Timothy A. Grady
Focusing on character and characterization, the unit brings these subjects down to the level of how to craft prose word-by-word to produce a desired effect in the reader (or range of effects in a range of readers). To achieve a systematic formula for the successful creation of prose about character, the unit brings together concepts outlined by Janet Burroway, Leonora Woodman, and other writers. The unit is composed of three major parts (preceded by an initiating section) and is designed to last between four to six weeks.
The overall structure of the unit is guided by its chief a strategy that pairs a process-oriented portfolio with daily writing workshops. Too often, the portfolio in a classroom acts "merely as storage or final evaluation device",
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but in a creative writing classroom, such limited use of a portfolio is almost deadly to the educational objectives. Writing is an art and therefore dependent on artistic processes. Thorough use of the portfolio as a pedagogical tool, one that establishes a formal discourse between teacher and student through mutual feedback, as well as a repository of work facilitates a master-apprentice relationship with students where the students become, "constructors of knowledge…[in accordance with] the psychological and educational research of…John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky."
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The process-oriented portfolio focuses on three major aspects of the students' writing in the unit: production, perception, and reflection. This unit on characterization in prose is designed to help student writers tackle authentic problems that face professional writers, and as such, the process-oriented portfolio is designed to emulate real-world writing endeavors that, "often take a long period of time, require attention to many steps along the way, can be solved in multiple ways, and build on previous understandings".
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Production, perception and reflection, as applied to in this unit via the portfolio become the channel through which content is delivered rather than just assessment aspects of students' performance. As these aspects are critical to the teaching of this unit, each is discussed below briefly.
Production in this unit, and portfolio, is the act of creative writing as applied to characterization in prose fiction. The unit uses various types of analytical and reflective writing, but the role of production (creative writing) is the one it uses most. It would be easy to let analysis and reflection overwhelm the self-constructed student creative writing; however, authentic creative writing is "at the heart of artistry" and "reflection and perception…become more meaningful when they grow out of the student's own work."
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The central role of production demands the large amount of time devoted to student creative writing in the lesson plans. During the unit the students engage in creative writing (focused on characterization) almost everyday for the majority of each class meeting.
Though production is critical, perception, as a role in the portfolio, is equally important. It is through the students' study of published writers' works (and eventually their own and their peers') that perception becomes a part of this unit and helps to develop the students' own writing. Studying published authors' works to examine how they tackled characterization "enriches students' experience of the world and their art making" as the students learn "to recognize new options and can make use of expanded visions in their own work."
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At various points within the unit, the students' critical focus on published authors is shifted to peers' work and their own writing, allowing the students to become their own critics.
The final aspect of the portfolio used in this unit is reflection. In many ways it is reflection that truly helps student writers to enrich their own writing (though it relies on both production and perception). It is in the act of reflection that "students take an active role, not only in construction their own understanding, but also in demonstrating how their understanding has evolved over time."
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Through reflection on the characterization that students create in their own prose, students become aware of how they have or have not applied the concepts gleaned from studying each others' and published authors' works. Throughout the unit both formal and informal reflection are implemented through process logs, discussion, and critiques.
The three aspects of the portfolio come together in daily writing workshops that integrate all three. While curriculum is often laid out in sequential arrangements, learning is often recursive. A student may very well learn D before A as opposed to a orderly sequence of A, B, C, and then D. The daily integration of production, perception and reflection helps daily writing workshops to create an environment where there are "two sets of curricula…one for the whole class, and one for each individual student".
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The writing workshops allow each student multiple opportunities to engage with the different aspects of the unit's teaching.
Though the structural design of the unit offers recurring opportunities to learn about how to characterize when writing prose, it does have a specific sequence of educational objectives. While learning is not necessarily sequential, it is organizationally advantageous to present the concepts, elements, and exercises in a sequential manner; otherwise, the range of particular objectives that contribute to the overall goal of students effectively characterizing could be overwhelming to both students and teachers.
