Character

Ali Sparkes is a children’s author who leads writing sessions for Junior and Young Writers every Saturday morning at MAST Mayflower Studios. To learn more about her, visit her website: https://www.alisparkes.com and click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/ali-sparkes

Susan L. Edser, MA graduate in Creative Writing and Publishing and winner of Bournemouth University’s prestigious Vice Chancellor Award 2024, is Ali’s assistant and writes the weekly blog. To learn more about her, click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/susan-l-edser

The Junior and Young Writers began working on the first building block for their Play Creators scripts. Ali invited them to think about the characters who will be central to telling the story. To help them consider people different to them, the first task was to interview someone with whom they don’t usually work. A list of questions helped the process, such as ‘What’s the best or worst meal you ever ate?’, ‘If you had to listen to one song for 24 hours, what would it be?’ and ‘What famous person would you like to have dinner with?’ The children and young people then wrote up a three-paragraph profile of their interviewee and read it out to the group. We found out that one person is a fan of a cheddar cheese and fried onion sandwich, someone has very stretchy ears, and another person’s favourite film is Titanic.

The next part of the session was to create a character, and Ali had a bubble chart to complete, called ‘Build a Being’. As students from Solent University will perform these characters, Ali encouraged them to think about what is feasible to act out. A punnet of popcorn, for example, might be challenging, but a 25-year-old businesswoman with a northern accent and a secret fear of trains would be manageable.

The Junior Writers came up with various ideas:

- Jeremy, aged 14, with a superhero coat

- A woman who always wears an old black dress

- A character who was traumatised by being attacked by a cat, a dog and a bear

- One protagonist had a fear of falling off a cliff

- A boy with an ambition to be a pilot

The Young Writers’ ideas included:

- A convenience store owner, with poor social skills, who’s scared of the guy next door.

- A 17-year-old girl, with short cherry-red hair, who fears her brother will die from cancer

- A 48 year old man, but is a ghost, and a kleptomaniac

- Mr Rainbow, who is a jester, with a high spice tolerance, and his landlord is his enemy

- A 21-year-old archaeologist, who’s accident-prone and wants a best friend.

The groups had a chance to consider all the characters and vote on them. Ali led the groups to consider who could be a strong protagonist or if there were intriguing connections between them. The Young Writers progressed well with this, choosing the convenience store as one of the settings and the shop owner as a core character. They chose the serial killer character as the next-door neighbour. The second play idea focused on the boy dying of cancer and the ghost forming a friendship. This was an excellent start to creating two plays for the Play Creators, and everyone was buzzing.

Star Writer of the Week was awarded to Siya in the Junior group, who pushed herself past her first idea that would have been difficult to play, to create two excellent character profiles. For the Young Writers, it was Sisan, who thought of the convenience store owner, an ‘everyman’ character that audience members could relate to, but with great potential for drama, too. Brilliant work, playwrights!

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Character