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Vile Villains and Bold Baddies: How to Write Convincing Antagonists.

Where is the hero of a story without the villain to thwart their moves and provide drama? Learn how to create well-rounded antagonists, use effective descriptive language and maybe make your reader sympathise with them. Maybe...
Tracy Lambert
Average rating:
4.9
Number of reviews:
(235)
Star Educator
Class

What's included

1 live meeting
55 mins in-class hours
Assessment
Informal assessment during class

Class Experience

US Grade 4 - 6
Many actors will tell you that it’s more fun playing the villain. It can be just as much fun writing them too.

In our one-time class, we’ll take a look at how we can create an antagonist that commands attention as a fully rounded character (and those villains do like attention!).

We’ll take a look at what a villain is in creative writing and why we need one at all.
We’ll brainstorm villainous vocabulary and dastardly descriptive terms (looking at verbs, abstract nouns and adjectives among others) and build a word bank to use throughout the class. 
After that, we’ll practice writing a few effective sentences, using approaches that we may not have considered before.
We’ll also discuss giving our villain a backstory and how that can enrich our characterisation (especially with character flaws, motivation, personality, and goals).

Together we’ll brainstorm ideas such as using settings, dialogue, appearance and names to help create a memorable character.

We’ll also experiment with writing from different viewpoints to help understand our creations.

During our main writing time, students will be able to choose whether to start working on a character profile of their villain or on the beginning of a story or scene with their villain. 

Students will be encouraged to share their ideas and writing, time permitting, through either reading aloud, sharing in the chat feature, uploading to the class or sending to me in a private message through the classroom if they prefer. Students are under no pressure to share at all if they’d rather not.
Learning Goals
Students will learn:
the role of the ‘villain’ character in creative writing
the value of building a word bank of descriptive language
exploring language to create powerful images and descriptions
how to ‘flesh out’ a character 
what a backstory is and how to write it into a story
the usefulness of writing from different viewpoints
sharing ideas and participating in discussions, whether verbally or via the chat feature.
learning goal

Other Details

Parental Guidance
Content is age appropriate
Supply List
A notebook or paper and something to write with, or a device to use for writing and note-taking. 
A small whiteboard may be handy but by no means necessary.
External Resources
Learners will not need to use any apps or websites beyond the standard Outschool tools.
Joined September, 2020
4.9
235reviews
Star Educator
Profile
Teacher expertise and credentials
Writing is my passion and as well as majoring in English at university, along with Theatre Arts, I've almost 20 years of experience in teaching English in primary schools. Over those years, I have worked regularly with groups of children specifically on English writing skills and teaching creative writing online.

Reviews

Live One-Time Class
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$13

per class
Meets once
55 min

Completed by 3 learners
Live video meetings
Ages: 9-12
1-6 learners per class

This class is no longer offered
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