The particular objectives of the unit, as they appear sequentially in the lesson plans, are: 1) to explore aspects of characterization and fiction, 2) to create rudimentary character sketches based on observations of people, 3) to reflect on their prior knowledge and experience with on characterization, 4) to know five methods of characterizing in fiction, 5) to characterize their own characters using each method, 6) to reflect on how different characterizations are different, 7) to know three methods of characterizing through modulations in prose, 8) to characterize their own characters using the three methods of modulating prose, 9) to reflect on how different prose styles affect characterization and why, 10) to understand how character is a pattern in a prose sequence, 11) to craft stories using various techniques of characterization, and 12) to reflect on how characterization affects story and how their facility with it has changed.
Obviously, the range of particular educational objectives could become unwieldy quite quickly. Certain objectives may take longer than others to implement. In an effort to guide student development and help present the unit, the unit is divided into three major parts: elements of characterization (content), prose style of characterization (form), and the interplay of the content and form as pattern within a story (content and form). Each section, along with its corresponding objectives, can be expanded or shortened for different classes.
Before the unit's major sections begin however, an initiating section introduces the focus of characterization in prose. The purpose of this section goes beyond simple introduction though. It acts as a means of authentically evoking the students' interest, prior knowledge, and writing. As education scholars Robert Marzano and John Kendall noted in The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, "it is the interaction of…attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that determines both motivation and attention."
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In other words, an initiating activity needs to go way beyond simple a verbal introduction of concepts to be successful.
As a successful initiating activity to characterization in fiction, students practice observing people as characters. Taken from countless writer's experience, including my own, one of the best ways to "understanding people is through observation and… knowledge of others";
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it connects writing to life, one's self, and the world. To achieve maximum effect, the observation of people should be done in an environment that is outside the classroom, and if possible, the school grounds. The students' observations of strangers on the street, in a government building, or a shopping plaza are all excellent venues for the initiation. These unfamiliar locations and subjects of observation help cue the students' curiosity, sense of purpose, and encourage them to experiment and take risks.
Wherever the location of the initiation turns out to be, students are instructed to write down simple characteristics and draw some basic inferences for the at least three to five of the people they observe. Before the students begin writing, a short list of suggestions given by the teacher help students to focus (characteristics can include height, dress, hair color, movement, etc; inferences might include the subjects' moods, personalities, occupations, and so on). At the start of the initiation, the teacher also encourages students to write openly and go wherever they want with their observations. Depending on the prior knowledge of students, the teacher can review fundamentals of good character design: credibility, complexity, purpose, and change as well.
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At the conclusion of the initiating activity, the students discuss what it was like to observe people, what they noticed, and how it made them think. As the unit progresses, the students will be using these observations and character sketches almost daily, so an intensive period of discussion and reflection on the activity is advised. The students are encouraged to explore what they already know about writing characters in fiction, types of characters, ways of characterizing, the role of character in fiction, etc.
Ultimately, students use these observations and character sketches as the raw material for the characterization lessons later in the unit. These character sketches and the students' subsequent writing exercises will be a primary source of reflection in student journal writing (hereafter termed process-logs). In this way, the students are reconnected to the evocative power of the initiating exercise. An optional extension to the unit is to repeat the initiating exercise at various points in the unit to re-cue students' inspiration. A teacher can bring students a new location, have them look for certain characteristics, or focus on a particular method of characterization as the students observe in the optional re-initiations.
After the introduction, the first major section of the unit introduces students to five specific methods of characterization in fiction. These five methods focus on the content of the words used in fiction. For example, students examine the different ways to characterize in fiction, such as when an author uses a phrase like "he sneered at them for their weakness"(action) as opposed to "he said, 'you feeble toads'"(speech).
Depending on which commentator on the craft of writing fiction you read, there are different numbers of methods authors use to characterize their characters; this unit uses five of those listed by Janet Burroway in Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. These methods deal with the nature of the content of the prose: actions, dialogue, thoughts, descriptions, and setting.
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The last method, concerning characterization and setting, is one of the most accessible "economical means of sketching a character"
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and can be used as alternate starting point/focus for students having difficulty. These five are not a perfect list or are they intended to be, but they do roughly cover the most common ways to characterize in contemporary fiction.
This section of the unit utilizes creative experimentation where the students are asked to characterize a person or character in multiple ways (e.g. through setting, or dialog, or description, etc). Students use their original character sketches from the initiating activity as raw material for these experiments in characterization. Students should be encouraged at this point to begin playing around with creating a "book" of characters to work with in the upcoming short story they will write. A book of characters, a collection of various experiments with characterization and different character sketches, acts as a creative research tool for writers and will help to build student enthusiasm as they begin to plan out (brainstorm) for the stories they will eventually write through the unit.
