Story Elements _________ _________ _________ _____________________________________________ _________

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Story Elements________________________________
________________________________________
_________
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Characters

• A dynamic character
• changes b. does not change
• A static character
• a. changes b. does not change

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Round Characters
A round character a. many insights are
given. b. Few insights are given
Flat Characters
A flat character a. many insights are
given. b. Few insights are given
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a. Dynamic b. Roundb. Static c. Flat
In most books the main character is both _______
and _______.
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Setting

• The setting of a story includes the
  __________________________in which the story
  takes place. Some stories may have more than one
  setting.

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Setting

• THE LION AND THE MOUSE by Aesop
• A lion asleep in his den was wakened by
  a mouse running over his face. Losing his temper,
  he seized it with his paw and was about to kill
  it. The mouse, terrified, pleaded to the lion to
  spare its life. "Please let me go," it cried,
  "and one day I will repay you for your kindness."
  The idea of so small a creature ever being able
  to do anything for him amused the lion so much
  that he laughed aloud and let it go. But the
  mouse's chance came after all. One day the lion
  got tangled in a net. The mouse heard the lions
  roars of distress and ran to help. Without
  hesitation it set to work to gnaw the ropes with
  its teeth and succeeded before long in setting
  the lion free. "There!" said the mouse, You
  laughed at me when I promised I would repay you,
  but now you see that even a mouse can help a
  lion." What is the most likely setting for this
  fable?
• a zoo
• a savannah
• a desert
• a swamp

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First-Person Point of View
In the first-person point of view one character
tells the story. This character reveals only
personal thoughts and feelings of what s/he sees.
The writer uses pronouns such as "I, "me,
mine, or "my". ExampleI woke up this morning
feeling terrific. I hopped out of bed excited to
start the new day. I knew that today was the day
my big surprise would come.
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Second-Person Point of View
With the second-person point of view the narrator
tells the story using the pronoun "you".  The
character is someone similar to you.
ExampleYou wake up feeling really terrific.
Then you hop out of bed excited to start the new
day. You know that today is the day that your big
surprise will come. This is rarely used in
literature. It can be seen in Choose Your Own
Adventure books.
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Third-Person Point of View
The third-person point of view is the most
commonly used in fiction. When writing in the
third-person you will use pronouns such as "he",
"she", or "it". ExampleBrian woke up feeling
terrific. He hopped out of bed excited to start
the new day. He knew that today was the day that
his big surprise would come.
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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
Excerpt from Woodsong by Gary PaulsenI go up to
the front of the team in the darkness and drag
them around, realizing we are lost. My clothes
have been ripped on tree limbs and my face is
bleeding from cuts, and when I look back down the
side of the mountain we have just climbed I see
twenty-seven head lamps bobbing up the trail.
Twenty-seven teams have taken our smell as the
valid trail and are following us. Twenty-seven
teams must be met head on in the narrow brush and
passed and told to turn around.
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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
Excerpted from Soldier's Heart by Gary
PaulsenThere would be a shooting war. There were
rebels who had violated the law and fired on Fort
Sumter and the only thing they'd respect was
steel, it was said, and he knew they were right,
and the Union was right, and one other thing they
said as well--if a man didn't hurry he'd miss it.
The only shooting war to come in a man's life and
if a man didn't step right along he'd miss the
whole thing.Charley didn't figure to miss it.
The only problem was that Charley wasn't rightly
a man yet, at least not to the army. He was
fifteen and while he worked as a man worked, in
the fields all of a day and into night, and
looked like a man standing tall and just a bit
thin with hands so big they covered a stove lid,
he didn't make a beard yet and his voice had only
just dropped enough so he could talk with men.
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Excerpted from Soldier's Heart by Gary
Paulsen Third-Person Point of View
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Practice Number your paper from 1 10.
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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
1. Excerpted from Father Water, Mother Woods by
Gary PaulsenIt started that simply.  At the
courthouse or the library there was a large
bulletin board, and for a dollar you could sign
the board and write down your guess to win the
car-through-the-ice raffle.  Of course, you never
met anyone who had won, but only those who knew
somebody who had won, and therein, in the
winning, the simplicity was lost.
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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
2. Excerpted from Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen
        A        "Tonight we just do
A." He sat back on his heels and pointed. "There
it be."        I looked at it, wondered how it
stood. "Where's the bottom to it?"        "There
it stands on two feet, just like
you."        "What does it mean?"        "It
means A--just like I said. It's the first letter
in the alphabet. And when you see it you make a
sound like this ayyy, or ahhhh."        "That's
reading? To make that sound?"        He
nodded. "When you see that letter on paper or a
sack or in the dirt you make one of those sounds.
That's reading."
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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
3. Excerpted from Caught by the Sea by Gary
Paulsen I drove to California that very day,
straight to the coast, then north, away from
people, to a small town named Guadalupe, near
Santa Maria. There I bought some cans of beans
and bread and Spam and fruit cocktail and a cheap
sleeping bag and then walked out through the sand
dunes, where I could hear the surf crashing. I
walked until I could see the water coming in,
rolling in from the vastness, and I sat down and
let the sea heal me.
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• 6. Choose the sentence that is written using a
  first person point of view.
• While walking home, he tripped and fell into a
  puddle of water.
• I believe that its important for students to be
  involved in after school activities.
• The City Council should reconsider its recent
  vote on a tax increase.
• Citizens need to exercise their right to vote in
  the next election.

