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'Losing Yourself' In a Fictional Character

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'Losing Yourself' In a Fictional Character

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This article talks about how people can lose themselves in another character. If they happen to have a connection to a character in the book, then they will start to think a little bit like that character for a while and might even effect their actions. It is interesting to think how we happen to relate and might even mimic some of the characters thoughts and actions if we take away the barrier between a person's self. I hope that I can bring this idea up in class, or at the very least use the idea to help students understand characters a little better by putting them in the character's shoes.

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Reading comes alive when we recognize how the ideas in a text connect to our experiences and beliefs, events happening in the larger world, our understanding of history, and our knowledge of other texts. The Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World strategy helps students develop the habit of making these connections as they read. When students are given a purpose for their reading, they are able to better comprehend and make meaning of the ideas in the text. You can use this strategy with any type of text, historical or literary, and with other media, such as film. It can be used at the beginning, middle, or end of the reading process to get students engaged with a text, to help students understand the text more deeply, or to evaluate students' understanding of the text.

1. Select a Text
This strategy works best with a text that raises universal themes that might resonate with students' own experiences and with material they have studied previously. Teachers often give students their own copy of the text so that they can mark it up, although this is not required.

2. Guide Students through Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World
Theaccompanying handout to this strategy provides you with sample questions that you can give students to guide them through this activity. The questions in the directions are general, but you can make them specific to the material your class is studying. For example, you might ask students to connect what they read to specific texts or to events you have studied earlier in the school year.

3. Debrief
Students gain a deeper understanding of the text, of their classmates, and of the world around them when they have the opportunity to discuss their responses with peers. Students can share their responses with a partner (see theThink-Pair-Share teaching strategy), in small groups (see the Assigning Roles teaching strategy), or as part of a larger discussion (see the Fishbowl teaching strategy).

One Connection: If you have limited time, you can give students the option of writing about one connection they have found between the text and another text, their lives, or the larger world.

Mapping Connections: Social maps are a visual way of showing relationships between people, but they can also be used to show relationships between ideas and events. An extension of this activity would be to have students draw the connections they find between a text and other ideas, events, or experiences. Students can work on these maps in groups, noting the relationships among their responses.

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A teaching strategy to help students make connections between the ideas in readings, their own experiences and beliefs, and events in history and the world. Facing History offers teaching strategies that nurture students' literacy and critical thinking skills within a respectful classroom climate.

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I want to make sure that these books and characters create discussion with the student. So I would like to create a book club where the students get together and talk to each other on certain books. Then they will be table to discuss their own thoughts as they focus in on the characters and what they thought about them such as the traits that they observed through the book. We might even have students who bring their own unique ideas that we can discuss upon and think about. Then the students can share with the rest of the class what they found.

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This article talks about the various ways that characters in a story appeal to us, what are some things that make them memorable and likeable. I wanted to share this article with the class that they think about the characters that they read, I would like to invite them to think about what they like about their own favorite characters and if it relates to what we read in this article. I would also like to have them think about if there are any people in real life that they might look up to in the same way and relate it to how we might like characters who we can relate to or have an interest in.

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The source and exact nature of the curious phenomena we refer to as characters remains something of a mystery, but the craft of characterization is not.

Although it's clearly a cause for celebration-or at least relief-when a character appears in the mind's eye fully formed, the reality is that for most of us, this is a rare occurrence. Certain techniques are required to will our characters to life. We need to draw on the unconscious, memory, the imagination and the Muse until our characters quicken, assume clear form and, with hope, begin to act of their own accord.

Can this process-so inherent to the success of any novel-really be condensed into a single method? In my experience as both writer and writing instructor, the answer is, to some extent, yes. The key is first to understand what your characters require from you in order to come to life, and then to determine how you can draw on your best available resources to give them what they need.

CHARACTERISTICS OF COMPELLING CHARACTERS

The most compelling characters are those who appear internally consistent and yet are capable of surprise. In my own work, I've found that the art of crafting such fully realized characters can be boiled down to four crucial elements: a driving need, desire, ambition or goal; a secret; a contradiction; and vulnerability. Let's take a closer look at each one.

