Here is a long response to a short question from Keri in Connecticut about the Invisibles that she asked way back in May of 2016:
“My problem with the Invisibles is in coming up with “the problem” for the character. I know, the kids should be coming up with one, but if they don’t? If there’s no good problem, then there will likely not be a good story.”
This is such a good question. I have six suggestions in this lengthy response:
I agree that the quality of the problem is of huge importance for any story and that is no less true for stories using Invisible characters.
There is no easy solution, because as we know each story has its own energy. I try to reject any problem that is not great, sometimes slowing the class down but I see it as critical to just wait it out until I get something that everyone kind of jumps up out of their chairs at.
Another answer I could think of would be to really develop some quirky aspect of each of the two characters. Those little quirks can lead to a spark moment where someone throws out a really funny problem and that’s what I experience almost all the time with the Invisibles.
A third answer is, when you get to Level 5 of the Questioning Process, just ask in English what the problem is. Or you can have them write possible problems on a slip of paper and have them hand them to you on their way out the door at the end of class.
A fourth answer is that when they are creating the images individually they actually write down the problem on the back of the page with their answers to the other five prompts.
In my 6th grade classes at the American Embassy School the kids were actually almost annoying with their creativity because they would start thinking way in advance, almost at the start of the story, about what the problem was.
It was, to them, such an important matter that the class dissolved sometimes into chaos as they would blurt out three sentence problems in spite of their training not to blurt, because every time we arrived at level five questioning after finding out who the character was with in level four they couldn’t help themselves.
This NEVER happened with the 8th graders who had been fed on grammar for the years preceding their first experience with TPRS with me in 8th grade. This point about how their imaginations atrophy is probably the most accurate to explain why you have the roadblock to moving the story along through the problem creation level five part of the story.
I certainly would hope that you do not feel the burden of creating the problem yourself! That is not how this works. A goal we must have as CI teachers is to make it clear in our classes that the kids are responsible for all creativity – you just ask the questions.
This can be a big challenge emotionally if you are one of the kinds of teachers who always feel that it is your job to solve problems or, in this case, to created problems to solve. This is never good in a TPRS class. Make them feel as if they are the ones to make the story interesting at all points of its development.
If you send the message that YOU will furnish all the cute answers, then why do they need to think at all? They can just sit there and put psychic pressure on YOU to be the funny one. Kids do that in schools all the time because teachers let them.
Another solution to the “problem” problem is to backtrack. Maybe you whipped through the first steps 2 through 4 (character development, location, with whom) so fast as recommended that the characters didn’t have enough details to make a problem.
When stuck in a story at any point, I always remember what Blaine told me about the vortex image where in order to get out of the bottom of the vortex. This is where, if you remember, the questioning funnel runs out of room at the bottom at the smallest point of the vortex and you can’t think of any other questions to ask – you have painted yourself into a corner, so to speak – so you, as Blaine says, “add a new character or event”. This is so simple and you could do that if the problem isn’t appearing. Add what we could call a Step 4B to the creation of the second character by creating a third, another “with whom” character to add more interest to the story: “Class, who else is the main character with besides (minor character one)?” When you get your details about this third chaacter you greatly expand you problem creating potentialities.
And the fact is that those 6th graders had about fifteen other really great characters that they just couldn’t wait to get into a story so what was I doing?
Another good reason to bail in that moment is because really when we arrive at the problem we shouldn’t be more than five or six sentences – ten at the most – into the story, as we have discussed in other places about how with the Invisibles it is so important to get quickly through the first five levels so that we can have time to have a more detailed and interesting story where stories are best, in the fifth and sixth levels of failure to solve and solving the problem.
Before ending, let’s look at what Tina Hargaden has suggested about the problem of creating a problem with the Invisibles:
Tina shares:
“The personality of the character and their short back story often suggests the cutest problems. I mean, in the Sammy the Salad story that I love so much, the problem is that someone wants to eat him because he is a salad. And in the story of Juicy Jimothy, the story was well-loved even though the problem was (in my opinion) lame: they wanted to find a banana to be their mom. But the story turned out cute regardless because we all loved the characters so much.”
So what Tina is suggesting here reflects with the point made above that it is the personality of the character that is key in creating a good problem. This is new with the Invisibles. When working from a script, we only meet the character on the day of the story, but with the Invisibles, the characters become a part of the class, so to speak, so the ownership of the character is so high that good problems can’t help but be created.
Tina continues:
“I honestly do not remember the problem in the Colonel Cantaloupe story but it was so fun because the rainbow-barfing unicorn was so hilarious she kind of stole the show. So Keri, if she truly has the kids’ ideas front and center, will find a richness that she is not expecting because her expectation of what is possible in student engagement is limited as she is working with working from scripts right now. Maybe the part about finding the problem needs to be beefed up. Maybe in the “getting the problem” level of questions, we provide ideas:
Ask them “What is his secret?”
Tell them “She is angry/sad/alone/other not positive state of mind”. “Why?”
Ask them “What is the problem?”
Maybe this part is where people will get scared?
So to conclude here are the six suggestion to use at level 5 of the Invisibles story asking process:
- Wait it out, even if it’s uncomfortable. The right problem will come along. Stay in the moment as per skill #22 in TPRS in a Year!
2. Make the characters have at least one really quirky aspect as you develop them in levels 2 through 4 to arrive at the problem creation point of the story in level 5. Quirky characters might lead to a quirky problem.
3. Put the responsibility of creating the problem directly on the the students (30 minds vs. 1) by steadfastly refusing to offer any answers to anything all year. (End the atrophy of their creativity created by too heavy a reliance on story scripts from previous years.)
4. Backtrack to add more details about the existing characters so that they have more information from which to create a problem.
5. If that doesn’t work, add a third character in Step 4 (with whom?)
6. Bail out. It is not such a bad thing! One day those 6th graders revealed to me one of the biggest secrets – really the biggest secret of all by far. We were in a boring story and they were clearly restless as we went through the character/location process of levels 2 through 4 and when we got to the problem at level 5 and couldn’t come up with one they just rebelled. The English was everywhere. They complained that the characters were boring, the story was boring and in a way and with a style that only 6th graders are capable of. I, of course, like a fool, took it personally. I obviously had not taken my own advice in that class in making it clear as I trained them through that first year together that it was up to THEM to make the story interesting. Taking it personally was my first mistake. The second was even worse – I refused to bail and take their very clear and emotion-filled advice to just “drop this story and start another one!” Such a simple thing and I couldn’t do it because of my ego. Oh boy did I learn something that day.