It’s just a coin purse, but I hold it up and say, “This is a banana.”
Then I set it down on one of the two chairs pulled up to the front of the classroom and ask for a brave volunteer.
Borrowing a concept from the theater artist Konstantin Stanislavski, I teach students that each character has an Objective, a good Objective has an Obstacle or series of Obstacles, and what the character does to overcome the Obstacle is the Action.
“Action,” I tell them, “is the only thing your reader cares about.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” the volunteer asks, plopping into the chair.
“You represent our character,” I tell the student. “Your objective in this story is to get the banana. So when I say, “Once upon a time,” you do what you need to achieve the objective.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Once upon a time!”
The class goes quiet. The student in the chair gets up, walks the two steps to the other chair, and picks up the coin purse.
“And they lived happily ever after,” I say. “The end.”
“That was boring,” a student will usually point out.
This is when I tell the volunteer to reach around their back and grip the chair with one hand. “Act like you’re handcuffed to the chair by that one hand.”
“Okay…”
“Once upon a time!”
This scene is often just as quick as the first one, the student usually just standing up with the chair and carrying it the couple steps to the “banana.”
The discussion that follows is built around how not-compelling the scene still is.
Next, the volunteer is “handcuffed” to the back of the chair with one hand, and their ankles are “manacled” to the chair. I ask the student to wrap their feet around the legs of the chair and keep them there.
Then I move the chair with the banana as far away from the volunteer as possible.
After a few moments, the volunteer will start scooching.
The class will become absorbed as our character jerks the chair under them all the way to the banana.
Both chairs then go back to the front of the room.
“Your right hand is handcuffed behind you,” I tell our character, “and your feet are chained to the chair.”
“And the chair is immovable,” I add. “It’s cemented to the floor.”
“What am I supposed to do?” the volunteer asks.
“Once upon a time…”
This is when the rest of the class will often start offering suggestions.
The writing exercise following the activity is a simple brainstorming session done first as a group. It’s also where the different types of literary conflict can be introduced. Most ideas that students will come up with are variations of being physically kept from a particular object, but the point that should be hammered home is that every character in a written scene needs to have an Objective and an Obstacle for the sake of Action.
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Mike Moran (M.Ed.) is a writer, a director, a performer, and a schoolteacher with twenty years of experience who plays, sings, spits verse, performs stories, and generally acts the fool while representing The Iowa Goatsinger. His work has appeared in Bitter Oleander, Little Village, and The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker (great weather for MEDIA, 2016).