you make a story about that would be interesting to tell and still be about the character's lycanthropy? That's pretty much what I'm probing for.. what would work for which types of werewolves. Hoping to spark a discussion, or at least some musings, and get some ideas flowing.

For instance, the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind allowed you to not only become a werewolf, but you could play through its main quest on the side of werewolves against the inhabitants of the island. It essentially put you in the part of being a hound of Hircine, who is the daedra prince of the hunt, to hunt and kill others. As a werewolf, you were forced to change at night and had to kill NPCs to keep yourself alive. You were forced to do Hircine's bidding, defending or attacking key targets, until you would eventually hunt against others he had deemed worthy for their huntsmanship, and then against one of Hircine's own aspects to overcome him. You also had the option of curing yourself, which you don't have to take (you could continue on, even doing Morrowind's main quest and the Tribunal expansion as a werewolf). It added to your character's story, given the game world's lore and history, that you could play up. It was interesting, and it wasn't werewolves for the sake of werewolves.. if you took out the werewolves, you'd need to change a good portion of the expansion's story (or redo it completely).

Granted, storytelling in games isn't the same as in books or movies, but the basic idea is there.

[Terastas]

That's actually what I liked about Being Human. It isn't about a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf; it's about three people who just so happen to be a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf. Being Human relies largely on the classic templates, but the story is driven by A) how those three characters cope with their conditions, and B) how those conditions are relative to the greater picture.

Mitchell, for example, makes for a pretty sucky vampire too, but it's that world of vampire politics he's effectively been dragged into that makes for a compelling storyline.

The problem, both with werewolves and their counterparts, is that a lot of people write about them thinking that the fascinating nature of the monster will compensate for the total lack of plot. You can embellish the nature of the monster all you want, but it won't matter; once the audience figures out how you are defining the monster and accepts it as being true within your fictional universe, any fascination they may have had with the monster drops to zero and they're going to get antsy while they wait for you to introduce them to the plot.

The only way (that I can think of) to keep the werewolf concept fresh is to withhold information, not just from your audience, but from the werewolves themselves as well. The werewolves and vampires in Inhuman (I discovered there was already a book about vampires called Night Life so I renamed it again) don't have much of an understanding into the nature of lycanthropy and/or vampirisim and know nothing of their origins because all of the original werewolves and vampires were killed and the records of their existence destroyed. They ask themselves the questions we at the Pack have asked all the time, but for a lot of them, the best they can do is speculate for an answer.

The alternative way to keep the monsters fresh would be to keep changing the rules, but that will piss off your audience soon enough. Stephanie Meyer did this continually in her Twilight books by introducing more and more characters with unique (and inexplicable) vampire powers, which didn't keep the story interesting (or even plausible); it just made it suck that much more. A more classic example would be what happened with the Dragonball series, where the "writers" could only keep things interesting by introducing more powerful villains, and likewise could think of no way for Goku to defeat them except to give him yet another Saiyin level; it continued to grow in this fashion until it actually reached a point where the destruction of the entire planet was just another ho-hum event.

I've dabbled with changing the rules a bit myself, but not literally. The vampires and werewolves are, for the most part, clueless into their nature. However, every now and then someone will pop up claiming to know the truth, but will ultimately be discredited as just some douche who only chose to believe whatever made him feel best about their new condition. The guy who claims to be Rafael Ravencroft, Duke of Transylvania since 1492 may instead turn out to be a 22-year-old high school dropout from Orange County named Caleb Finkelstein (not the exact reveal I have planned for Inhuman, but I've got an equivalent to such drafted in my mind already). Keep the storyline fresh, but stick to your continuity as well.

The better course of action, however, I think would be to go the way of Being Human and never assume that the nature of lycanthropy will automatically fill in both the character description and the plot. I've spent over a year setting up the Inhuman format, only a couple of days of which I spent specifically focusing on the actual natures of lycanthropy and vampirism. It's much more interesting, I think, to write about what vampires and werewolves are thinking and feeling and how vampires and werewolves with differing views on their conditions ultimately respond to each other. I don't expect anyone to be fascinated by the unwritten laws of the viroids that I've set up for my reference (I've actually semi-scripted a scene where a werewolf rants at the protagonist about how living as a werewolf is supposed to be boring), but I have high hopes that five-way conflict between the Families (communal werewolves), the Assembly (progressive-minded vampires), the Houses (vampire mafia clans), viroid supremacist gangs and interloper human Crusaders will keep things going for a long time to come.

