Fantastic Characters and Where to Find Them: A Generative Exercise for Classroom
Fantastic Characters and Where to Find Them: A Generative Exercise for Classrooms Exploring Narrative Structure, Worldbuilding, and the Cultivation of Character
Claire Agnes
Many of today’s undergraduate writing students have grown up with an affinity for the fantastic. The success of books like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones, coupled with the popularity of authors like Aimee Bender, M.T. Anderson, Laini Taylor, Kelly Link, and Holly Black, indicate a desire to engage with narratives that transport and transform. Many of my students enter the classroom with the fifth book of a fourteen-part epic series tucked under their elbows, fingers itching toward the pages while we discuss craft. These popular series are epic in their scope, ideas, and plot. They detail magical worlds full of imagination and adventure, characters layered in the history and conflicts of their empires, power struggles between rival groups, and duels that spark and captivate.
This exercise utilizes the largesse of the fantasy genre to help students explore fundamental elements of craft, storytelling, and character construction. By approaching these facets of narrative through the fantastic, the magical, and the absurd, students can practice critical building blocks of narrative using creative, nonlinear methodology. Fantasy stipulates that all worlds are possible. This freedom allays student insecurity regarding rendering realistic, dynamic, and nuanced characters. The step-by-step guided worldbuilding process of this exercise helps free students from linear thought in favor of spontaneous creation. Once the details of the world have been established, the students have enough raw material to form a protagonist and general narrative arc that suits such an environment. By first creating the world, culture, and creatures, students build narrative conflict and tension that can later be explored by their hero, who is developed during the final stages of this exercise. Students approach each component of fantastic worldbuilding through micro building blocks of detail, allowing for spontaneous creativity and invention without the weight of an entire proverbial world on their shoulders.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Part I: Introducing “The Hero’s Journey” (20 Minutes)
This first component of the exercise will familiarize students with the structure of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Students will relate the theory of the monomyth to popular works, connecting narrative structures across other media.
- Introduce students to Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth, from his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The original structure uses seventeen steps, but I have found students most receptive to the adapted twelve-step structure detailed by Christopher Vogler in the Twelve-Stage Hero’s Journey. Instructors may choose to write each step on the board, make up a handout detailing each step, or print one of the many graphics available online. Students wi