Writer's Workshop: Chapter 4, Characterization

I really enjoyed the activity we did on class this past Monday with the puppets. Each student wrote a short 2-3 sentence story about a puppet they had picked from a bag at random, and then we passed them around and reviewed them based on plot alone. Then each group picked one that they felt was the best and created a skit for it that they presented to the class. My character was Olive Oyl and I had written a short story about how Olive Oyl and Popeye had gotten into a fight because he spends all of his money on spinach and never buys her a new dress, and our group decided that would be an interesting one to make a skit about.

This activity would be such a great way to teach plot and characterization in a classroom. It was also interesting because the next day in my Health and Learning class we were exchanging lesson ideas and adapting them to whichever concentration we are in. A girl who is studying Deaf Education presented a very similar idea because apparently students who are hard of hearing have trouble with reading comprehension, so when things are acted out they become much clearer to them. In Kist's class we tied this activity into Chapter 4 of Modern Library's Writer's Workshop. Stephen Koch writes that characterization is all about the little things, not the big things, that the characters do. The car chases are less important than the everyday actions they do that make the characters easily related to by to their readers.

The author writes that Edith Wharton, who says there is a big difference between "novels of situation" and "novels of characters and manner." The author elaborates on that point, explaining that in the first the characters are created after the situation, while in the second, the events come after the development of the characters. The example he sites as a "novel of character and manner" is The Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield. I have read that novel and remember relating to it so well. I loved Holden's character, and the reason that novel continues to be such an undeniably great piece of writing is because of Holden. I only hope to be able to teach The Catcher in the Rye to my students in the future.