Creating Character

Creating Character

​DIRECTIONS: Review the student examples on the next slide, then respond to the questions that follow.

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Open Ended

Which student READ section example is your favorite? Why?

Open Ended

In Moony Hope (Example 1), the opening pages are about a true event: the time one of the student authors swung too hard in a hammock and knocked himself unconscious after hitting his head on a bump on the wall. The student’s grumpy-eyed uncle with the red-striped shirt saw it happen. The student said his relationship with that uncle was pretty bad. How can you tell from his description? How does the description warn readers (foreshadow) the accident that follows?

Open Ended

Homecoming (Example 2) is entirely fictional, except for a single detail about one of the characters: the author actually knew someone who wore a loop of green yarn around his ankle, but she didn’t know much about him besides that. The authors of Because They Smell (Example 6) “grew” their poem out of a single true “seed’: the reason Darth Vader is their favorite (he can choke people with his mind). If you could “borrow” a single habit, behavior, life event, or trait from a real person you know and give it to one of your characters, what detail would you choose?

Open Ended

The student author of Time Travel (Example 4) based the “Nicki” character on a real –– and really troubled –– person without anywhere to live who camped out in the alley behind his school. In this poem, the author imagines the physical things in Nicki’s tough life literally becoming part of her body. Pretty grim. If you’d rather not write something this dark, that is fine, of course, but for this question, just focus on the poet’s strategy: he writes a fictional future for a real person he knows in the present. If you were to try this, who would you base your character on, and what would their future look like?

Open Ended

Review the infographic pictured here, then choose one or two examples from the READ section and respond to the questions below.

a. Discuss spots where you find sensory details. How do they help shape character?

b. Discuss spots where you find motion. How would the piece suffer (be less interesting) if everything “stood still” instead?

c. Discuss spots where you find tension (“push-pull”). What do these details reveal about character?