Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2015
Daring To Be Brave
Hello dear reader, and happy Friday.
Today I'm excited to introduce you to a fun new book
that just might help your child understand and conquer a fear or two,
but not before I tell you about my trip to NASA yesterday.
John's supervisor invited me to talk with a few leadership giants
about Fixed and Growth Mindset, so I went to share Carol Dweck's work with a Star Wars spin that I adapted from {here}.
I have it on good authority that they really connected with the Mindset song
I wrote for them and played on the Ukulele.
You are my Padawans, my Mindset Padawans ...
Anyway, so many fun presenting opportunities presenting themselves.
And now, today's book review:
Title: Daredevil Duck
Author & Illustrator: Charlie Alder
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Date: May 12, 2105
Suitable for ages: 3 and up
Fiction
Theme: courage, friendship, fear
Brief synopsis: Daredevil Duck only dreams of being brave. Will he be able to muster up some courage when mole's yellow balloon gets stuck in a tree and he needs Duck's help?
Opening page:
Compare and contrast this Duck tale with another book
Why I like this book: If you've already watched the little clip, you've seen the flip-flap feature that instantly endeared me to this treasure. I love lift-the-flap books, but it's rare to find them beyond the Board Book stage.
Daredevil Duck totally wants courage to be his superpower. He wants do brave stuff, to be a superhero, but time and time again, his fear gets in the way, and he's scared silly. This is super common in younger children, so I predict they'll connect with this beautifully-illustrated Duck tale that has sent my heart soaring.
As an enrichment idea, encourage students to create their own Fear-This Flip-Flap book listing or drawing out things that scare them. Under the flap, they can show ways in which they imagine processing through to conquer that fear. Give them a yellow balloon as a tangible reminder about Duck and his adventure.
Friday, May 29, 2015
PPBF: The Pout-Pout Fish In The Big-Big Dark
Today I'm excited because it was our last Friday of this school year
hook, line, and sinker.
Title: The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark
Author: Deborah Diesen
Illustrator: Dan Hanna
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Date: August 17, 2010
Fiction
Suitable for: ages 3-6
Themes: feelings of fear, courage, friendship
Brief synopsis: Ms. Clam needs help when her little pearl is lost at sea. Can the Pout-Pout Fish conquer his fear of the dark so that he can keep a promise?
Opening page:
A doozie of a drowsy
Made Ms. Clam yawn.
Then a big current whooshed
And her pearl was GONE!
Resources:
Sing along with the Pout-Pout Fish song:
Project-Based Learning: Read the book, research ocean life, then hold an Aquarium Open House. Here's a sneak peek into the sea-life event that Mrs. Martin's Kindergarten learners hosted this afternoon; talk about courageous!
Why I like this book:
Who wouldn't savor this sea-worthy story as we sail in to summer? Cute and clever, this rhyming underwater treat serves up an all-important underlying truth:
We are bigger than the dark.
Mr. Fish knows his strengths, but he's also well-aware of his limitations. And although he wants to help his friend recover what was lost, he realizes that he must first muster up a whole lot of what he doesn't have much of when it comes to the dark: courage!
Courage comes in all shapes and sizes. For Mr. Fish, it's going to come shaped like Miss Shimmer, who works side-by-side with him to keep his promise, face his fears, brave the dark, and recover that pearl. Find out from your little sponges what scares them and let them share their strategies for mastering those
scared feelings.
Check out this book and the other Pout-Pout Fish titles,
Monday, October 28, 2013
Writing The Spooky Scene
We�ve all read stories where we get a weird creepy feeling even though not much is happening on the page. No monsters jumping out, maybe just someone hears a noise, sees something out of the corner of their eye and it�s enough to give you the willies.
But when you try to write a scene full of psychological horror it�s not as simple as putting the character in a spooky environment and letting the reader�s imagination do the rest.
You know from real life that you can get the heebiegeebies for no good reason.
Alone in the house, a creak from upstairs, new underpants required.
But in fiction trying to foster that vibe out of simply describing its presence is like telling someone you were alone in your house and you felt scared. They�ll understand what you mean, but will they feel the fear?
Now tell them your ex rang you and said he was going to kill you, and then you heard a creak from upstairs. Even if it turns out to be as meaningless a creak as the first version of the story, the possibility it could be something real is enough to engender a chill in the person listening.
A direct threat in a story � a monster attacking, a killer in a frenzy, a character hanging from a ledge � is easy to understand both for the reader and the writer. If you want to establish a dangerous situation all you have to do is write a character in obvious danger.
An indirect threat isn�t so easy to create. By indirect I mean a sense of unease that crawls up the back of your neck. When it comes to writing a scene like that it isn�t as straightforward as having the character act all nervous and jumpy, even though it can feel like that�s what other writers do, and it seems to work.
But it�s easy to look at an effectively written scene in isolation and not take into consideration all the other factors adding to the effect.
By way of example I�m going to use a couple of scenes from Stephen King�s The Shining(the book, not the movie).
In the first scene, Jack is in the grounds of the Overlook Hotel doing his custodial duties of trimming the bushes. There are a number of large animal-shaped shrubs that he has to smarten up, which he does, but when he turns round the animals seem to have changed positions, then moved, then close in on him. And then they�re back to their normal positions.