A Driving Need, Desire, Ambition or Goal

The fundamental truth to characterization is that characters must want something, and the stronger the want, the more compelling the resulting drama. This is because desire intrinsically creates conflict, the primordial goo in which character is formed.

Take, for example one of the most memorable characters in American literature-Blanche Dubois, from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. At the start of the story, Blanche has lost her family home and has been left with nowhere to stay. Desperate, she has come to New Orleans to find her sister, Stella, and ask to be taken in.

This is a perfect demonstration that simply by giving the character a deep-seated need or want, you can automatically create conflict, for the world is not designed to answer our desires as easily as we might hope.

A Secret

For your character, a secret is that inclination or trait (such as a psychological disposition to dishonesty, violence, sexual excess, or the abuse of alcohol or drugs, to name a few) or an incident from the past that, if revealed, would change forever the character's standing in her world, among co-workers, neighbors, friends, family, lovers. Secrets inform us of what our characters have to lose, and why.

Drawing on the example of Blanche Dubois, her secret is that through drink and illicit sexual liaisons, she has become so emotionally and physically dissipated she could not hold on to the family home.

We are our own best source for understanding secrets. We know our own, and if we're insightful, we understand how they affect our behavior-specifically, how they make us afraid.

A Contradiction

We all know people who are both shy and rude, cruel but funny, bigoted but protective. This complexity, which seems to particularly manifest itself during times of stress or conflict, is what can make a person inherently unpredictable, setting the stage for the kind of surprising behavior that can keep readers enthralled, wondering what might happen next.

Our senses and minds are tuned to focus on irregularities-the thing that doesn't quite fit, doesn't make sense, or is simply changing. This is an evolutionarily adaptive trait; it helps in analyzing the environment for threats. But it also attunes us to whatever is unusual in what we perceive; contradictions reveal what we couldn't predict, the enigma, the surprise.

Again, let's look at how this applies to Blanche Dubois: She is desperate and weak, hopelessly vain, with an alcoholic's capacity for denial and delusion-but she is also fiercely proud and resourceful with a surprising steeliness. It's contradictions like these that can automatically pique a reader's interest.

Vulnerability

Nothing draws us into a character more than her vulnerability. When people appear wounded or in need of our help, we are instantly drawn to them-it's a basic human reflex. We may also sometimes be repelled or frightened, but either way, the fact of the matter is that injury to another person instantly triggers a strong response.

Obviously, vulnerability may be the result of the character's secret: He is afraid of being found out. Or it may come from the intensity of his need or want-because, as we all know, desire can render us naked in a fundamental way. For your character, the ambition and focus inherent in a strong desire can imply some form of inner strength, while at the same time rendering the character vulnerable to being deprived of what he most wants.

Blanche's desperation to find a safe place makes her vulnerable, as does the tawdry nature of her secrets, which threaten to shame her beyond redemption if revealed. In other words, needs or desires, secrets, contradictions and vulnerability are almost always interconnected.

METHODS FOR DEEPENING CHARACTERIZATIONS

Often our characters first appear to us as we flesh out the idea for a story. But characters who emerge from story ideas can often be flat or two-dimensional; this is because at that early stage, they serve the purpose of filling a role, rather than acting as independent beings with needs and fears and affections and concerns "outside
the story."

Compelling characters are not cogs in the machine of your plot; they are human beings to whom the story happens.

Some stories begin with the characters, of course, and the narrative emerges from an exploration of their needs, their defenses, their secrets and contradictions, or some problem they face. The trick in those cases is making sure the narrative doesn't meander, creating, as writer Philip Larkin called it, "a beginning, a muddle and an end."

But more often in mainstream fiction and especially genre fiction, the novel begins with a story idea, and the characters need to be fleshed out to keep them from being stock players in the drama. We might wonder how many uniquely memorable world-weary detectives there can be, for example-and yet every year at least one more seems to emerge from the wave of crime novels crashing onto bookstore shelves. It takes skill and insight to breathe life into stock characters, something too often dismissed by those who disdain genre fiction as inferior.

So how do we flesh out our characters when they arise from the needs of our stories, or when they otherwise lack the specificity, uniqueness or power necessary to engage a reader (or the writer)? The best inspiration often comes from within us-and from our experiences with the people in our lives.

