Getting to Know Characters through Poetry

This week’s Primary Creative Writing Club is an inspiration-packed activity sheet from workshop leader, teacher, and writer Sarah Connors.

Getting to Know Characters through Poetry

Hello Everyone!

Hope you and your family are all well and healthy.

This week, you will be writing a poem about one of the characters you created last week. The aim is to get to know them a little better.

If you didn’t tune in last week, it might be good to go back HERE and try the exercises with fruit and vegetables.

List of things you will need:

            1 Bowl or cup

            A Pen

            Ripped up bits of paper (Roughly 10cm x 5cm)

            Strips of paper (Roughly 20cm x 5 cm)

            I piece of paper or card  – You could use the inside of an old cereal box

            A glue stick or sellotape

Warm up – 5 minutes

Choose one of your characters from last week:

Hero          Scaredy-cat         Nasty one

Once you’ve chosen your character, stick with him/her throughout the following exercises.

Warm up – 3 minutes

Write down everything you can remember about your character: name, what they are scared of, what they are like as a person, etc.  Don’t stop writing, even if you have to revert to blah blah blah. If you prefer, you can draw a picture and add labels.

Exercise One

Take your bowl and label it Parts of the body.

Using your small bits of paper, on each one,  write down a part of your character’s body.  Make sure you only write one part of the body on each piece of paper.  So for example, you might end up with 10 little pieces of paper labelled:

Skin, elbow, teeth, eyes, ear, feet, bunions, warts, hair, nose hair, legs.

Place them in your bowl.

Exercise Two

Randomly choose one of your pieces of paper from the bowl marked Parts of the body.

Imagine you are staring at your character and the part of the body you have chosen. Describe the body part by using the following method;

Use a strip of paper and write I can hear …

Use a strip of paper and write I can smell …

Use a strip of paper and write I can see …

Use a strip of paper and write I can taste …

Use a strip of paper and write I can hear ….

Fill in each strip.  Choose your words very carefully. You may only add five words or five syllables on each strip.

Once you have completed this, cross out  I can hear, I can smell, I can see, I can taste, I can hear.  You should have five strips of paper. Read your poem out loud.

Exercise Three

Choose another item from your bowl marked ‘Parts of the body’. Repeat the process.  Read the poem out loud.

Do this one more time.  You should end up with three separate poems about three separate parts of your characters body.

Exercise Four

Look at your three poems.  Choose your favourite two lines from each poem and put them together.  Spend some time moving the lines around until you are happy with your final version.

Glue them onto your large piece of paper.  Illustrate your poem.