Aku beruntung sekali bisa belajar kelas dongeng dari Sheila Wee, seorang storyteller profesional dari Singapura.
Yang paling kusuka dari workshop ini adalah para peserta diajak membuat cerita sendiri. Sheila memberikan kami outline cara membuat cerita yang bisa selalu kita pakai untuk membuat dongeng karya sendiri. Nah, berikut ini adalah Original Value Story Template dari Sheila Wee.
– What value do you wish to promote?
– Decide on a main character for the story. For young children, an animal can work as well as human character.
– Create a character first impression. Who is her/his name? Age? Create a brief description of the character’s physical appearance and their main character traits. Remember that you want your audience to identify with this character on an emotional level, so try and create similarities between the character and your target audience.
– Decide the character’s goal. In this story what does the main character want, or need to do, or want or need to have? Remember that for the audience to identify emotionally with the main character, the goal must be one that they see as worthy, and one that they might have themselves, if they were in the same circumstances.
– Why hasn’t the character got what he or she wanted? What has got in the way of achieving that goal? Is there an external problem? Or is it a character trait (a flaw) that is preventing progress towards the goal? Or is it a combination of the two? To make your story more effective, choose problems, and flows that are likely resonate with your audience. Can the value you are trying to transmit be brought out in the way the character struggles to overcome the obstacles?
– What does your character do to overcome the obstacles that they face? How can you emphasise the struggles your character goes through to overcome these challenges? How does your character react to their struggles to achieve their goal? How can you show your character’s similarity to your target audience in the way they react to their challenges?
– How is the story going to end? Remember that children need stories with a positive ending. Without baldly stating the value, is there a way in which you can emphasise the value in the conclusion of the story? How might you open up a discussion on the story and the values it contains?