Building Superhero Stories

Q: How can you quickly go from a blank page to an exciting story? How can you add richness and life to your ideas? How do you keep going when you’re stuck?

A: By using building blocks!

All stories can be broken down into their building-block elements — the objects, people, themes and styles that make different genres what they are.

In this session, working as a team, students and I will explore superhero stories. We’ll talk about our favourite examples, and from those we’ll work out what building blocks you need to make a thrilling, original superhero story:

• a hero
• an arch-nemesis
• secret identities
• lairs
• sidekicks
• costumes
• … dozens more

Then, using the building blocks we identified, we’ll improvise our own brand new, amazing superhero adventure, on the spot.

At the end, we’ll look at our brilliant creation and reflect on how you can use the building blocks approach to quickly get any kind of story off the ground and into glorious flight.

Topics covered:

* What superhero stories do you know?

* What do they all have in common?

* What are the building blocks of superhero stories?

• Let’s build a story
• (for older students) exploring twists and variations
• taking building blocks into all your stories