[alphanubilus]

As a writer, the story is by far the most important aspect, and as a writer who writes about werewolves, it has to be integral to the plot. Werewolves and werewolf related tales have always been used as metaphores as far back as history itself. There are good werewolf stories and there are evil werewolf stories. My fav stories come from the 12th century French lais, concerning the noble werewolf, but I've studied the more darker legends and lore as well.

With the "Wolf Prince", it was crafted to be more of a fairy tale. I researched old fairy tales to bring an authenticity to it, even though I made up, almost everything in the story. It feels like it could have been ripped right out of a book by the Bros. Grimm, but of course it wasn't. The constittutional werewolf in the story, undergoes the metamorphysis and learns from it. It is more of a tool, to help the lead character realize what is important in life and thus helps him become a better human.

With "Hour of Darkness" the werewolves aren't people who were turned into beasts or who can become beasts, but are a new race entirely. HOD was an opertunity for me to pour all of werewolf lore and mythology (ancient mythology that is) into a mixer and craft a scy-fy-fantasy epic were I not only create customs, religion, inner mythology, and language, but an engaging narrative to boot. While werewolf "purests" might cry foul that my characters don't learn anything from being an uber cool werewolf, it is their relations with humanity that evolves, grows, and thus allows the story to be compelling.

[Aki]

It was interesting, and it wasn't werewolves for the sake of werewolves.. if you took out the werewolves, you'd need to change a good portion of the expansion's story (or redo it completely).

Not really. I really don't see how Bloodmoon is any different from Dog Soldiers or Being Human in regards to your complaint that any other monster could be swapped out. You could end up turning into a riekling or any number of other beasties in Bloodmoon and it'd be the same experience.

And frankly, I have to agree with others on the fact that lycanthropy shouldn't be the defining attribute of a character. A character should be able to stand on his own as a fictional person even if you remove the lycanthropy from him.

[Morkulv]

What makes a werewolf-character interesting to me, is basically character-development. What I hated about almost every werewolf-movie is the fact that most of the characters don't even seem to care how its possible that there's somebody changing into a anthromorphic wolf. They just seem to be there. I also would like to see the werewolf-character show more emotion to his/her conflict of changing from man to werewolf.

[Chris]

It was interesting, and it wasn't werewolves for the sake of werewolves.. if you took out the werewolves, you'd need to change a good portion of the expansion's story (or redo it completely).

Not really. I really don't see how Bloodmoon is any different from Dog Soldiers or Being Human in regards to your complaint that any other monster could be swapped out. You could end up turning into a riekling or any number of other beasties in Bloodmoon and it'd be the same experience.

If you took out the werewolves, it wouldn't have made sense for Hircine to show up since they were there hunting for him in preparation for the Great Hunt. The world's lore wouldn't support him showing up for the hunt without his hounds (see here, which is a book that was first seen in Battlespire, which came out in 1997, almost 6 full years before Bloodmoon's release in 2003). And without Hircine and the hunt, you don't have the Bloodmoon prophecy, which was the entire basis for the expansion's main quest. Even if you kept Hircine without the werewolves, you would have to remove a portion of the main quest line that let you play through as a werewolf, any other piece of your character's story that would've resulted from it, in addition to retconning that piece of information about Hircine. You could've done something else in its place, yeah.. but the result would've been something different than what it was, in the larger scheme of things.

A character should be able to stand on his own as a fictional person even if you remove the lycanthropy from him.

Agreed. If you want to have a good werewolf character, you have to have a good character there to start with. Adding lycanthropy to that character offers a bunch of story possibilities, though. Exactly what you can do with it depends on the character and how (his) lycanthropy works.

I also would like to see the werewolf-character show more emotion to his/her conflict of changing from man to werewolf.

Yes, I would too. But you can only dwell on it so long, before it becomes a repetitive emo-fest. Happens often with vampires.

That's actually what I liked about Being Human. It isn't about a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf; it's about three people who just so happen to be a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf. Being Human relies largely on the classic templates, but the story is driven by A) how those three characters cope with their conditions, and B) how those conditions are relative to the greater picture.