Real-Life Characters

Near the end of his life, John Updike wrote a poem titled "Peggy Lutz, Fred Muth," in which he thanked his childhood friends and classmates-the "beauty" and "bully," the "fatso" and others-"for providing a sufficiency of human types ... all a writer needs."

Whether we know it or not, our minds and hearts are populated by all the characters we will ever need-though we may disassemble them and rearrange the parts into composites for variation.

To fully tap this potential, begin by reflecting upon the following real people in your life-jot down their names, fix them in your mind, remember a few details about their lives, their physical appearances, the effect they've had on you, and anything else you think would be important if you were to describe them to someone who didn't already know them.

Include in your exploration:
A family member you feel particularly close to
A family member you particularly dislike, or from whom you're estranged
Your closest friend from childhood with whom you've lost touch
Your closest friend from childhood with whom you're still in contact
A stranger whose path crossed yours this past week
A person you know personally and admire
A person you know personally and fear
The love who got away
The love you wished had gotten away
Your first love
Your greatest love
Your greatest childhood nemesis
Your greatest adulthood nemesis
The person from childhood who annoyed you the most
The person in your present-day life who annoys you the most
Your favorite neighbor
Your least-favorite neighbor
Your favorite co-worker
Your least-favorite co-worker
Your postman or someone else you deal with on a "business" level daily
An older person who has inspired you
A child who fascinates you
Someone for whom you harbor a secret crush or feel sexual attraction
Someone you believe has a crush on you
A person who believed in you
A person who thought you would never amount to anything
A person whose life you would never trade for your own

The list can go on, of course; it's limited only by one's own inventiveness. But writing out such a list provides a larger cast of characters than we originally might have realized we possessed. We can sometimes unwittingly get into ruts, writing variations on the same character over and over-the overbearing parent, the needy lover, the insufferable phony, the lonely aunt. The value of using people we know to inspire our characters is that we already see them so vividly and specifically.

Emotional Triggers

Of course, we know a great deal about the people in our lives, but we don't know everything-and this is why real people provide excellent but not perfect source material for characters. We will also have to draw on our own lives, at least as a starting point, to fathom a character's inner world.

It often surprises me how frequently writers, especially young writers, fail to explore the rich veins of emotion they possess in their own lives, so they can translate that to their characterizations.
The most important emotional incidents to explore in a character's life-and one's own-are:
THE MOMENT OF GREATEST FEAR: This is perhaps the most important emotional trigger, because almost all of our limitations, failures, frustrations and disappointments-and thus our secrets and vulnerabilities-can be traced back to or relate to some fundamental fear.

THE MOMENT OF GREATEST COURAGE: This may be physical valor, moral isolation or simply persisting in the face of some dread.

THE MOMENT OF GREATEST SORROW: Think of death, grief, loss.

THE MOMENT OF GREATEST JOY: It's strange how nebulous moments of joy can seem-and what a loss. At what stage in your character's life (or in your own) did the golden moment occur? What's happened since?

THE WORST FAILURE: Ouch, I know, but don't shun this moment; from a writer's point of view, it's golden (as are all our travails, sorrows, embarrassments and screw-ups-embrace them).

THE MOMENT OF DEEPEST SHAME: Shame is connected to self-image, and this moment will be when that image was seriously undermined in a particularly personal way in front of others.

THE MOMENT OF MOST PROFOUND GUILT: This involves some violation of a moral code. It may also make us ashamed, but guilt involves having knowingly done something wrong.

THE MOMENT OF MOST REDEMPTIVE FORGIVENESS: If you've been forgiven for some serious wrong, it's not likely you've forgotten it. It's permitted you to regain your place with some crucial loved one.

When performing this exercise, my students sometimes get caught up on trying to think of the "greatest" such moments. Don't fall into this needless trap. Instead, think merely of one moment (presumably of many) of particularly strong impact in any one category.

Obviously, plumbing your own life will not provide access to the whole of your characters' inner lives (unless your characters inhabit the same world you do). Rather, these moments provide touchstones, points of access to begin the exploration into similar moments in your characters' lives-a necessary but not sufficient precondition for a compelling portrayal.

