Developing the Elements of a Story, Part 1 I can’t even count how many times I’ve read Thomas’s Christmas Delivery or Little Bear’s New Friend. My children never tired of hearing about Thomas’s and Little Bear’s adventures. Though as adults we may not read the same book as many times as our children reread their favorites, we can appreciate the draw of a good story. It’s that connection we have with the story that keeps us turning page after page into the wee hours of the night. But what makes a story one to treasure? And how can we help our kids develop a tale beyond a sequence of events? The glue that holds a story together is character, plot, and setting, and when children understand and develop them, a great story is born. Who remembers Charlie Bucket, Cassie Logan, or Wilbur the pig? These characters are memorable because they have connected with us in some way. Readers want to bond with the characters of a story, particularly the main character (protagonist), and it is what ultimately keeps them reading. Bringing a character to life, however, making characters real and multidimensional is not always easy. Here are a few tips to help your children develop characters to remember. The most important thing a writer needs to do is make the character genuine. This means the character has speech, thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes, and responses that are lifelike, not contrived. The first step to meeting this goal is to make a character profile that provides basic physical and personality facts. These include but are not limited to species (i.e. human, animal, alien), accent (if any), gender, age, hair, skin, and eye color, ethnicity, height, weight, date of birth, scars, birthmarks, piercings, clothing style, favorite foods and activities, fears, skills, and hobbies. A fun way to create a character sketch is by creating a “Wanted” poster or “mug shot.” However, if your child prefers graphic organizers, there are fun options for a younger child at Permanently Primary as well as a wonderful collection of downloadable organizers for older children at Daily Teaching Tools. Perhaps your child is happy making lists or filling out charts; detailed worksheets can be printed from Capstone Kids. After the basic profile is complete, your child can further develop his or her character by brainstorming personality traits and how that character would express those traits through actions or speech. Character trait charts, like those found at Education Oasis or Daily Teaching Tools are convenient methods that will help your child make his or her character come to life. More than this, it emphasizes to them the need to show rather than tell the readers who the character is. Although much of the information collected may never be integrated into the story itself, fleshing out the character makes him or her more authentic. In turn, your young writer will be more likely to present the character in a convincing way and have fun in the process.
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Everybody Is Different: Varied Characters Make For Believable Characters
No two people are alike. For that matter, no two animals are alike either! One mark of a great story is believable characters, each with his or her own distinct personality and habits. Author Kaley Birchfield is only eleven years old. Her story, “A Home for Barney” (the featured story from our March/April 2014 issue), is only six pages long. Somehow, in those six short pages, Kaley manages to bring to life a whole host of human and animal characters. How does she do it? There’s the narrator, Christy, a young woman who works at a goat farm. From the first sentence, we see that Christy loves nature. As the story goes on, we learn that she is emotional, loving, and a bit of a worrier. Christy’s co-worker, Marla, seems kind of slow at first. Little by little, we see that, while Marla may not say much, she is wise, and she feels things deeply. Their boss, Jenny, is a take charge kind of person, full of confidence. But she has a soft side and feels sad, like Christy does, when Barney the goat has to leave. Then there’s Barney and another goat, Mocha. They couldn’t be more different from each other. Barney is gentle, calm, and affectionate. Mocha is unfriendly and moody. Even the family that arrives at the end of the story has well-drawn characters, especially the bubbly, impulsive youngest sister, Autumn. It would be boring if Kaley simply listed each character’s distinguishing qualities. Instead, she shows us what each character is like through their words, actions, gestures, and speech. Marla seems unemotional, but the goodbye hug she gives Christy speaks volumes. Christy’s emotions are up and down as she and Barney are separated and reunited more than once. At different times Christy’s shoulders sag, she can’t sleep, she has a lump in her throat. She is overjoyed when Barney runs up to her after their separations. When Autumn realizes how sad Christy is to lose Barney, she blurts out her family’s address and tells Christy to come visit. Why do we write stories? Why do we read them? You can probably think of many answers to these questions. Maybe we like to leave our own lives for a little while and lose ourselves in the lives of others. Maybe we have feelings of sadness that we can’t express, and a sad story helps us tap into our own feelings and get them out. And no matter how young or how old we are, we can always learn. We can learn how to be better people, more loving toward each other and our pets, more understanding, better able to cope with loss and change. But before we can get all these benefits from a story, we must believe in it. We must believe that the characters are real.
