Week 1 Tips - Strengths, Weaknesses, Special Abilities and Nasty Habits

To be used with this week's challenge: Design a New Species of Monster

The best monsters have a combination of strengths and weaknesses as well as special abilities and nasty habits.

Strengths and weaknesses help make your monsters interesting and will help with the story later on. For example, my smelly troll characters are very strong but really stupid. This means that my heroes (children) can't fight a troll, but they can come up with clever ways to trap them.

Special abilities are a bit like strengths. They're things that most monsters would not be able to do, but your monster species can.

Nasty habits are a great way to show the reader more about the monsters you're writing about. In the book You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!, we're told that Mr Gum picks his nose and eats it. That helps us understand just how disgusting he is.

Perhaps you could discuss the strengths, weaknesses, special abilities and nasty habits of your favourite characters from books and television? Here are some examples to get you started. However, it's best if you think of your own.

Strengths

strong, fast, interesting, funny, brave, generous, friendly, polite, intelligent, fragrant, hard working, honest, jolly

Weaknesses

weak, slow, boring, unfunny, cowardly, greedy, unfriendly, rude, idiotic, stinky, lazy, dishonest, grumpy

Special Abilities

can fly, can turn invisible, can see it the dark, can talk to animals, can pick locks, can produce extra long bogies, can heal quickly when injured, can eat really hot pizza without burning its mouth, can jump a really long way, can hold its breath for ten minutes

Nasty Habits

picks its nose, scratches it bum, eats children, burps in between sentences, talks with its mouth full, stands in front of the television, throws mud at children, steals other people's sweets, rubs out other people's homework, eats it own earwax