COMPARISONS OF SIX FAIRY TALES Name ________________________________________________________________________ |
| TITLE OF FAIRY TALE_________________________________________________________________________ Hero/Heroine Adversary Hero/Heroine's enviable characteristic Testing of characters Magical creatures? Animals? Royalty? Poverty or wealth? Stepmother/dead mother? Goodness rewarded? Evil punished? Ending: Happy? Sad? Do characters change shape, being, etc.? Death? Birth? Moral of the story Setting |
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| 1. After you have read many many fairy tales, think of the style of each fairy tale. Consider if you want to use a style (not the story) of a particular tale in writing your own fairy tale. 2. To start your story, pay attention to things going on in your life: your child, your dreams, your friends, your family, places you have been, other things you may have read, things you see on TV or the Internet, or whatever. For instance, one time I had a dream of horses that could fly up to trees and roost. Also clouds made of fish. This kind of thing could be incorporated into a fairy tale. 3. What is the setting of your fairy tale? Describe your setting using all of the senses. If you have a magical or imaginary place, go crazy and make it a unique setting. If you choose an existing (or magical) setting, do some research and make it fit the research. If you choose a real setting (not imaginary), again, do some research and make it true to the real setting. 4. Decide on your main character (protagonist). We will do an activity in class. Think of your character beforehand, however. Describe her/ him/ it in great detail. A fairy tale doesn't have to include fairies. It can be any character, in any situation. Your character should be different in some way from your other characters. 5. Is there a message you would like to impart in your story? 6. Write as if you are telling a story. ~Write to entertain, to teach, to change attitudes, to raise topical issues (if you want to). ~Build personalities through your writing. ~Use descriptive language. ~Use dialogue. ~Use first person (I) or third (they/ he/ she, etc). (How about 2nd person? Ever tried that?? "You") ~Usually use past tense, since this is considered a telling of something that already happened. ~Use similes (comparisons; words linked by "like" or "as"), metaphors (indirect or hidden comparison; for example, "a heart made of stone"), onomatopoeia (words that sound like what they are such as POP), personification (animation of non-living things), rhymes, alliteration (repeating the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in a row). ~Use rhetorical questions. ~Do you want the story to include a moral? 7. Are you starting with "Once upon a time" and ending with "happily ever after"? OTHER ways to develop your story: ~Make sequencing cards of your story: introduction (characters, setting, time); complication or problem (main character mirroring complications in real life); resolution (of complication: better or worse; happy or unhappy). Remember that everything is a perspective. Maybe the reader would consider the resolution in your story unhappy but your character would consider it happy. Surprise is wonderful! ~Design a wanted poster for your antagonist (bad guy, or the characters, institutions, whatever that oppose your protagonist). ~Create a story map. ~Write an interview for the main character. ~Create a puppet show. ~Write a newspaper report of your story. ~Design a dust jacket for your fairy tale storybook. REMEMBER: PLOT (what is happening?) SETTING (where and when?) CHARACTERIZATION (main and other characters) STRUCTURE (how does it begin, what happens next, how is it resolved??) THEME (is there a bigger message you are wanting to tell?) |