Mitchell, for example, makes for a pretty sucky vampire too, but it's that world of vampire politics he's effectively been dragged into that makes for a compelling storyline.

They kinda go hand in hand, I think. Mitchell is a pretty sucky vampire because he doesn't go around turning people or drinking blood (and because he doesn't drink blood, it makes him a substantially weaker vampire, almost human-like). But it's exactly because of that, that pushed him into his position that makes for the compelling stories. His reluctance to act like a "normal" vampire put him at odds with the rest of the vampires, as did his decision to befriend a werewolf, which is often the basis of the stories focusing on him. Granted his, and other vampires', aversion to sunlight is much less pronounced in the series compared to the pilot.. a change I didn't particular care for.

As a writer, the story is by far the most important aspect, and as a writer who writes about werewolves, it has to be integral to the plot. Werewolves and werewolf related tales have always been used as metaphores as far back as history itself.

Yeah, some of the better werewolf-based movies I've seen are typically based on lycanthropy being a metaphor for something more "mundane". Puberty seems to be a popular theme, with the quintessential one of "recent" memory being Ginger Snaps. I'd like to think it could break away from being over-handed metaphors of love/sex/puberty and still be considered good werewolf stories in their own right, though.

[Terastas]

They kinda go hand in hand, I think. Mitchell is a pretty sucky vampire because he doesn't go around turning people or drinking blood (and because he doesn't drink blood, it makes him a substantially weaker vampire, almost human-like). But it's exactly because of that, that pushed him into his position that makes for the compelling stories. His reluctance to act like a "normal" vampire put him at odds with the rest of the vampires, as did his decision to befriend a werewolf, which is often the basis of the stories focusing on him. Granted his, and other vampires', aversion to sunlight is much less pronounced in the series compared to the pilot.. a change I didn't particular care for.

True, but that's actually not what I'd meant to say. I mean I didn't particularly care for the way vampires are depicted in Being Human. They basically made the vampires softer with only light sensitivity of the eyes and a blood addiction to balance out their many perks, chief among them being immortality. They are the kinds of vampires I would have expected to see on the CW.

Since it's such a soft and simple vampire formula, however, they waste very little time stressing the nature over it and jump straight into the plot. The first time the vampire Herrick is introduced is when he pays a visit to the hospital to "recruit" a rich patient into his coven so they can have his money. The way vampires were conceptualized in Being Human is fairly weak, but the concept is secondary to both the interactions between characters and the operation of the coven. There are plenty of things about the vampire lore in Being Human that don't make sense and may have just been left in as a plot device (such as their aversion to religious symbols and inability to enter private buildings unless invited), but the pace and plot don't leave you that many moments to stop and think about it.

I'm trying to do a better job creating believable vampires than Being Human did, but the BBC series is still very much a model for my current writing. Biology is a lot harder to write believably about than history and/or society, and besides, I think your audience would much rather hear about the latter anyway.

[Aki]

If you took out the werewolves, it wouldn't have made sense for Hircine to show up since they were there hunting for him in preparation for the Great Hunt. The world's lore wouldn't support him showing up for the hunt without his hounds (see here, which is a book that was first seen in Battlespire, which came out in 1997, almost 6 full years before Bloodmoon's release in 2003). And without Hircine and the hunt, you don't have the Bloodmoon prophecy, which was the entire basis for the expansion's main quest. Even if you kept Hircine without the werewolves, you would have to remove a portion of the main quest line that let you play through as a werewolf, any other piece of your character's story that would've resulted from it, in addition to retconning that piece of information about Hircine. You could've done something else in its place, yeah.. but the result would've been something different than what it was, in the larger scheme of things.

Except for the fact that Posting of the Hunt merely mentions "hounds" which could be anything. Indeed, there are "lesser" and "Greater" hounds, not all of which can be werewolves (and the term werewolf is not used once). You need not remove player involvement either with the removal of (clearly not requisite, since Devs control Lore, and the existing Lore doesn't contradict the non-usuage of werewolves, since Hounds are undefined) werewolves, as some other method could be implemented to bend the player to Hircine's side.

I mean, s***. They could have tossed vampires from Molag Bal to Hircine. Same damn story, except your (Anti)protagonist is pale and fanged instead of furred and clawed.

