Characters - Young Writer's Workshop

Instructor, Oct, 1997 by Joan Novelli

Where can children meet a heroic baseball player, get to know a girl growing up in the mining settlements of California, make their way down a crowded street with a man who mends old socks, and join forces with a young girl trying to break an evil curse? These and other fascinating characters come to life in the pages of books (all featured on the front and back sides of the poster, after the Electronic Learning in Your Classroom pullout section).

In these pages, you'll find strategies to help your students create colorful characters!

Mini-Lessons with Ella Enchanted

On the reproducibles (after the Electronic Learning in Your Classroom pullout) Gail Carson Levine shares an early draft from Ella Enchanted and the final version. Following are ways you can teach with these reproducible pages.

* What can students tell about Ella from reading the excerpt? Have them identify words and phrases that reveal the character.

* Challenge students to find and discuss as many revisions as they can. (For example, Gail added two sentences about Ella's father to help set up his character.)

* Launch a mini-lesson on the serial comma. Copy the second sentence without the punctuation and let students read it. Now ask them to read it again with the commas in place. Do the commas make the curing soup easier to imagine?

Characters Lead the Way

That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift. When I cried inconsolably through my first hour of life, my tears were her inspiration. Shaking her head sympathetically at Mother, the fairy touched my nose. "My gift is obedience. Ella will always be obedient. Now stop crying, child."

I stopped....

- from Ella Enchanted by Gall Carson Levine (HarperCollins, 1997)

Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine's first published story, is a Cinderella story with a surprising twist. Though she wanted to retell the fairy tale, she "needed a reason for the character to be so good." So Ella's goodness comes from a fairy's gift of obedience. Try as she might to follow her own will, she must always obey others. You can just guess what happens when the evil stepsisters discover this.

Though set in a make-believe world of gnomes, ogres, and other creatures, Ella seems as real as any child. Here's how Gail creates unforgettable characters.

* Gail asks questions to get to know her characters. Who is this person? What is her room like? What's in her pockets?

* Writing in the first person makes it easier for Gall to be the character. For secondary characters, she steps into their shoes to figure out what they would do.

* As a book develops, Gail plays hopscotch among the characters. When something happens to one, she thinks about how this affects the others.

Choosing a Name

What name would your students give a fairy? For the fairy in Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine thought Lucinda sounded just right. Sometimes Gail gets inspiration for characters' names from people she knows. Other times, she uses a baby-name book. Ask parents to lend you some - they're sure to become favorite additions to your students' writing resources!

Win this Book!

Teaching Writing: A Workshop Approach by Adele Fiderer (Scholastic Professional Books, 1997; [800] 724-6527) offers step-by-step plans for conducting writing workshops. Enter to win one of a dozen copies of this book by sending a postcard by November 1, 1997, to Workshop Giveaway - October, Instructor, Scholastic Inc., 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Please include your name, grade, school address/phone, and a favorite student publishing tip. All submissions become the property of Scholastic Inc. and may be used for any purpose in any publication.

Five-Senses Scavenger Hunt

In What a Writer Needs (Heinemann, 1993), Ralph Fletcher calls them a writer's "most important tools." They're the five senses - and with them your students can add the details their writing needs to paint believable pictures of their characters.

Here's how Gail Carson Levine appeals to our sense of sight to help us picture Ella, her main character in Ella Enchanted.

... I put on the frock Mother liked best. She said the spicy green brought out my eyes. I thought I looked like a grasshopper in it - a skinny, spiky grasshopper with a human head and straight hair.

Read this passage aloud. Then ask: What words help you picture Ella? Follow up with a senses scavenger hunt, letting students team up to scour books they're reading for ways authors use the senses to create characters. Ask students to create posters with what they find, listing each sense along with representative passages from books. (Be sure they include titles and authors.) Bring students together to share their examples, then display the posters to inspire students as they develop characters in their own stories.

Scribbles Take Shape

Daniel Judah Sklar, writer-in-residence for Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and author of Playmaking: Children Writing and Performing their Own Plays (Teachers & Writers, 1991), draws on his experience as a playwright and teacher to help students breathe life into their characters. Here's a favorite activity.