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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
4. Excerpted from Guts by Gary Paulsen I have
spent an inordinate amount of time in wilderness
woods, much of it in northern Minnesota, some in
Canada and some in the Alaskan wilds. I have
hunted and trapped and fished and have been
exposed to almost all kinds of wilderness
animals Ive had bear come at me, been stalked
by a mountain lion, been bitten by snakes and
punctured by porcupines and torn by foxes and
once pecked by an attacking raven, but I have
never seen anything rivaling the madness that
seems to infect a large portion of the moose
family.
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1st, 2nd, or 3rd Point of View
5. Excerpted from Winterkill by Gary Paulsen
And I would like to stop the story of Duda here
and tell how he got his divorce and married
Bonnie and they adopted me and we bought a farm .
. . . That's how it would end in a movie, with
Rock Hudson playing Duda and Doris Day playing
Bonnie, and that's how it should end, and that's
how I dream of it ending almost every night,
until I wake up sweating and remember that it
isn't a movie and it doesn't end that way.
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• 7. Choose the sentence that is written using a
  third person point of view.
• Several of their players have signed scholarships
  to play college football.
• You should know better than to send a text
  message while driving!
• We need to take our time on this project we
  could both use a good grade.
• The red car with the black convertible top is
  mine.

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• 8. Choose the sentence that is written using a
  first person point of view.
• You need to do your best on the English test
  tomorrow.
• Would you please pass the mashed potatoes?
• Softball is my favorite sport, but soccer is a
  close second.
• Darrell went to the movies with John this
  weekend.

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• 9. Determine the point of view of the
  following passage.
• Walking home, I heard someone running behind
  me. I was frightened. A tall man ran by me. He
  raced to an emergency police phone and
  frantically began pushing buttons. The man
  brushed sweat from his forehead and then noticed
  me standing there. Hurry, he began, we need to
  get out of here quickly. Theres been an accident
  at the plant.
• What point of view is used in this passage?
• first person
• second person
• third person
• fourth person

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• 10. Read the following excerpt from O.
  Henrys The Ransom of Red Chief and determine the
  point of view.
• IT LOOKED like a good thing but wait till I
  tell you. We were down South, in Alabama -- Bill
  Driscoll and myself -- when this kidnapping idea
  struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed
  it, "during a moment of temporary mental
  apparition" but we didn't find that out till
  later.
• first person
• second person
• third person
• fourth person

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Answer Key with Point of View

1. From Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli - third
   person limited
2. From From the Mixed-Up files of Mrs. Basil E.
   Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg - third person
   limited
3. From The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du
   Bois - first person
4. From Number the Stars by Lois Lowry - third
   person limited
5. From Missing May by Cynthia Rylant - first person
6. From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.
   Lewis - third person omniscient
7. From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya
   Angelou - first person
8. From The Olympic Games by Theodore Knight - third
   person limited
9. From Through the Tunnel by Doris Lessing -
   third person omniscient
10. From Pictures on a Rock by Brent Ashabranner -
    third person limited

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Conflict Conflict is the struggle between the
opposing force.