[Chris]

Except for the fact that Posting of the Hunt merely mentions "hounds" which could be anything. Indeed, there are "lesser" and "Greater" hounds, not all of which can be werewolves (and the term werewolf is not used once).

But "hound" is almost always associated with dogs or canine-type creatures, and Hircine is the father of the werebeasts. Calling them hounds (as opposed to pets, slaves, hunters, etc) and then not be werewolves would've just been disingenuous. They could've used something else, sure, but that wouldn't have been much better than taking the story and doing a search-and-replace on certain words, IMO. I also don't think its stated that the "lesser" and "greater" hounds can't be the same type of creature (just with different skill levels).

With Daggerfall, the werewolves were more or less just another creature (in fact, becoming a vampire or werewolf/wereboar was considered an easter egg). But leading in from that, and the lore added in Battlespire, I just don't think it would've been "right" if it wasn't werewolves as a prelude to the Bloodmoon prophecy.

True, but that's actually not what I'd meant to say. I mean I didn't particularly care for the way vampires are depicted in Being Human. They basically made the vampires softer with only light sensitivity of the eyes and a blood addiction to balance out their many perks, chief among them being immortality. They are the kinds of vampires I would have expected to see on the CW.

Ah, yes. I personally think the series pales in comparison to the promise that the pilot showed, mainly because of things like this. After all, the original concept of the pilot was a werewolf, vampire, and ghost living together and trying to have a normal life. There were reasons George and Mitchell couldn't hold well-paying jobs (George would actually start feeling bloodlust the week leading up to a full moon, as opposed to simple anger and aggression; Mitchell did have issues being outside in the day time for extended periods, even when bundled up in winter clothes on an overcast day with an umbrella), but it was their desire to break from that rut that caused them to attempt to settle down and try to act human. They didn't know if they could do it, and they were prepared to just up and leave if something went wrong, which there was a sense of that something could by their nature alone.

Needless to say, the series may be decent/good (in no small part due to excellent performances by certain cast members), but I enjoyed the pilot that much more (which also had excellent, dare I say better, performances).

Since it's such a soft and simple vampire formula, however, they waste very little time stressing the nature over it and jump straight into the plot.

I think they handled it well enough with the pilot. The vampire and werewolf concepts were more defined and had presence (you watch George and Mitchell, and you would know they were a werewolf and vampire, as opposed to just two guys that have some unique issues that relate to them being a werewolf and vampire), but it didn't have to spend long at all to jump into the plot. It was effective at showing what the problems they had were during the course of the story (it helped that they were strongly based on existing concepts, so it didn't take much to get it across, either), and those problems are what made it interesting. Just how would a vampire, that has an aversion to sunlight and a need for drinking blood, live in a human society? How would a werewolf live with humans, amidst monthly transformations and waves of bloodlust that cannot be scheduled away?

[RedEye]

A good story is one where you can take out the characters and still have something interesting to read. Even though the characters drive the story, the story itself should be interesting without them. Think: A classic roadster with a pretty girl standing beside it... if you remove the girl (or guy), the roadster should still catch your interest.

Characters should be both interesting and relatable. They work best if you can actually imagine meeting one of them in real life (minus any special abilities) and really liking them (or despising them, depending...). A good character needs a few flaws because people have flaws. The internal conflict they experience gives them reasons to do things outside of the direction the plot takes.

One of my teachers commented: "All stories are essentially morality plays. There is a good person and a bad person or a bad situation; and the response of the character to the situation or person is one of the major drivers of any story; hence 'Conflict tells tales'. Watching a weakness become a strength attracts readers because they have weaknesses in their own lives, and you present them with a method of overcoming that weakness. Above all, the characters and their world should be interesting; the daily life of an accountant won't sell any books."

I tend to agree.

[hardlyric]

Actually this is something I'm developing for a series of short stories on my end, so I can really relate to the feeling you have. Often a werewolf character is treated very two dimensionally in its wolf or hybrid form - and only fleshed out as a human character.

I think to understand the issue and to overcome it, a series of truths need to be examined:

1. A good story needs conflict in the form of an antagonist so that the protagonist can go through an arc. Though not always necessary to be in this format - it is often utilized for its simplicity.