Each of these triggers a vulnerability or a secret, perhaps a desire, maybe even a contradiction, depending on context. By envisioning these scenes in your characters' lives, after first exploring them in your own, you gain key insights into the formative episodes in their emotional lives, and, with hope, begin to see them more vividly in your mind's eye, the better to render them on the page.

The key is to intuit the character so distinctly she seems capable of acting on her own volition. Once this happens-and as I said at the outset, it's a mystery how or why it does-you're capable of beginning the dialogue that will form your story, asking your character: Where are you going? Why? How will you get there? With whom? And who will you have become when the journey is over?

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How to Craft Compelling Characters | WritersDigest.com

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The source and exact nature of the curious phenomena we refer to as characters remains something of a mystery, but the craft of characterization is not. Although it's clearly a cause for celebration-or at least relief-when a character appears in the mind's eye fully formed, the reality is that for most of us, this is a rare occurrence.

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This is a graphic organizer to helps students find character traits that are stated and what could be inferred from the actions that the character takes. I want to prove this to the students so that they can think about these things while they are reading their stories.

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This article tells us abut the process of authors crating characters in their stories and what the process entail. I want to include this article in my class to helps students understand why the process is important to the story, and what it means if the characters are not compelling.

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One way that students can become more invested in a book is if they create a book trailer like the one that is displayed int he article below. The trailer involves us getting a more dynamic view of the book and helps us understand a little more about what it entails. I hope to use this idea as a possible project where students try to introduce us to a character in one of the books that we are reading, then present it to the class. They can focus on anyone as long as they tell us more about a character, what they do in the book, a bit of their history and what are their motivations are. They might even try to make it a little more interactive by having someone act out the character for the class or have he character answer student questions.

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In middle school, we ask students to dissect texts and perform literary analysis. However, that does not mean that we have to limit how we assess their understanding of the books. If the desired learning objective is for students to . . .

Demonstrate understanding of the plot elements

Explore the role of tone and theme

Identify significant scenes or events and their impact on the story

Analyze a character and show an understanding of that character's motivations

Explain the relationship between the author's life and the story

. . . does it have to be an essay or book report?

Book Trailers

In the spirit of movie trailers, book trailers allow students to create video advertisements to entice new readers. Not only do these projects ensure that students have a firm grasp on the story's plot, setting, theme and main characters, but they also provide an opportunity to address persuasive writing as well as digital literacy concepts like copyright and publishing.

Students could use iMovie or Animoto to create and publish their videos. In fact, iMovie includes a set of pre-built trailer templates, and Ben Schersten (@benschersten) created a great set of PDF storyboards for students to use in planning those projects. Both iMovie and Animoto allow students to focus on the content, as they greatly simplify the editing process. Ann Feldmann's sixth graders produced a great set of examples. By incorporating their own drawings and writing instead of searching for images or shooting live video, the technology became a medium through which they could really engage with the literature.

Podcasts

On a foggy fall day, I took my ninth graders outside to sit on the porch while I read "The Tell-Tale Heart," tapping heartbeats on the deck and playing off the ominous weather. They hung on every word, engrossed in Edgar Allen Poe.

Leveraging the recording capabilities of most computers and mobile devices, students could explore the role of tone and sound by creating podcasts in the fashion of old-school radio shows. Using Garageband, Audacity, AudioBoo or any other sound recorder, students can retell portions of stories, complete with background music and sound effects, to demonstrate their understanding of tone, setting and theme, as well as practice their reading fluency.

Choose Your Own Adventure

My middle school students struggled with identifying and comprehending the concept of foreshadowing. They didn't readily see how certain moments or scenes could impact later events. By allowing students to recreate the story as a "choose your own adventure" tale, they have the opportunity to map out not only the original story but also a new one, identifying significant events or images and their impact on the story.

Within the Book Creator app, students can build e-books with text, images, drawing, audio and video. Since inserted images can be hyperlinked to specific pages, students could create interactive stories. Jonathan Wylie (@jonathanwylie) describes a similar approach in his blog using a combination of Google Forms and Google Presentations. Either one of these options encourages students to identify significant moments from a book and illustrate their relative impact on the overall plot.

Illustrated Character Analysis

Atticus Finch tells Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view -- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." In order to see whether or not your students truly comprehend the characters, encourage them to create a new scene and put those characters in the middle of it -- to take a walk in their shoes.

