Methods of Tracking How a Character Responds and Changes

1. Methods of Tracking How a Character Responds and Changes

2. Methods for Character Tracking • Physical Description • Name Analysis • Attitude/Emotions • Dialogue • Thoughts/Opinions • Reactions: events, people, conflicts, setting • Actions

3. Physical Description • The most common way of describing a character. • Identifies anything about the character's physical appearance. • Includes height, skin, hair/eye color, physique etc. • If it changes, sometimes it's significant, or represents an internal change

4. Example of Physical Description • "A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled bear, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair". • From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

5. What's in a Name? • Sometimes a characters name, or how other characters refer to a character has meaning. • Not all characters names have significance, but if a name is unique, it could reveal identity or change.

6. Examples of Significant Names • Voldemort was referred to throughout most of the book as "He Who Shall Not Be Named." • As characters grew in confidence and strength, they eventually grew brave enough to refer to him by his real name. Harry was early on able to do this

7. Attitude/Emotions • Tracking how a character acts or behaves, and how they feel towards others reveals a lot about them and how they may change. • Strong prejudices, ignorances, opinions may often change. Fear can become confidence, despair can change to hope.

8. Example of Attitude/Emotions from Blood on the River • In the beginning, Sam has a strong "I can do it on my own attitude." • In time he developed a greater attitude of trust.

9. Dialogue • Dialogue is the way in which a character talks. • What a character says and how he says it gives us a clue to his personality and any changes in it. • Is the character serious? Sarcastic? Shy? Obnoxious? Ignorant? Etc. All these qualities can be shown through dialogue.

10. Example of Dialogue • From The Tortoise and the Hare • Then one day the tortoise answered back: • "Who do you think you are? There's no denying you're swift, but even you can be beaten!" • The hare squealed with laughter. • "Beaten in a race? By whom? Not you, surely! I bet there's nobody in the world that can win against me..." From this dialogue we can tell that the tortoise is optimistic and that the hare is arrogant.

11. Thoughts/Opinions • The thoughts and opinions of a character can only be analyzed if we are inside the head of the character. • This means that you can only include an analysis of a character's thoughts or opinions if you are told what the character is thinking. • If an author does tell you what the character is thinking, they are revealing something about the character: fears, dreams, goals, beliefs, likes, dislikes etc.

12. Example of Thoughts From The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney • Diary of a Wimpy Kid is written as a diary from the character, Greg's point of view. Since it's a diary, his writing is an example of his thoughts. • From these thoughts of Greg's, we can tell that he is unenthusiastic about school, and is not extremely self-confident.

13. Reactions to Incidents • A character can be analyzed by looking at how he acts or behaves in response to outside stimuli. • How did a character react when presented with a certain incident or situation? How do they react to other people? To conflict? To the setting? • Actions/Incidents really determine the way the character develops as the story goes on.

14. Example of Reaction to Incident • From Maroo of the Winter Caves by Ann Turnbull • "The lion snarled angrily, its tail whipping from side to side. It made a run at Maroo. She stood her ground and thrust the torch toward its face." • From analyzing Maroo's action in this incident we can tell that she is a courageous, brave, character.

15. Actions • Characters take certain actions when confronted to situations. • Examples of actions could be physical conflicts, desertion, destroying something etc.

16. Examples of Actions • When Otak is out hunted by his sister, we leaves without telling her to try to redeem himself by hunting. This informs us that his anger is enough to drive him away, even if it is dangerous.