2. A reader must be able to attach themselves to the humanity in a story so as to feel the weight of the protagonists' choices and have the desire to see how the character's arc is concluded.

Using the two points above, it's easy to take any werewolf story and break them down and see how the cliches are created. That being said, I believe in turning it over and so here is the meat of my idea:

The werewolf retains his humanity in a hybrid form and is still communicative. He's not a bloodthirsty killing machine. The real monster in my story will be the remaining humans who view the protagonist werewolf as a monster. In a lot of ways it's similar to Frankenstein's monster and very much a story of racism and the desire for acceptance.

I think to make a werewolf interesting, creators must first deconstruct the cliche and create a new mythology. Wolves after all are not mindless killers - but instead very loyal familly types - and the killer werewolf story was only brought about because of the ignorance to the wolf itself. Now that we understand wolves more, it's easy to see through the monster and start fresh.

[Berserker]

I think to make a werewolf interesting, creators must first deconstruct the cliche and create a new mythology. Wolves after all are not mindless killers - but instead very loyal familly types - and the killer werewolf story was only brought about because of the ignorance to the wolf itself. Now that we understand wolves more, it's easy to see through the monster and start fresh.

I hate to say it, but on the internet at least, especially with people who write stories about werewolves, this "new mythology" has become a cliche. In fact, it's what this very message board was born from.

And therein lies the problem. People want so badly to clean up the werewolf's image that the natural reaction is to create a polar opposite. So now we have two types of werewolves, the ones who are monsters, and the ones who aren't: before, it was just black, but now we have black and white. How much of an improvement is that, really?

An interesting werewolf story must look beyond both tradition and popular culture to find a unique meaning.

[Terastas]

I think to make a werewolf interesting, creators must first deconstruct the cliche and create a new mythology. Wolves after all are not mindless killers - but instead very loyal familly types - and the killer werewolf story was only brought about because of the ignorance to the wolf itself. Now that we understand wolves more, it's easy to see through the monster and start fresh.

I hate to say it, but on the internet at least, especially with people who write stories about werewolves, this "new mythology" has become a cliche. In fact, it's what this very message board was born from.

And therein lies the problem. People want so badly to clean up the werewolf's image that the natural reaction is to create a polar opposite. So now we have two types of werewolves, the ones who are monsters, and the ones who aren't: before, it was just black, but now we have black and white. How much of an improvement is that, really?

An interesting werewolf story must look beyond both tradition and popular culture to find a unique meaning.

It depends on what that "new mythology" turns out to be. I've said several times before that the Pack was predominantly born out of a severe discontentment with the current werewolf trends that followed the original mythos, so if there was anything wrong with the original mythology, we wouldn't still be here talking about it.

The other side of the coin, however, is not just people "cleaning up" the mythology, but drastically overcompensating. That can go both ways, but the more notorious offenders are the ones that try to sparkle things up and make them pretty. The most notorious offender, of course, was Stephanie Meyer, who apparently made the conscious decision that she didn't want there to be any drawbacks at all to being a werewolf, the final result of which being a pack of werewolves that was just two steps away from being the sled dogs from Balto. She took a lot away from werewolves trying to make them sound good, but she didn't fill in the gaps when she was done either.

The classical werewolf mythos is pretty far fetched and inexplicable on multiple levels, but it is balanced between strengths and drawbacks. An ideal form of lycanthropy should be one with an equal level, which is what I'm trying (extra emphasis on that word) to accomplish with my writing. There are a lot of aspects about the classical werewolf mythos that I didn't carry over, but I typically try to either redefine it or include another aspect that keeps the balance of pros and cons in check.

The cliche "new mythology" you're talking about is more a product of therian fanfics and crap "horrormance" novels. It's a lot more pervasive than it should be, but it's still pretty far from being the norm.

[JoshuaMadoc]

I might diverge into a separate topic about this.

[LunarCarnivore]

I think to make a werewolf interesting, creators must first deconstruct the cliche and create a new mythology. Wolves after all are not mindless killers - but instead very loyal familly types - and the killer werewolf story was only brought about because of the ignorance to the wolf itself. Now that we understand wolves more, it's easy to see through the monster and start fresh.