Storybird allows students to choose from hundreds of illustrations in order to create their own stories. As illustrated by Cybenglish, students could show their understanding of characters by placing them in new scenes in order to reveal their motivations.

Augmented Reality Author Studies

When my eighth graders read , they also conducted historical research into the life of Elie Wiesel to better understand the context of the book as well as the author's account. These studies turned into small research papers to which my students had hardly any personal connection beyond having completed an academic task.

On the other hand, Elissa Malespina (@SOMSLibrary) constructed a completely different experience for her students. At the culmination of their author study, her students created Animoto videos which they then turned into "auras" with Aurasma, an augmented reality app. To do this, students created trigger images representing either the author or a character from the book, which their classmates scanned in order to watch the videos. In the end, not only did these students articulate the relationships between the authors and the stories, constructing an immersive experience for the rest of the class, but they also contributed their knowledge to a broader community.

Vision of an Engaged Middle School Reader

How many middle school readers have you seen who look as engaged as the children in this picture?

If the true learning objective is to ignite a student's passion for literature and provide an opportunity to demonstrate understanding through a variety of modalities, then maybe it's time to move beyond the book report.

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Projects to Engage Middle School Readers | Edutopia

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It's my fault. I'll admit it. During my eight years in the classroom, I ruined at least two amazing literary works by assigning horrifically dull reading projects. My only hope is that those middle school students, whose enthusiasm I quashed, found another way to become passionate about literature.

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The cultural x-ray is a tool that students can use to analyze characters from other cultures. It starts off by drawing a figure and using it to organize the traits of a certain character. Outside of the character are traits that are observable, ones that one can see through the actions that are taken in the book. Inside the character, particularly in the heart, are the traits that we can determine about this character based on the actions that we read about. I would like to use this as a possible means to help student's understand characters, in other cultures or even in our own. I feel that this graphic organizer would be something that interest students and would like to use.

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While coming across all of this information on characterization, I kept thinking about how it would apply to actual people. am trying to show students how important it is to connect books and stories to real life, so it would be a great idea to start out by characterizing themselves. In an exercise that is similar to a cultural x-ray, I would like the students to think about what motivates them, what their goals are, what they like, and what they plan to work on. After which, I would like for the students to think about what they are like and what personality traits that they convey to other people. As well as what might be below the surface. I want to make sure that they are thinking critically on who they are and what they have found out about themselves. (Idea came from the following article.)

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Teaching Character Development Through Filling Out a Personal Survey: Creative Writing Lesson Plan

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Teaching story writing and fiction writing includes teaching how to develop well-rounded characters in the story. Use this lesson plan to teach characterization by having your students fill out a personal survey for themselves and then for their characters.

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Meet Jack, a boy that happens to be a big daydreamer. You wouldn't think that his daydreams would amount to much or cause trouble, but now they seem to be coming to life and they are starting to turn things upside-down. Fortunately Jack starts to channel special abilities that make him a "conductoid". But in order to make everything right, he needs to tea up with his realistic sister Phoebe to help save the day. I wanted to use this book because of the dynamic of the characters, while one is a dreamer and the other is realistic, it makes the story a little more interesting. It is also a good way to have students characterize these two siblings and see why they think the ways that they do.

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Amelia lost : the life and disappearance of Amelia Earhart

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Amelia lost : the life and disappearance of Amelia Earhart

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The story of Ameila Earhart is conveyed to us from the beginning of her life to the very last time anyone saw her.This book helps us see what this woman was like when she was alive and the actions that she took to become the first female pilot and defy the odds. This book, being about an actual person was one that I wanted to include so students can see how characterization could work with actual people, what can we tell about this person given the actions that she took in her life. While it may not have the personal thoughts or feelings that some of the other books in this category have, it would be good practice for students to try and work on this skill with information that they can perceive from reading about this woman

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This story focuses on Jacqueline and her live growing up in the 1960's. In this story we see her life as she lives with her family in the south and in the north, having to deal with segregation and discrimination. All the while Jacqueline is trying to find her niche in the world, which so happens to be writing. The journey that she takes is quite long, focusing in on her feelings and thoughts about what she has to deal with. I wanted to use this book because it focuses on poetry to convey it's story. I think that this would be a great way to use poetry to see how characterization can be pulled from the descriptive use of words that we see. As well as the time period that this girl went through, it would help us see the motivation that she has to find her talent.

