Note: For this part of the editorial, I give my thanks to the Watt Pad writer @chaerinx .  Their comment surrounding a problem in the book Wings of Fire brought up a formulaic issue that I feel needs more attention.  This issue does not pertain only to the book mentioned, but to any fantasy novel consisting of a huge animal cast.  What is this issue exactly?  You are going to have to read just a bit further.

  The Warriors book series created by the Erin Hunters (Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui Sutherland, and Victoria Holmes) was in many respects the second huge breakthrough hit from the United Kingdom, following the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.  These books, organized in arcs of six books a piece, tell the fascinating take of four large cat Clans in the middle of British woodlands.  Each named after their four founders, Thuderstar, Shadowstar, Windstar, and Riverstar, the Clans live out their daily lives fighting for survival.  With dangers always looming such as corrupt Clan leaders like Tigerstar of ShadowClan, human intervention, disease, and wars between the four Clans, it is a true fight for survival.  Despite being labeled a children's book series, many of the mature themes such as forbidden love, warfare, sacrifice, and loyalty have attracted many older readers.  Millions of copies sold later, this huge series has stayed since 2003 a top choice for fantasy readers.

  With that fame though came the notorious copycats.  Whenever anything becomes well known in popular culture, desperate people trying to make a quick buck write stories clearly copying main plot elements from the popular trend.  This is no different with Warriors.  Soon enough, copycats had started to appear on various bookshelves following a similar plot line to the Warriors series.  However, the act did not stop there.  Even writers wanting to stray away from the Warriors writing format have found themselves using plot elements accidentally in their own stories.  This writing occurrence is what I refer to as The Warriors Effect.

  The Warriors Effect comes in various forms.  The first is the organization of twenty or more characters in a clan-like structure.  Many wolf related stories use this structure to organize their tribes, such as is the case with Wolves of the Beyond by Kathryn Lasky.  They may even use a glossary in the first pages of the novel to do so.  The second is the war-like battlefield presented to animals for not particular reason except to intensify the plot.  Books such as the dragon-filled Wings of Fire do such formulaic stunts.  The third and final trait is creating a character that had roots as a pet or as an outsider from the chaos.  It is basically making your own Firestar, who is the main character focused upon in the first six books of the Warriors book series.  Survivors, a book about dogs trying to survive after the end of the world, created surprisingly by the same writing team as Warriors, has a main character that can be summed up as a Firestar 2.0.

  Now if you are going to write a novel focusing on animals, The Warriors Effect will almost always be a part of it.  This is why besides Warriors, not many animal focused fantasy novels have become mainstream hits.  It can even be to blame for people being drawn away from animal focused stories, who believe the story will be "childish" like the Warriors series.  This effect has been a hidden, but deadly one to fantasy writers wishing to not focus on a human for a change. 

  The only way to fight The Warriors Effect is to battle it with the most imaginative material you can think of.  You have to completely think outside of the box in order to make your fantasy novel of this variant not fall into the trend.  This is not the easiest of tasks.  Writing in the perspective of an animal can be quite challenging due to the language barrier humans and other creatures have in real life.  Additionally, the fish out of water character is the simplest to use when introducing audiences to an fantasy filled setting.  Avoiding a fall into any part of The Warriors Effect is not a simple task.  It is a move that must be made though if you wish to write a novel of such nature.