This writing activity is based on a very funny Kurt Vonnegut lecture on the shape of stories. In this project, students learn to develop compelling narratives by graphing the plots. American author Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is best known for his book Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). In this very funny, very brilliant talk on the fundamentals of the narrative arc, Vonnegut explains through a chalk-board lecture how to graph the ins and outs of a story. Using the example of Cinderella, Vonnegut proposes a universal story structure that can be plotted with an X/Y axis. Only partly tongue-in-cheek, he suggests that most stories can be understood (and plotted) as moving from happy/sad on the Y axis (the vertical in a graph) and in time with the X axis (the horizontal in a graph) moving from the story beginning to story end. The X axis (happy/unhappy) could also be re-thought as good/bad, calm/scary, good fortune/bad fortune and any number of other dynamic pairs to shape story lines and characters. This talk is appropriate for young writers and can easily be adapted to concrete classroom writing projects. Project: Plot a story on a graph. Follow Vonnegut’s general concept of plotting a story on an X/Y axis. Have your students actually write on the graph’s curve the major plot points as the story moves from its beginning through its middle to its end. While Vonnegut’s model is for plot, this same structure can be used for character development to show how a character’s personality might change over the course of the story.
Writing activity
Writing Activity: developing character and perspective with character sketches
This writing activity is built around 11-year-old Ella Staats’ story, “My Mother’s Little Girl'” published in Stone Soup in September/October 2012. Read the story and then work on your project, which is write a story with two lead characters. But before you write the story, write a full character development, at least two typed pages long, for each of the characters. The only place that the fictional world of your story really exists is in your head. The more you have imagined that world–what it looks like and what each of your characters is like–the more convincing your story will feel to your readers. In “My Mother’s Little Girl,” we are dropped into a family in which the daughter is what used to be called a tomboy. She likes her hair short, doesn’t wear dresses, and has no interest in playing with dolls. This puts her in conflict with her mother. So far, we can say, predictable and even boring. And then something happens. Towards the end of the story the daughter learns something about her mother’s childhood and why her mother acts towards her the way she does. You might say, towards the end of the story the daughter learns her own mother’s backstory. That is when something interesting happens. A light goes off in the daughter’s head, “Ah! So that is why my mother acts the way she does!” And I know, at that point, I found myself rethinking the story from the beginning. The whole story suddenly made sense. While neither character is likely to change, what I think the story is about is how understanding can replace misunderstanding when two characters, especially characters who love each other, can finally understand where they are coming from. I don’t know whether the author, Ella Staats, had worked out her two characters before she started the story, or if letting the daughter learn about her mother’s childhood was something Ella thought of as she was writing. Authors work in different ways. For this project, I want you to try working the more methodical way, which is to work out your main characters before you set them down in your fictional world. Project: First, read Ella’s story, to see a great example of the kind of writing you are trying to produce. Create a character sketch for two characters who are very different from each other. Think of the sketch as writing a short biography. Do your best to create characters that seem real enough to you that you can imagine several different stories in which they relate to each other. Write down what each character looks like, their family history, and their temperament. What do they each like to do? Let your imagination go. Then, when you have two people who feel real, put them together into a story. Let them interact with each other. You don’t need to share with your readers everything you know about the characters. But I think you will find that, with the main characters so worked out, you will be able to create a story that carries with it an unusual sense of reality.
Writing Activity: novels in the form of letters, inspired by Jane Austen’s childhood writing
Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the the greatest novelists to have written in English. Her novels are still widely read and have been adapted into movies and television series. Jane Austen began writing as a child, and now, finally, some of these childhood writings have been adapted into movies. Whit Stillman’s 2016 movie Love and Friendship borrows its title from the work of the same name, written when Jane Austen was fourteen, but is actually based on Lady Susan, a novel that Austen probably wrote when she was nineteen although it was not published until much later. Both works are “epistolary” novels–novels written in the form of an exchange of letters. This form was common in the eighteenth century as the novel developed into a popular form of writing, and even one of Austen’s more famous works, Sense and Sensibility, began its life as an epistolary novel. Another famous novel of the period, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782) by Pierre Laclos, is also written in the form of letters, and in the end it is the discovery of one of the secret sets of correspondence that creates the climax of the story. That story, too, has been adapted into many theatre and movie versions including a version where the action is transported to a group of teenagers in New York City (Cruel Intentions, 1999). Today, with the resurgence in correspondence through texting and email, the epistolary story is a format that once again makes sense for young writers. One of the things that is exciting about a novel written in the form of letters is the scope it gives for the writer to unwittingly reveal themselves through the style and content of the letters the author has them write. There is no all-knowing narrator in the middle of the action ready to intervene to tell the reader who the characters really are, what the other perspectives might be, or what to look for. The writers of the letters (the characters) have to tell us everything themselves, without seeming aware that they are doing so. The characters who have to tell us, by telling the people they write to, where they are, what has happened, and how they feel–all of which might be different depending on who they are writing to (imagine: even if you are not inventing things, you would probably write a different letter to your best friend about how things are going and what you have been doing at summer camp than you would to your teacher or your grandparents). The skill of the author is, partly, devoted to giving the writers of the letters their own authentic voices, while at the same time making sure they (accidentally) give themselves away in the little hints they drop or the ways they tell their version of a story. It’s a form that you can really have fun with. Writing activity: Create a scenario with at least two characters and a problem, and choose a contemporary form of letter writing as your style: it could be text messages, emails, postcards, greetings cards, notes on school worksheets, or a combination of these and any other forms you can think of. Write at least 5 letters or messages from each of the characters to the others. Each one should reveal something about the action–carry it forward in some way–and reveal more information to the reader about the character, personality, and role in the action of the writer of the ‘letter’. Why not consult our pages on Juvenilia for links to some of the great authors’ juvenilia, and watch some clips of the movies we have mentioned. You can also read some stories published in Stone Soup, such as “Kisses from Cécile” based on a real correspondence; a piece of historical fiction, “Julius’s Gift”, where letters are both part of the action and part of the narrative, and more recent ones like The Red and Blue Thread which incorporate text messaging great effect. The full movie can be rented from Amazon.com and from Curzon Cinemas.