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Stanley Yelnats is a boy that is unjustly accused of stealing sneakers and is sent to a detention center called Camp Green Lake. Here he meets quite a number of colorful characters like Mr. Sir, The Warden, Armpit, and Zero, just to name a few. The punishment that they have for Stanley s digging holes, but what are they looking for? What about Stanley's no good dirty rotten pig stealing great-great- grandfather, how does he fit into this? I found that this book is full of different characters to analyze, not just the main character. The story is also quite humorous, which I would think that the kids would like about this story.

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The story follows the tale of a young Vietnamese girl called Ha, and her family as they are displaced from their homeland and take refuge in the United States. When the family gets there they have to deal with many problems, both financially and socially. As time goes on, Ha finds people that she can talk to and does her best to try and get around these challenges that she faces at school. This is another poetry book that I thought would be helpful for characterization, the descriptive imagery allows the students to see what this girl is like and her motivations. I also felt that this is a good book to express about characterization of characters from different countries, who have different ideals. Helping to emphasize that while we may not see certain traits or traditions as important, other culture in fact do.

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This article talks about a teaching technique about characterization that will engage kids. A student picks a character from a book and fills out what they would think would be on that characters phone (if they had one). The students can draw pictures of things that the character might take a picture of, the music that they might listen to, email messages that they might receive from other people in the book, or maybe apps that they might have on their phone. This activity takes characterization and uses it for a fun activity that students will enjoy. I hope to use this with some of the characters that we will be reading in this module like Bud, Not Buddy or The Lighting Thief to see how well students understand characterization and if they can use this skill to guess what characters would do in this context.

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Laura  Randazzo – Solutions for the Secondary Classroom

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My freshmen are wrapping up our study of The Odyssey this week, and I couldn't help but share their adorable efforts on a recent in-class activity. Like a proud parent who tapes gold-star papers to the refrigerator, I often post awesome creations on my classroom's back wall of cabinets. Make it onto the cabinet display? Two bonus points for you!

Here's a close-up look at some of my latest favorites:

The "Whose Phone Is This?" activity works with every novel and play. In fact, my juniors will complete the same worksheet when we get to The Catcher in the Rye in a few weeks. I'm guessing I'll have a lot of red hunting cap-adorned selfies on that round.

Teach on, everyone!

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My freshmen are wrapping up our study of The Odyssey this week, and I couldn't help but share their adorable efforts on a recent in-class activity. Like a proud parent who tapes gold-star papers to the refrigerator, I often post awesome creations on my classroom's back wall of cabinets.

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Percy Jackson is a regular boy who has never known his dad. But that all changes when he is attacked by a mythical creature, his life changes. He learns that he is a demi-god, the son of Posiden, and that much of the legends of the reek world are true and are a part of America. Now he must find the lightning bolt of Zeus before the gods of Olympus go to war with each other. I included this book was because I wanted a story that was focused on adventure, where we could see a hero on a journey where he learns more about himself and changes from when we first saw him in the beginning. I also noticed that this is a popular book with students, so I feel that this would be a great book to exploit for characterizations. There are quite a few characters that we could focus on.

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In 1936, a young orphan boy named Bud strikes out with his suitcase full of stuff on the look for who his father is. He has a lead on it with a flyer on the Dusky Devastators of the Depression that his mother left behind, they are a band that might hold a clue to who is real father is. Now Bud is on a mission to find these musicians and their leader, Herman E. Calloway to find the answer to his question, is Herman my father? I wanted to use this piece to helps students to see the perspective of characterization from a historical perspective. How this boy is trying to find his father and how living during the great depression might effect his thinking and his actions.

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The video used here is meant to help someone understand why characters do the things that they do through certain video clips of movies. I plan to use the first half of this video as a means of discussion and trying to understanding more about motivations. I hope to use this as a practical means to seeing what would motivate a character before we did it with stories.

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This clip is a brief overview on what character traits and motivations are. I plan to use this video to help students understand about character motivations. This will be a little something that I use to help the students understand a little more about the topic. Then afterward see what questions the students have.