I�m sure you can see how this scene would be unsettling. And it is. There�s a definitely a creepy vibe to it. But it is far more about a man who thinks he�s hallucinating or possibly losing his mind (he�s under a lot of pressure) than it is scary.
Later on there�s another scene where Jack goes up to investigate a room in the hotel after his son, Danny, claims to have seen a woman in there. He finds nothing, but he starts thinking he isn�t alone in there. Again, this is presented through Jack�s eyes as not being too sure if what he�s seeing and hearing is real or imagined, and we never actually see anything, but this scene is terrifying and really makes your skin crawl.
So what makes one scene get under the skin and not the other? Both are well written and have a definite unsettling vibe to them, and if anyone can write a good scary scene it�s Stephen King. But there is one big difference between the two.
In the first one with the topiary, Jack is alone and freaked out, but his fear is more for his sanity than it is of the bushes doing him any harm. And the reader is similarly not sure exactly what the danger is from being jumped on by a bunch of leaves.
With the other scene in the hotel room, it is preceded by another scene where the son, Danny, goes into the room and he actually does see what�s in there: a naked dead woman in the bath who gets up and grabs him...
But while you can see why the scene with the kid is horrifying, what has that got to do with the later scene with the dad?
The thing is we know when the dad, Jack, goes into the hotel room that there is something in there. And that makes a big difference to how we perceive Jack�s nervousness about looking behind the shower curtain.
That doesn�t mean you have to reveal everything to the reader before you can scare them, but it helps a lot to make the reader feel the threat is real.
If the threat is real then the reader will feel tense even if that threat doesn�t materialise.
Convincing the reader that there is the possibility of real danger, harm or loss is a complex thing. I can show the monster, or I can show you what�s left of the monster�s victim, or the effect of the monster on the locals, or the size of the police presence; or just a news report on in the background. And after all that it can still turn out the threat wasn�t real, just a guy in a mask (he would�ve gotten away with it too, if it weren�t for those pesky kids).
My point is that just because you establish the level of danger doesn�t mean you narrow the scope of the kind of story it will be. You can still decide to not reveal specifics of who or what is the source of the danger, you can reinterpret signs as new information comes to light, and you can even mislead your audience.
Making it clear there is a real threat out there in the woods and not just some agitated squirrels will make every trip into those woods a tense affair, whether it�s a monster hunter with a gun or a kid chasing butterflies.
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Monday, March 4, 2013
Worst Case Scenario Is Something To Aim For
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Sometimes in life we get worried and worked up about something and it turns out not to be as bad as we had feared. The terrible thing we were convinced was about to happen doesn�t materialise. It�s good when it turns out that way. In real life.
When a character thinks: I hope the killer doesn�t look in this closet where I�m hiding... definitely have the killer open the closet door.
On a basic level, you always want to choose the path of most conflict. If a robber is trying to sneak past security guards, having him slip past without any problems isn�t going to be a very interesting robbery. You need problems and for things to go wrong in order to create an interesting narrative.
But this principle also applies to a character�s reason for being in the story in the first place.
Let�s take a woman at her younger sister�s wedding. Seeing all this love and romance and happily ever after stuff makes her freak out that she�ll be alone and single for the rest of her life.
Let�s take a woman at her younger sister�s wedding. Seeing all this love and romance and happily ever after stuff makes her freak out that she�ll be alone and single for the rest of her life.
That fear drives her to get involved with the wrong guy, to do what he wants, whatever it takes to make him happy. But in the end she realises it�s better to have no man than the wrong man.
You might think the fear she had at the beginning is enough to show motivation for what happens to her, and it comes full circle when she has her epiphany.
And you could do it that way� I�m sure readers will get why she does what she does.
But you�d have far more impact on the reader if you showed her getting everything she wanted�the rich handsome, the beautiful house, the posh new friends�and showed how she changed and did whatever it took to get all this.
But she had to abandon her friends, lost contact with her embarrassing family, ended up stuck in her new home entertaining people she doesn�t even like.
Then the fact she�s utterly alone and unhappy, the feeling she did all this to avoid, will resonate strongly with the both the character and the reader.
Then her realisation at the end will carry weight.
Whenever a writer brings a fear or warning to the reader�s attention, it�s tantamount to an agreement with the reader that just such a thing will take place. The reader might not be all that aware of this agreement and the writer may have just mentioned it in passing to add motivation, but the expectation has been created, and it needs to be met.
Even if there is a way to avoid the horrible outcome in a plausible and entertaining way, don�t. Falling into the worst possible situation is the best thing for a story. It�s not easy to write and it may not be fun for the characters involved, but it�s the most entertaining version for the reader.
In fact, the only time you shouldn�t have it work out the way the character was most afraid of is to have it turn out even worse.
Making the character aware of the possible negative outcomes (and through them, also making the reader aware) enables you to set up foreshadowing, create tension and anticipation and establish stakes. But all that dissolves very quickly if they just stroll through the story never having to face those fears.
Whatever the character dreads most is what they should end up having to deal with at some point.
This is by no means a hard and fast rule. It�s just that if the character is worried about a monster under the bed, it tends to be a more fun if there really is a monster under the bed.
Whatever the character dreads most is what they should end up having to deal with at some point.
This is by no means a hard and fast rule. It�s just that if the character is worried about a monster under the bed, it tends to be a more fun if there really is a monster under the bed.
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