Characterization - Two Questions to Spark Discussion

I saw a quick interview video clip of author Matt Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl) talking about character creation. He has the ability to create rich characters and supporting characters that feel like they have their own stories independent of the protagonist. He was asked how he does it and his reply is two questions - ones that I think our students would benefit from when analyzing characters:

1. What do they want?
2. What are they afraid of?

He says once he knows those two things about a character, it informs everything they do - whether it be shopping or fighting. 

If you've read the book, you get why the cat is wearing a tiara, sunglasses, and is riding a velociraptor. 

I will be using this today in my discussion with my students on the characters of Brave New World. Two simple questions that should spark quite a bit of discussion. Or maybe it won't. Who knows?

Here is the clip if you want to use it in class (it is less than a minute long): https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQk2M7IDOv2/

Shameless Plug: Literature and Lairs - Character Analysis

Character Analysis D&D style!

 

The idea came to me when printing off some character sheets for my daughter's D&D group - this is the perfect platform for dissecting character!  So I started tweaking and realized that while the idea is sound, just modifying the existing D&D character sheet is not going to work for my purposes.  So I started just making one from scratch.  Here are a few partial screen shots - I think it came out pretty good!

So the whole thing is a page front and back, along with a detailed walk-through student instruction sheet.  I plan on having my students roll the die to get the attributes and then finding a character that matches closely (allowing for some tweaks here and there).  I made this for my AP Lit students, but the first practice run-through was on a group of middle schoolers at a Pre-College camp - they loved it!  My objective was to create a platform for character analysis, but the middle schoolers used it to create detailed characters for a creative writing campaign, so I was happy to see that it is quite versatile!

It took way longer to get this sized and laid out than I thought it would take when I first embarked on this idea, but in the end, I think it will become a mainstay in my classes.

Get it here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Literature-Lairs-Character-Analysis-11913326?st=fb14def15bd606f53d6adaa1318e8e4c 

If you try it out, I would love to hear from you.  Drop a comment here or on the TPT site.  Every bit helps!