Your characters will often be the most important part of your story. Whether a character is a hero or a villain, the reader needs to feel like they know them.
It can take a long time to get to know someone properly but stories often don’t give you a lot of time to do this.
Instead, you need a shortcut; a quick, clean way for your reader to learn about a character. Once you know the character better, you can understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
Today’s writing challenge looks at character stories in a different way. Today we’ll be looking at how we learn about other people in real life.
(*Teachers: There are printable PDFs available for this task. These are revised according to Scottish primary school levels (‘Up to P4’=approx. age 8 and under, and P5+=approx. age 9 and up). You can download the sheets by clicking on these links: Up to P4 [Greyscale], Up to P4 [Colour], P5+ [Greyscale], or P5+ [Colour].)
Getting to know you…quickly?
It can feel odd to step past this sort of slow learning and make an effort to learn their stories straight away. Yet, when you want to get a good story out of someone you sometimes have to learn fast.
Today we’re going to try and find an important story. We’ll look through another person’s memories and discover the stories hiding there.
The easiest way to do this is to behave like a reporter. A reporter is someone who works for a newspaper, a TV news station, or makes news content on the internet.
Reporters work with facts and this week we’re looking for stories hiding inside facts. After our ‘interviews’ we’ll be using the answers we get to create a story.
Stories based on imagination are ‘fictional’. The stories we’ll be working on here are factual (not imaginary) so we call this a ‘non-fiction’ story.
Find their story
Our first job is to find a story that’s hiding in someone’s memory. Pair up with someone for this writing challenge.
If you’re in school you can work with the person who sits beside you. If you’re at home then find someone in the house who has five or ten minutes to spare.
When you are asking your partner questions listen with care to their answers.
At this point don’t write down every word they say. All you need to do is try to find a hidden story about this person. There’s time for writing notes later.
Look out for something unusual, or exciting about their stories. Here are some starter questions that should help you find that story:
- What’s the best day you’ve ever had?
- What is your greatest achievement?
- Have you ever been somewhere unusual?
- What is your favourite hobby?
Get the details
The answers your partner gives you should help you find at least one story to ask about. Pick one answer that sounds particularly interesting and try to find out more.
Reporters ask some key questions about any story. These are often called the ‘five Ws‘. They are: Who? What? When? Where? and Why? and often you’ll add How?
As well as these questions, try to ask as many questions as you can about how your partner felt about things. (Note: Feelings will help you a lot when you turn your interview into a story in next week’s writing challenge)
Your partner might have very short answers to some questions. They may give you a lot of information for other answers. Either is fine and any answer you get will help decide on what sort of story they’re telling.
(Note: You didn’t have to write notes for the first task but you will need to write notes for this. Grab some paper and try to jot down the most important bits of the answers you get.
Events/Places:
- Who did they go with/ who was involved?
- What happened at the event? AND What did they need to do to achieve it/ get there?
- When did this take place?
- Where did the event happen?
- Why did they attend this event?
AND
- How did they feel before it? AND How do they feel after going?
Hobbies/ Skills:
- Who helps them with this hobby/skill? AND Who got them interested in their hobby/ skill?
- What is the hobby/skill? What have they done most recently in relation to their hobby/skill? AND What would someone do to get into/learn this hobby/skill?
- When did they start learning about their hobby/skill?
- Where do they go to do their hobby/skill? AND/OR Where do they go to get the things they need for their hobby/ skill?
- Why did they decide to start their hobby/skill? Why do they continue to practice this skill/ hobby?
AND
- How do they feel about their hobby/skill? How do they do what they do?
More to come
This is the first of a two-part activity. In the end, you will have written a ‘non-fiction’ story (meaning factual story) about your partner. Your notes from this week will be vital for part two so keep a hold of them.
Part two will appear next week. In the meantime please feel free to share any other stories you have using the buttons below. you can share all sorts of stories; written, drawn, animation, jokes. Whatever you like.
There’s a button to sign up below (if you’re new to Celebrating Stories).
If you are a member already you can use the sign-in button. Once you’re signed in you can enter the ‘Writer’s Room’ where you can add your story.
Happy writing,
All the best, John
OR
THEN…
