How to teach your child to write a novel: Lesson 4: Conflict

Junior Secret Noveling Club

You are reading part five of a ten part series that shows you how to teach your elementary-age child to write a novel, and in the process become a wiser, more thoughtful reader of books written by others. Check out the preparation, the genre lesson, the hero lesson, and the villain lesson, then come back here for lesson four, Conflict.

Greeting:

Start your meeting, say your oath, and send your secret handshake around the table. Ask the kids if they had any great ideas this week? Share with them how noticing the world around them can inspire them in their novels, and how just about anything they see or do that’s interesting can end up in their stories.

Warm-up :

Game: You give the answer, have the kids write down the question. As with all warm-ups, don’t overthink this. The purpose is just to get the kids pencils moving. For each answer, give them a few minutes to write down their questions, and then share what they’ve written.

Answers to use: 1. In a minute! 2. Never! 3. Immediately!

Conflict discussion:

There are two major events in a novel that create the conflict and make the story interesting. Without conflict, a story is very flat, more like an explanation than a plot. A conflict gives a plot direction, energy, kind of like the story’s engine that drives the reader onward to find out what happens next. At the beginning of a novel, the hero and villain are locked in stasis. Demonstrate by holding your two fists out, pressing against each other, frozen in an long, still punch.

The inciting incident is the explosion that sets the story in motion. You may have heard this called the initiating action, or some other term, but I like “inciting incident” because it’s kind of a silly way to express this. You can use a golf analogy to describe what happens with the inciting incident and the climax. At the beginning of the novel, the ball is on the tee. We see the ball, we see the club, we look down the fairway, but nothing is happening. Then the club pulls back, waaaaaay, back, and WHACK, the ball is sent flying through the air. That first WHACK is the inciting incident. After several more whacks, we’re on the green, and the climax may be the final putt, when we’re on the edges of our seats waiting to see if the ball will go in under par.

Here are some possible inciting incidents. See if the kids can come up with more categories:

Stranger comes to town
A man goes on a long journey
Something precious is lost
Something lost is found

Decide on your inciting incident and fill out your worksheet. Here is your link for the worksheet: Inciting Incident Worksheet.

The climax of the story is the final battle, when the hero wins or loses, either reaches his goal or fails utterly. Discuss some examples from movies and stories the children are familiar with. The climax is where the question is answered that was first raised in the inciting incident. Will the world be saved? Will the hero get the girl? Will the seeker find what he’s looking for? Etc.

Decide on your climax and fill out your worksheet. Give out the badges for this week! Here is your link for the worksheet: Climax Worksheet.

Grammar Wrap-up:

Today we’re talking about adverbs, and specifically how we can eliminate clunky and extraneous adverbs by choosing better verbs.

Have the children resolve these verbs with adverbs into one verb that more specifically expresses what is being said:

Walked quickly
Laughed crazily
Talked slowly
Walked proudly
Laughed quietly
Talked quickly
Walked unevenly
Laughed squeakily
Talked loudly

Homework:

Find 20 adverbs in the book you are reading and write the list in  your notebook.

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