There are several lessons within this section as each of the five methods of characterizing through content is explored and experimented with, but each bares a structural similarity to the rest. Every lesson begins by examining the work of a published author, a short lecture--discussion about the method under examination in the author's work, and then proceeds to student production of their own creative writing. Each session is then followed by a period of critique and reflection.
For example, the lesson on characterization and setting might begin with the examination of a passage from a best-selling novel, like Jim Butcher's Grave Peril. The novel, about a detective-wizard, is written in the pulpy, fast-passed, hard-boiled detective vein.
The novel opens, "There are reasons I hate to drive fast. For one, the Blue Beetle, the mismatched Volkswagon bug that I putter around in, rattles and groans dangerously at anything above sixty miles…As a rule, when I drive, I drive very carefully and sensibly. Tonight was an exception to the rule."
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At first students might think this passage has no setting, but the teacher can ask the class where the character is, what is he doing, what objects are described, what do the objects tell us about the character, and so. From student answers, the teacher can draw out that the main character is poor, out of place, involved with danger, not afraid, etc.
After this examination and critique, the teacher might review the specifics of how setting affects character: weather, objects, activity, time, culture, etc. The teacher can review another passage from the novel, or one from something completely different. The focus in the lesson is on how setting characterizes, not on individual works (though examplars are critical). Once the work has been examined, discussed and outlined, the students are instructed to choose one of the character sketches they made during the initiation and to apply setting as a characterizing element.
At the conclusion of this lesson, the teacher asks students to reflect in their process-logs on what they accomplished and how their writing changed from the character sketch to the exercise.
All the lessons in the first section follow a format similar to the example given for setting and characterization.
Next, the second major section examines and applies different techniques of prose style to affect characterization. The prose style of a piece creates rhythms, perspective, and dramatic structure in a reader's mind at the level of form, that is, beneath the content. It shapes how a reader engages with the content. Where the five methods deal with the characterizing content in fiction, prose style is concerned with the form. Though style is something beyond just linguistic tricks, learning particular aspects "allows…[students] a firmer control of their own writing".
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This section focuses on the very basic aspects of sentence length, arrangement, and complexity as aspects of prose style that affect characterization.
This section also uses creative experimentation where the students are asked to characterize a person or character in multiple ways (e.g. short sentences, long sentences, simple and complex). The lessons in this section proceed in a similar way to the first section. There is a critical examination of authentic works that deal with the concept the class is examining, then a period of student-centered production of their own writing, and finally an act of reflection. As this section goes forward, students are encouraged again to create a "book" of characters to work with in the upcoming short story they will write.
In the second section, the teacher emphasizes a number of things about sentence length, arrangement, and complexity that usually escape students. As different works are examined at the opening of each class, the teacher highlights the many possible purposes for various prose styles and their potential effect upon a range of readers.
Regarding the length of sentences, the teacher should discuss how longer sentences can produce a flowing feeling that might help characterize a character's internal calm, or how a longer sentence might be used to convey a character's sense of exhaustion, or even how a longer sentence might help add to the grandeur of character's thought; the number of possible reasons and effects of using longer sentences is virtually unlimited, so the important thing is to convey multiple reasons so that students begin to have a sense for possibility. As the presentation moves forward, the teacher bridges the examination of sentence lengths and their effects to the students. The teacher also examines shorter sentences and then the effect of mixing short and long sentences. During this lecture-discussion stage, the teacher continually asks for student perceptions about the concepts.
When the topic of sentence arrangement arises, the teacher should highlight how most, "English sentences flow from subject to verb to any objects" and the five major sentence patterns.
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The importance of the primary and ultimate position in a sentence is discussed. The teacher can illustrate through excerpted passages how a sentence that begins with a large number of object might predispose a reader to think a certain way about a character's action, or how an adverbial modifier in the primary position might undercut the character's own perception of events (thus characterizing the character as one who misperceives.) Again, the number of reasons and effects for various sentence arrangements is near limitless, so the crucial thing is to provide students with a multitude of possibilities. Again, during this lecture-discussion, the teacher continually bridges the questioning to the students, helping them develop a sense for sentence arrangement.
