Sunday 12 January 2014

Week 2 Task - Design a Hero

Just like monsters, heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Some heroes are human (e.g. Harry Potter and Willy Wonka), some are animals (e.g. Joey from War Horse and Lassie), others are mythical creatures (e.g. Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit), and some heroes are also monsters (e.g. Bruno Super-Troll-Knobbly-Foot from The Troll Trap is monster because he is a troll, but a hero because he is good).

Your challenge for this week is to design a hero.

Firstly, choose a species:
- a human
- a tig
- a fredanielawrobyus
- a rare good character from the evil species, the flabby gobble
- a rare good character from the evil species, the lumipoo momp
- a rare good character from the evil species, the treghorned crusher
- a rare good character from the evil species, the tubster of terror
- a rare good character from the evil species, the snaggy boop
- an animal species of your choice

Please do not invent a new species for this task - we have plenty of those already. Design a hero from either a real species or a species on our monster species short list.

Now decide your hero's strengths and weaknesses. A hero should have more strengths than weaknesses - he or she is a hero, after all! However, it is important to remember to give heroes weaknesses because characters that are too perfect are unrealistic. Heroes with flaws are much more interesting to read and write about than heroes without flaws.

Other things to decide:
- What is your hero's name?
- How old is he or she?
- Does he or she have any special skills?
- What does he or she look/smell/sound like?
- If relevant, what does her or she feel/taste like?
- What type of person is he or she?
- What does he or she like?
- What does he or she dislike?

If you want to, you can use the brainstorm technique that we talked about in week 1 to help you.


Please write a description of your hero in less than 200 words and email it to me by Friday 17th January.

My email address is rosen.trevithick@gmail.com

Here are links to some tips to help with the week's exercise:
Onomatopoeia
Similes and Metaphors
Backstories
Showing or Telling
Using Surprise to Make People Laugh

Heroes don't usually work alone. However, please send me one hero. Next week I'll select some of the most interesting heroes and we can discuss which ones would make a good team.

Downloadable resources:
Hero Brainstorm Template

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