Answer survey questions to better understand your characters in these Character Tests by R.J. Hembree as part of the online Writers’ Village University project (found via GalleyCat).
Sample question from the Character Builder Test (Hembree, 2010).
Building realistic characters is an essential component of writing fiction. The Character Tests are a part of a Character Building Workshop page, which also contains Character Building Tips, character archetypes, and a set of character disorders that help define them.
The challenge that comes with working with something like this is that following archetypes too closely has the potential to lead to cliched writing. This site could be very useful if used with caution. From the site’s creator:
The Character Building Workshop is an independent study of your characters using these online questionnaires. The process of filling out the forms will help you, the writer, learn about your characters on a more in-depth level. Once the questions have been answered, you will know more about the roles your characters play in your story. No longer will they be names on a page; they will become living, breathing beings as you continue writing your story.
—Hembree, 2010)
Free Speculative Fiction Online is a great, centralized source for tracking down science fiction online. It links to online repositories and the websites of a wide variety of authors: from classics like Asimov to stalwarts like Gaiman. There are hundreds of authors, short stories, and novels (including any number of Hugo and Nebula Award winners), and all of them are free.
While discussing polar exploration, I mentioned the story of Amundsen and Scott’s race for the south pole. The fascinating blog, Letters of Note, has Scott’s last letter, written bit by bit, on the ice, to his wife back home. It starts, “To: my widow.”
Photograph of Scott's (far left) expedition at the South Pole, on 17 January 1912, the day after they discovered Amundsen had reached the pole first. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
P.S. Letters of Note is a great resource for examples of great letter writing.
Tips and links range from how to start a writing bible, to the correct writing posture. I’m partial to tip on how to turn your computer into a typewriter, although it’s something that’s never worked for me:
The free Q10 program will convert your distracting computer into an old-fashioned typewriter–focused by real typing sounds and disconnected from the Internet.
–Boog (2010) in GalleyCat
And laughter without philosophy woven into it is but a sneeze at humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom, and if a piece of humor is to last, it must do two things. It must teach and it must preach – not professedly. If it does those two things professedly, all is lost. But if it does them effectively, that piece of humor will last forever – which is 30 years.
– Mark Twain
The term is not loaded with connotations of wisdom and wit, but “adolescent humor” is inescapable in the middle school. The question is, “What to do about it?”
(from Powell's Books)
With the recent furor over Mark Twain’s autobiography, which was embargoed for 100 years, I’m taking my cues from him (see above), especially since I like this philosophical approach to life in general.
I suspect it has much to do with the development of abstract thinking. During adolescence we develop a much greater ability to see and to create subtexts. With humor, the philosophy is behind the scenes, which makes it deep and resonant, but harder to see.
Background context is also important with humor, especially parody and satire: however, just because students can’t reference Plato or Socrates (the philosopher not the footballer), does not mean they don’t have their own cultural markers they can critique. Getting past “adolescent humor” means adding layers.
I am, of course, no expert on humor. This cycle I’m working with the mentor author group and my project is focusing on humorous dialogue. I have no high hopes, but I’m giving it the old college try.
None of this made it any easier last week, when I had to explain editorial cartoons. Our class is trying something new for a newsletter, a newspaper style. I vetoed Garfield-like strips as too simple, and insisted that their cartoons had to make a statement first and aim for humor second. The first student who volunteered for the job gave up after a couple hours of pulling his hair out. I think I’ll try showing them some editorial cartoons if I can find a good website. We’ll see how it goes.
Saudade:
Pronunciation: (from Forvo)
Definition: Portuguese – One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade. (from Jason Wire at MatadorNetwork)
Last week I had to explain the English word, nostalgia. Its meaning was a little difficult to convey because, when you think about it, to feel nostalgic you need to have had a certain amount of self-reflection. Self-reflection is typically not a strong point of early adolescence, which is why we have Personal World every day.
Then I came across Jason Wire’s list, and there are some wonderful words on there, but the one that resonates right now is the Portuguese “saudade”. I like how it is subtly different from nostalgia, but I also like that there is an entire genre of music, fado, that embodies the word.
NPR has a great review of fado artist, Ana Moura:
Also, in looking up the pronunciation of the word I came across the Forvo website. It has recordings of people saying words from around the world, so you can hear the sounds of words from native speakers. I chose the one in this post, a female Portuguese voice (), because it seems to capture the poignant emotion of the word quite well.
WritingDEN‘s Tips-O-Matic is a great site on writing great paragraphs and essays. The pages are very simple and well organized, without all the distracting noise of ads and extraneous information.
The language curriculum focuses, in general, on developing good writing style and craft, but some of my students need to work on the basics of essays a bit more, particularly with high-school entrance essays coming up.
And, saying these words, this wicked Wolf fell upon poor Little Red Riding-Hood, and ate her all up. — Perrault, 1922, p. 25..
Little Red Riding-hood as illustrated by Harry Clarke.
One of my students chose to do their first writing assignment in the mold of a classic fairy tale. So, as part of the revision process, I suggested they read the original Little Red Riding-hood to get away from the conventional, Disneyfied storylines. The Guttenberg Project, which aims to make available all the books that are now in the public domain as free ebooks, has Charles Perrault’s original book of fairy tales.
The student was somewhat surprised that Little Red Riding-Hood was eaten by the wolf in the end. They shared this with the rest of the class quite loudly.