As the lessons move on to deal with sentence complexity as a way of affecting characterization, the teacher should touch on how multiple clauses can make a narrator's description of character capture contradictory or complex aspects of character. Depending on the sophistication of the class, the teacher can discuss any number of possible effects due to sentence complexity: how the use of semi-colons can heighten contrasts or insights, how multiple embedded clauses can create a sense of being surrounded or trapped, how the simplest basic clause can sometimes hit harder than the grammatically gymnastic sentence. As with the prose aspects of length and arrangement, the key is to provide students with many ways that sentence complexity can affect a characterizing element.
Finally, in the last section of the unit, the students use the characterization techniques, passages, and their "books" of character that they have developed to create a fictional story of their own; the story should have one round/dynamic character and one flat/static character.
In this section, students learn how different methods of characterization are used in combination to create an overall character. In other words, as the prose sequence informs the reader of various things about a character (actions, words, thoughts, etc.), the reader gets an overall "sense" for that character; the little bits about the person add up. Students examine how, as incremental characterizations builds upon each other, a reader creates a character schema (a mental framework centering around a specific persona) in a way similar to that in which the mind creates a person schema for real people.
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The way we think about real people is critical to how we think about characters; despite knowing that they are fictional constructs, "...most readers do unshakably continue to apprehend most novel characters as individuals...and as those apprehensions are built up, revised, and articulated, all sorts of extra-textual knowledge...is brought to bear"
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Students will also learn how that sense of character is changed by various interactions with prose style.
Students practice their construction of characters and prose through a multi-day workshop environment moving through the stages of writing, revision, peer-review, etc. as they write their own fictional stories. It is in this section that students will move from guided practice to truly independent writing. In a sense, the first two sections are primarily there for knowledge acquisition (though the students will be analyzing and creating daily), and this section is where they authentically apply that learning, create with it, and also reflect upon it.
Overall, each of the three major sections relies on the pedagogical principles of scaffolding and Bloom's taxonomy. Each section guides the students as they examine and deconstruct prose, and then, move through the taxonomy to the act of creation.
However, as creative writing is an organic, inspired activity, it is important to balance focused, guided practice with student choice and flexibility. That balance is achieved through limiting the teaching, feedback, and practice to characterization as opposed to other aspects of fiction. The scope of this unit is further limited to looking at two general types of characters in fiction: the flat and the round. By flat, I mean those characters that clearly are meant to serve only as functionaries for the story--the ones that readers don't get too upset by their death, torment, buffoonery, etc. In contrast, round characters are those that are clearly being rendered by the author as whole beings--generally, the ones readers are deeply sympathetic to and disturbed, or overjoyed, by their fortunes. The description and classification of flat and round characters above is grossly simplistic, but it serves to help limit the scope of this section of the unit; if a teacher wishes, they may discuss how a flat character may also be the protagonist of a fictional .
On the other hand, as seen in the individual lessons for this unit, almost every day focuses on keeping the students writing in a flexible, authentic manner. Teaching the creation of prose at a precise level of word-by-word construction, it would be easy to let the learning become stifling on what Richard Hugo terms "triggering", the spontaneous act of creating the next piece of prose from the last piece. Various strategies are used to continue to pique students' curiosity and interest throughout the unit.
As a resource for this unit, students analyze selections from high-interest, sophisticated texts such as "Jesus' Son" by Dennis Johnson (though any text sufficiently well-written will work). Other contemporary texts might include Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk or "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" by Stephen King. These texts act as models for the students and are integral to this systematic approach to constructing characters in prose. In analyzing these texts, students also learn how authors use character pattern and story to help different readers, and different learners, interpret the signals given within a prose sequence; this is a critical part of the process, as it weighs heavily upon the nature of the formulaic system they will learn in the construction process.
On the whole, students will learn about the construction of characters in fiction and about how we think about people in life. In the end, fiction is always a simulacrum of reality (at some level); as students work to construct characterizing prose that affects readers in precise ways, they will deepen their own understanding of how people perceive, present and communicate their personal characters to each other, and how this applies to themselves.