Create a supervillain with Liz Pichon (episode 23)

Bring a bestselling children’s author into your classroom and guide pupils through planning and writing a story centred on a supervillain.

In this episode of Author In Your Classroom, award-winning author and illustrator Liz Pichon, creator of Shoe Wars and the Tom Gates series, shares practical tips for crafting memorable villains and the worlds they inhabit. She demonstrates how everyday events and real-life stories – like a disagreement between two brothers who made shoes – can spark funny and exciting story ideas.

This teaching sequence supports pupils in developing characters, plotting scenes and applying descriptive writing techniques. It takes them from generating initial ideas to creating their own supervillains and writing scenes that bring those characters to life.

Carefully selected podcast extracts accompany the unit, providing insight into a professional author and illustrator’s process and encouraging pupils to see themselves as storytellers.

Teaching overview

Over four sessions, pupils begin by exploring where story ideas come from, collecting inspirations from personal experiences, observations and interests to build a bank of potential stories. They then design a main villain, developing appearance, personality, behaviour and backstory, learning how motivation and depth make characters compelling.

Pupils plan and write a scene introducing their supervillain, using techniques modelled by Liz Pichon, including humour, dialogue, alliteration, similes and vivid description. Finally, they expand their story universe, creating settings, objects and doodles to bring their villain’s world to life, using working walls or personal notebooks as inspiration.

By the end of the unit, pupils gain confidence in creating imaginative characters and scenes, connecting their writing to authentic author practice while building creativity and storytelling skills.