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Creating the Problem in the Invisibles Questioning Sequence
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8 thoughts on “Creating the Problem in the Invisibles Questioning Sequence”
Great article! Eloquently and concisely put!
“…because in doing so it links the character to archetypal patterns in the collective unconscious of the group…” is this from Jung?
Thank you for making this clear. Some stories were flat but only because the character was too. I never understood why. And in one of my classes, the students were good sports for letting them happen… but something was amiss. Asking WHY is powerful along with how does ____ feel? In my vulnerability, I pulled away from these into a safe zone early on. Now after this break, it’s time to go deeper.
This is perfect! I think it’s just what I was looking for. Now I will have a backup in case we can’t think of a good problem. Thank you!
Yes Keri. If the Invisibles NT approach had a weakness, it was in the creation of the problem (but so did targeted CI have that problem). But this solves it. We must develop the character. It’s just like character development in great literature. Examples are Steinbeck and Dostoyevsky.
Where would ANY story be without excellent physical and emotional development of the characters? And yet for so many years we have started stories with “There was a boy.” or “There was a girl.” No wonder it didn’t work.
I have a question. Since this emotional devel0pment should lead us right into the problem, should I actually tell the students that all their characters need to have a negative emotion? It seems to me that if I don’t, then many kids will have their characters be happy or excited, etc for various reasons. I’m just looking at the wall of my invisibles from last year that I planted as a seed for this year. Many of them are very happy and smiling! Just a thought…thanks.
I don’t ask them to make their characters have a negative emotion. Problems can arise from happy characters who are suddenly faced with a problem, and that is influenced by a lot of other things. Still a work in progress. It’s all about student ownership of the character – the more ownership, the easier we get problems. Too big a topic for here though.
The most essential element of storytelling in my view is the character. Problems are not interesting, have no depth, unless we have good physical and emotional portraiture of a character. That’s what the Invisibles is based on.
And after the story in level 1 classes I could ask my kids to read something about a character they lovingly and deeply created, or I could ask them to read about a girl going to live overseas. It’s not hard for me to decide which one to do.