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This week at Story Club, my young writers’ workshop, we looked at the antagonist. This also made us look at our protagonist — do they have a clear goal? The job of the antagonist, after all, is to get in the way of it. We spoke about antagonists who have opposite goals to the protagonist. (Harry Potter and Voldemort are a great pair, especially as each has a goal to destroy the other, among other goals. They get in each other’s way.) Other antagonists we discussed were Mrs. Coulter (who was respected in the group possibly for her dress sense and smarts) and the antagonistic force of all the perils of the ocean, including divers capturing fish from reefs (in Finding Nemo). So how did we get to the heart (or heartlessness) of these characters? We interviewed them!  Interview questions we used:
Interviewing the characters helped us hear our characters’ voices and uncover gaps in our knowledge about them. This was a fun way to get to know them. What antagonists came up in the young writers’ group? Some great ones. A ghostly presence (more of an antagonistic force than one antagonist) who enters human minds and takes over. A rich lord in Victorian England buying gunpowder from smugglers. A woman who dresses to impress, with dark purposes. An evil raven called Maiden. And ‘Derrick with a Duck named Dave’.
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 This week we started the first ‘Story Clubs’ of 2023. Story Club is my young writers’ workshop, currently for 9–16 yrs. Launched in March of 2021, when Cambridge was tentatively beginning to ease out of a tight lockdown, we are still going strong (with some original members)! We are still enjoying the community room of Thrive cafe (and the hot chocolates). And the story ideas are as engaging as ever.
For the first set of workshops for the year (which are now split into a Zoom session Tuesdays and an in-person session Wednesdays), we looked at wishes, hopes and dreams. In other words, character motivation and goals. What do our characters want? Is there backstory — why do our characters seek what they seek? You may not be surprised that a couple young writers created characters seeking a pet. The bond between young people and animals can be a wonderful one (and I haven’t grown out of it myself!) We also had a search for a lost twin. A lost Mum. A search for a childhood friendship, in a way a search for childhood itself. And big issues like solving the plastic problem in the ocean and stopping poverty. We discussed how the big wish and a smaller wish can go hand in hand. For example the search for the lost Mum takes the character to many countries in Europe, meeting her need to travel and try different foods. The story tackling ocean plastic began with one turtle, a great focus for the larger issue. What did our group wish for ourselves? After all our characters mirror life! The young people hoped that 2023 would bring pets, holidays, the chance to try gymnastics, the chance to try Something New and physical growth. And of course the wish to read great stories was mentioned a few times! Happy New Year everyone. Do you have a wish for 2023? |
AuthorThis is the blog post of children's author Giulietta M. Spudich. Archives
March 2023
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