Writing About a Character

Character description - introduction

Get your jotters or note books with pens.

Have you read a story where the characters had unusual names?

Give some examples:

Have you read a story where two characters had contrasting behaviour or attitude?

Give some examples:

Open Ended

Grandma gently took the box from its secret place in the wardrobe. Immediately her eyes began to prickle. She opened the lid carefully and took in the familiar scent.

How is Grandma feeling?

How do you now?

Get ready to do some work in your jotters.

You and your partner are cousins. You are in one of your homes, in the bedroom. The parents are downstairs.

There is a creak from the room above,the attic. It should be empty. What will your characters do?

Use Tip three – showing characterisation through what your characters DO.

Tip four – showing characterisation by what your characters SAY.

You will be using narration and dialogue:

5 mins write in your jotters.

Plot continued:

You are in the attic. It is very dusty, full of cobwebs, spiders etc. Its difficult to see as when you tried the light it flashed one and flickered out. You are surrounded by a mass of boxes and strange shaped objects draped in cloth.

You hear a noise coming from the back of the room…

Using both narration and dialogue, what will your characters do? Again remember you also want to create contrast between the two characters.

Some volunteers should share their work with the class.

We will continue tomorrow.

Get your jotters ready.

Get your jotters

Let’s pretend that we are Billy. - This means we will be writing in first person:

•We are going to write an entry into Billy’s diary.

Writing Targets

•We need to describe an event in Billy’s life. (Action) (Dialogue)

•Let the reader know how Billy feels about that day. (Thoughts)

•Reveal something about Billy’s character to our reader. (Personality)

You have ten minutes to do this in your jotter.

Volunteers can share their work with the class.

Assignment

Now you will be looking at your assignment for today.

You are to do this in your google classroom but let us discuss what is expected of you.

This is the end of the lesson for today, see you tomorrow.

Teachers can discuss this with their students in class rather than they writing.