Bring a bestselling children’s author into your classroom and help pupils create engaging, believable characters.

In this episode of Author In Your Classroom, award-winning author Sam Copeland (creator of the Charlie McGuffin series) shows pupils how to create memorable, three-dimensional characters. Pupils will explore how to build heroes and villains who feel real, with strengths, flaws and motivations that drive the story forward.

This unit is perfect for young writers who struggle to make their characters believable. It helps them move beyond “my friend did this” or “my favourite YouTuber is here” towards characters that engage readers and make stories come alive.

Short extracts from the podcast are suggested throughout the sequence to inspire pupils and show how professional authors approach character development – optional, but highly motivating.

Resource pack contents

This free classroom pack provides everything needed for a full character-creation and story-writing unit:

• Ready-to-use PowerPoint
• Extracts from Charlie Morphs into a Mammoth
• Planning sheets for heroes, villains, and story development
• Working wall images and quotes for display

Teaching overview

Across four sessions, pupils will:

• Invent a hero: Explore traits, strengths and flaws, learning how to ‘show, not tell’ when describing characters. Pupils create their own heroes and share ideas on a working wall.
• Invent a villain: Consider motives, redeeming features and believable flaws to make their villains three-dimensional. Pupils draft and refine their villain’s profile using planning sheets.
• Plan a story with their characters: Use heroes and villains to drive the plot. Pupils think about how character traits influence events, challenges and conflicts in their stories.
• Write the story: Apply techniques from Sam Copeland to make action scenes exciting, including varied sentence lengths, detailed description, inner monologue and repetition for tension. Pupils draft, revise and share their stories, adding examples to the working wall.

The unit also includes guidance for extending pupils’ work and continuing the story beyond the classroom sequence.

How to listen

Search for Author In Your Classroom wherever you get your podcasts. A free resources pack is available with every episode.

Subscribe to hear more brilliant children’s authors share insider tips that help pupils write with confidence, purpose and flair.

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• Building fantasy worlds with Jamie Littler – Author In Your Classroom ep 3
• Planning a plot with Robin Stevens – Author In Your Classroom ep 1