Lesson video

Welcome to today's English lesson I'm Missus Crompton.

Our focus today is responding to an image stimulus within our descriptive writing.

You will need a pen and paper, take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away and have everything you need to hand.

To begin with, then just a very quick reminder of what a descriptive piece of writing includes.

It paints a picture of a scene, person or experience in the reader's mind and it focuses on a moment in time or a contrast between two points in time.

Moving on, looking in terms of what would make a successful piece of writing, we're going to look at organisation, vocabulary selection and technical control.

We want to make sure within our organisation that we are structuring the piece of writing in a deliberate way.

You need to design that piece of writing.

Think about what you're going to say, when, and what effect do you want to have on your reader.

In terms of the vocabulary, we need to be precise with our word choices.

We need to know what we want the reader to feel by selecting a particular word.

And finally, we need to remember that punctuation isn't just there to mark the ends of sentences or to mark a pause, it can also work with the words in order to create meaning.

I want us to start considering how that can happen in our writing, and bringing all that together will make us really successful.

Okay, so, we're going to look at an image stimulus.

The first thing I would like you to do is to make a list between five and 10 adjectives that you would like to use to describe the figure that you can see on the screen right now.

Pause the video at this point, resume when you are ready for the next step.

And welcome back.

So, you have your list of five to 10 adjectives, we will be looking at that gentlemen again, in a moment.

However, I just want to have a little bit of a stop point here to consider a few ideas and what I would like you to do is to write the title, character types and functions on your piece of paper.

Once you have done that, we're going to be looking at four elements, the hero, the villain, the archetype and the everyman.

And again, when I just gone through these, you might want to pause the video.

Again, don't struggle trying to write as I'm speaking, you can do it afterwards.

So pose the video again, and you will be able to get down these definitions.

So in terms of characters, we have certain characters in literature that we become familiar with so familiar, but we don't even realise that we are responding to them in a certain way because there are expectations that we have of these different hero types.

But we'll just have a little bit of a fairly piece stop have a look at some of these terms. These are all of the character types and functions I've selected a few for us to work with today.

So, a character could be the hero or also known as the protagonist, protagonist means that they lead the action they propel the action and they are usually the main character.

We have the villain and they are the antagonist.

So rather than propel the action, they block the action, they are anti-reaction, so to speak.

So we have the villain character, the one who opposes the hero and that is their function.

An archetype.

Now this idea of function is quite interesting.

Characters do a job within a text.

They're not just there for us to think, oh, I like you, or I don't like you.

There are reasons why people like or dislike characters and that is because the writer is assigning them a particular role within the narrative.

And an archetype is an interesting character.

This word takes its origins from the Greek archeine, and it means the original, an original type, model or pattern and therefore you can have an archetypal character who has all the classic qualities of what we might presume a very feminine princess character might be.

So we might presume them to be gentle, we might presume them to be beautiful, we might presume that they've got long blonde hair.

Those are archetypal images that we have in our head and that's stored there because we see them so many times.

You will still see that same image, perhaps in an advert or in a film now.

Those are archetypal images of what beauty, a lot being the lead lady is all about.

Right or wrong, that is what is there in our heads and that's an interesting thing for you to know so that you can then decide whether you want to dismantle the archetype and do something a little bit different.

Finally, we have the everyman character.

An everyman character acts as symbol for the average person in society and this is a really interesting character type.

Sometimes we have characters that don't do anything particularly extraordinary, they don't seem to do anything particularly exciting, they don't seem to have particularly good look within a text, and that is because they are there to act as a symbol and what they represent is maybe an average experience and so they are also an interesting character to look at.

And we can have characters who we're not necessarily getting really deep into their psychology and why they do certain things, they are functional in that respect and they are sending some sort of message about what the human condition is like for the average person.

Okay, time for you to pause me, should you wish and then resume when you are ready.

Just a few more bits of theory or explanation and notes taking that I would like us to consider.

So this next term, direct characterization is a way of building a character.

Direct characterization is where we are told information about our character's personality or qualities in a direct way.

So he had grey hair, a grizzly beard, person blue eyes, factual bits of information, aspects of that physical appearance that I am just telling you.

And with that, you might start to build something from the fact that I use the word piercing blue eyes about that character.

Okay, so direct characterization is where we are told information.

Pause if you need, resume when ready.

Indirect characterization is where we infer information and that's through a character's actions, what all the sag about them or how they interact with others.

So you might get the impression that somebody is shy or you might get the impression that somebody is quite mean from something that they either do or say.

So that is indirect characterization.

Again, pause, resume when you are ready.

Now, why am I telling you all of this? I want you to think about this as something that you are probably doing in your writing without always being aware and some of these ideas are almost like templates that we use when we come to write.

