Unleash the Magic: Discovering and Exploring the Writer Within

Have you ever read a book and fell in love with a character? Have you ever read a book and hated the characters? Were they underdeveloped or not developed? Were you able to connect with the character? Did the character contribute nothing to the story?
Did you ever say I could have written that character better? I would have changed this or that and the story would have been so much better. Would you like to learn the steps to creating a lovable protagonist or an antagonist that people love to hate?

In the first two classes we will take a look at characters that the students have created and take a deeper look at the characters and what motivates them. What influences the choices they make and what are the consequences of their choices.
There will  be discussion of setting and mood. How do those things affect the character, the conflict and the overall story.

It takes conflict to make a story. Without conflict the story will be flat, nothing to motivate your character to make a change, to continue the journey. What is the conflict in your favorite book? How does the conflict motivate the character?  What external and internal conflicts do you see in your  favorite character? How can you add conflict to your own stories.


In classes three and four we will  take a look at our characters, we will discuss the conflicts the students have created for their characters and discuss ways to up the ante and make them more challenging and suspenseful.

Class Three:  
We will define conflict and explore how it affects the story.
We will then take a look at the student’s favorite stories and identify the conflicts by working our way through their favorite character’s questionnaire.
Questions we will look at will be:
1.	More than anything in the world what does the protagonist want?
2.	What he/she is afraid of?
3.	What is his /her general weakness? 
How did these answers affect the protagonist and lead to conflicts?

Class Four:
We will explore conflict as well as the 4 Act structure by discussing Act I  and how the characters story fits into it. We will  explore whether or not the conflicts are enough to sustain a plot.


Class Five: We will review students homework and discuss Act II and  Act III. 
A few things that will be considered is dialogue, action versus lulls,  s character change and growth  Novel beginnings and the exciting event that starts the characters on their journey. 
Then we will talk about rising action (conflict). and finally talk about climax and falling action to the end of the story.

Class Six:
I will discuss show versus tell, and the use of strong verbs and nouns.

Classes Seven through 12: We will discuss and critique the students writing.
The students will write assigned parts of their own stories and I will critique and edit what they have written.