I hate to say it, but on the internet at least, especially with people who write stories about werewolves, this "new mythology" has become a cliche. In fact, it's what this very message board was born from.

And therein lies the problem. People want so badly to clean up the werewolf's image that the natural reaction is to create a polar opposite. So now we have two types of werewolves, the ones who are monsters, and the ones who aren't: before, it was just black, but now we have black and white. How much of an improvement is that, really?

An interesting werewolf story must look beyond both tradition and popular culture to find a unique meaning.

i agree. why should werewolves as a whole be good or evil? its up to the individual to choose, a good man makes a good dog and vice versa. or in the werewolf as a mindless beast scenario, its not really morality if the werewolf kills to eat, as its doing what comes natural: is a lion evil when she slaughters the gazelle? the Werewolf's guide to life is a nice amalgamation of these, as the wolf is killing to eat, but its up to the man to stop it by locking himself up.

[Terastas]

or in the werewolf as a mindless beast scenario, its not really morality if the werewolf kills to eat, as its doing what comes natural: is a lion evil when she slaughters the gazelle? the Werewolf's guide to life is a nice amalgamation of these, as the wolf is killing to eat, but its up to the man to stop it by locking himself up.

That's still even under the assumption that the instinct is to kill, as opposed to just the instinct to hunt or to eat (whose to say a werewolf couldn't curb his hunting instincts by laying out a foot-long sub before he shifts?). Lions only slaughter gazelles when they're hungry; they just laze around doing nothing if they're not.

The savagery things is one of the aspects I tried to redefine instead of eliminating. They don't have hunting instincts, but they tend to act like they do. First, shifting hurts in ways that can't even be imagined, which can jolt the werewolf down into a sort of primitive survival "everybody-get-the-eff-away-from-me!" mode (as Mattias says in Mercenaries P.O.D.: "The hanged man will kick at anything when the noose starts to tighten around his neck."). The other part of it is the extensive alteration to their sensory organs; when the pain finally subsides to normal levels, their hearing, sense of smell, depth perception etc. are all altered in such a way that their brain was not originally programmed to transmit, leaving them (momentarily but still severely) mentally impaired.

I've thought about a bunch of different possibilities this could lead to, such as the werewolf finally regaining his awareness with a taste of blood in his mouth and thinking he killed someone, only to be told later that the blood was his own from his gums bleeding as his teeth grew out.

Without the assistance of the pack, he may have thought that he really had killed something, which likely would have resulted in him chaining himself up before the next shift. Doing so would mean that the next time he underwent an involuntary shift and entered that shock-induced primitive survival mode, his initial mental state would be even worse, because now he's in agonizing pain and restrained (If you want to see someone absolutely lose their mind, put him in a straitjacket and wait until he gets an itch. It'd be kind of like that.). Additionally, when his unlearned senses kick in, the restraints may panic him, further impair his capacity to translate his new senses and cause him to flip out and possibly kill someone for real next time.

Consequently, that would make every shifting process unique. Which could be used to stretch the horror aspects, as there would be little to no guarantee that a werewolf's behavior could be anticipated, even if they had already shifted once or twice already.
Less cliche but with the same purpose in terms of mood and atmosphere I think.

[Wselfwulf]

I think an interesting werewolf character challenges an audience with a dual duality; internal conflict between the impetus of one side and the other, concordance between one side and the other, and second order evaluations of both of those things

Not really. I really don't see how Bloodmoon is any different from Dog Soldiers or Being Human in regards to your complaint that any other monster could be swapped out. You could end up turning into a riekling or any number of other beasties in Bloodmoon and it'd be the same experience.

I think due to bloodmoon's nordic aesthetic and beserker analogue the werewolf was more or less the most appropriate. As for Dog Soldiers you probably could swap it out, but you would have to find something that keeps a kind of hunter theme, as well as the idea of man displaced into wilderness. And packs, the soldiers had to function as a unit.

As for writing I don't think there are hard and fast rules, perhaps if there were, anyone could bust out fine literature. You could focus on a monstrous condition, like Bram's Dracula, where the imagery was what had the impact, or focus the characters in which case the condition becomes a vehicle or allegory for something else, or perhaps weave plot, character and imagery together like in Shelley's Frankenstein. I think any option could work and a clever writer does something you don't expect or something you do, but well.