However, this is the important thing, your characters can either conform to or subvert expectations of a reader.

So sometimes it's very interesting to do something a little bit different with your characterization and the question I want you to about is do you want to give a typical or an atypical representation with your character and with your descriptive writing to an image stimulus? And that's the idea that I want you to hold in your mind today.

You may wish to pause at this point so you can get the phrasing of conform to or subvert our expectations.

So I'll let you make that choice, resume when you are ready.

So here he is again, who did you create? Just go back to those original adjectives that you wrote down.

Did you create a typical or an atypical representation? What is typical of an elderly gentleman? What would we presume? But what did this image show us? I tried to pick an image that had the lighting in a certain way that it could look quite sinister.

So that would be an atypical representation.

However, he's smiling too, is that sort of snare? Is that a menacing smile or is it a sign that he's a gentle character? Those were the ideas that I wanted you to play with so just a moment to reflect who did you create, typical or atypical? And you can refine your adjectives at this point and go oh, I didn't mean to do that, but did you? Let's try another one.

So let's have a look at this description.

What character type will you create, typical or atypical? So at this point, pause, have a look at the image and decide what you're going to do.

But I want you to very purposely think about your character type and I want you to think about your objective selection in line with that.

As soon as you're ready, resume the video.

And welcome back.

So now, what I would like you to do is to try a new technique.

So when it comes to writing about an image stimulus, it can sometimes be a little bit difficult.

What we don't really want to do is to have a really detailed description of somebody moustache, because that's not really going very far.

So what we're going to do is to imagine this as a photograph, because if we had a still image, one of the still images that we encounter of a face is a photograph, so let's work with that idea.

We're going to imagine that we are looking through a sequence of five photographs.

At this point, I want you to decide which character you want to work with, whether you want to work with the lady or with the man and from here, I want you to decide, again, about the atypical and the typical and we are going to imagine what the other four photographs would show.

Let me just show you a little bit more of the next step.

I want you to consider the sequence of the images.

Are you going to have the same location for the photograph to be taken each time? Are you going to think about how you will link the paragraphs? So are we going to say click and the face froze once more? So going back to our images, is it always going to be the lady on the bus, the young girl on the bus? Is she always going to be sat looking out of a window and then we get another part of her narrative? Okay, where abouts in the sequence of five steps does this image come? Okay, so with the older gentlemen, is this an image from the end of his life? Are you going to show me in the previous images, what he looked like when he was the same age as the young girl? So think about how this could work, be creative.

So we're going to consider the sequence of the images.

Are you going to have the same location? That's an interesting thing, if you have somebody returning to the same spot over and over again, and remember these questions are always about use this as a stimulus.

There isn't actually much location around the man.

So is he actually in a photographic studio? Is it going to have his picture professionally taken five times in his life or are you going to imagine where he's located? So, sequence think about location, think about how you might want to link, make it really explicit to your reader that we are actually taking photographs and then think about how you're going to sequence them.

Is that going to be a journey of time? Isn't that? Are we going to see them grow up? Over to you to experiment with this and you are just writing down notes and ideas I'm not expecting you to write a whole piece.

Over to you, see whether you like this technique.

And welcome back, let's try playing with a few more images so let's have a look at this image and it's a stimulus image again with persons this time, rather than just one individual.

We've got three people in this image.

How are you going to deal with this? Are you going to be part of the scene or are you going to be an observer? Are you going to choose to be the adult or the child? Pause, think about what you would do if you were given the instruction, write the description as suggested by this image.

Soon as you're ready, then you can resume.

And one more, let's have a look at this image.

Write a description as suggested by this image.

Now, this time we've got an image and it's off objects.

However, I tried to pick an image that also suggested a person, so who is the owner of that dressing gown? Who actually lives here? What could you do with this type of image? Can you build me a character out of this? So write a description as suggested by this image.

Pause the video, resume when your are ready.

And welcome back.

So the last thing that I would like us to do is just to answer the three questions on the screen.

Number one, which image did you enjoy writing about the most? Writing is something that you are going to feel really comfortable doing certain things with and you know that some things push you a little bit more out of your comfort zone.

So it's really good to identify the things that we like and enjoy.

So, which image did you enjoy writing about the most? Secondly, what have you changed about the way you write today? What have you tweaked? What have you thought about that perhaps you hadn't thought about before? Maybe you're thinking about the representation's a little bit more and trying to think about your word choices and doing something a little bit different.

And finally, what will you remember to use next time in your writing? So pause at this point, think about those three prompt questions, we're identifying what we've enjoyed and then what we're going to use again.

Resume when you're ready.

Thank you for your focus today.

All that remains for me to say is please do complete your exit quiz and enjoy the rest of your learning today.