• Some forms of conflict include the following
• Person vs. _______
• Person vs. _______
• Person vs. _______
• Person vs. _______

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1. A person vs. person conflict is between two
people.
2. In a person vs. self conflict the main
character has a problem within him/herself.
3. In a person vs. the environment conflict a
character is struggling against the forces of
nature.
4. Person vs. Technology- In a person vs.
technology conflict, a character has a problem
with robots or machines.
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Practice Number your paper from 1 10.
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Plot

• The plot is the story that is told in a novel,
  play, or movie. The plot has five components.
• Plot Structure Components
• Exposition
• Rising Action
• Climax
• Falling Action
• Resolution

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Exposition

• The exposition is the introduction of the
  story. It contains the _______ _______ _______
  _______ _______ _______ _______. It is the
  information needed to understand a story.

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Rising Action

• The rising action is the portion of the story
  where a _______ _______ _______. This is the
  longest part of the story.

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Climax

• The climax is the _______ moment of the story.
  It is the _______ _______ in the story that
  occurs when characters try to resolve the
  complication.

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Falling Action

• The falling action is where the characters
  begin to _______ _______ to the conflict and
  _______ _______ _______.

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Resolution

• The resolution is _______ _______ _______
  _______. It is the set of events that bring the
  story to a close.

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(No Transcript)
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Theme
The theme is the insight _______________
__________________________________________________
_________the writer shares with the reader. It is
usually __________ directly, but must be
__________. The theme is the __________. Ask
yourself this question. What should you learn
from the story?
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Practice with Theme

• THE LION AND THE MOUSEby AesopA lion asleep in
  his den was wakened by a mouse running over his
  face. Losing his temper, he seized it with his
  paw and was about to kill it. The mouse,
  terrified, pleaded to the lion to spare its life.
  "Please let me go," it cried, "and one day I will
  repay you for your kindness." The idea of so
  small a creature ever being able to do anything
  for him amused the lion so much that he laughed
  aloud and let it go. But the mouse's chance came
  after all. One day the lion got tangled in a net.
  The mouse heard the lions roars of distress and
  ran to help. Without hesitation it set to work to
  gnaw the ropes with its teeth and succeeded
  before long in setting the lion free. "There!"
  said the mouse, "you laughed at me when I
  promised I would repay you but now you see that
  even a mouse can help a lion."
• What is the theme of the story "The Lion and the
  Mouse?"
• hunter's net cannot hold a lion for long.
• A mouse is good at chewing things.
• Lions and mice make good pets.
• Size doesn't matter when doing a good deed.

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• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (excerpt)L. Frank
  BaumDorothy lived in the midst of the great
  Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a
  farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's
  wife.Their house was small, for the lumber to
  build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.
  There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which
  made one room and this room contained a rusty
  looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a
  table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle
  Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner,
  and Dorothy a little bed in another corner.
• What is the theme of the passage?
• the plain life of a prairie farm family
• the things found in a home on the prairie
• building a prairie home
• living away from your parents

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• The Fox and the Goat by Aesop (paraphrased)
       
• One day a fox fell into a deep well and
  could not escape. A goat, very thirsty, came to
  the same well. When the goat saw the fox, he
  asked if the water was good. The fox, hiding his
  unfortunate problem by being cheerful, said the
  water was excellent. He encouraged the goat to
  jump down. The goat, paying attention to only his
  thirst, jumped down without thinking. Just as he
  drank, the fox told him of the difficulty they
  were both in and suggested an idea for their
  escape. "If," said he, "you will place your front
  feet upon the wall and bend your head, I will run
  up your back and escape, and will help you out
  afterwards." The goat gladly agreed, and the fox
  leaped upon his back. Steadying himself with the
  goat's horns, he safely reached the mouth of the
  well and made off as fast as he could. When the
  goat scolded the fox for breaking his promise,
  the fox turned around and cried out, "You foolish
  old fellow! If you had thought before you jumped
  into the well, you would never have gone down
  before you knew how to get back up, and you would
  not have exposed yourself to dangers from which
  you had no means of escape."
• Choose the best answer. What is a universal
  theme in this story?
• Look before you leap.
• Be kind to your enemy.
• Slow and steady wins the race.
• Do not attempt too much at once.

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Theme Using Number the Stars
Theme Proof (Evidence)
Do anything to help a friend.
Annemarie