How to Bring Monsters to Life!

Eyeball looking out

 
It's sooo easy... just eat your garlic, shine up your silver bullets and set out your stakes!

Then go out there and search for monsters to interview and draw.

Be sure to check under your bed first! Then the closet, of course. Below are several other tips, tricks and ideas!!!

How to choose a monster

Baba Yaga teeth
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Be careful-- they sometimes bite.

Really!

Don't forget to eat garlic-- it scares away vampires, werewolves and teachers.

Who is your favorite monster? Dracula? Medusa? A zombie? What about your favorite mystical creature? Be sure to choose someone you think would be fun to write about.

Imagine you are the monster

What sorts of things does the monster like? What does the monster eat? What does the monster do in its spare time? What's it like to be covered with fur? To have wings? To bite your lips when you have fangs? Good writing comes from being able to put yourself right in a character's shoes...or hooves...or claws...

Open your ears and your nose
(open all your senses)

When you're describing a monster let your readers hear it, smell it, and feel it as though they are actually right in front of the monster. Did it brush its teeth this week? Does it smell like a graveyard? Or wear cologne?

Be Snoopy

How do monsters talk? Does Dracula use big words? Does Sasquatch grunt a lot? Try to capture their style with your words.

Read until your eye-balls fall out of your head and roll across the floor

Crows and eyeball
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Don't forget to put your eyeballs back in.

The more books and stories you read about monsters the more you'll know about them. Plus reading is fun and makes you smarter and also makes your brain grow so big it'll explode. But that's only happened once, so don't worry about it. Did the writer use interesting descriptions? Did you like their characters? Was it a surprising plot?

Funny, sad, scary, bad

Decide whether your interview will be a drama, comedy, or tragedy, or a combination of all three. Do you want weird, funny things to happen to your monster? Then it's a comedy. If no one ever understands your monster-- it's a tragedy and if he learns to stop sucking blood and to fit in with the rest of the world, it's a drama.

Interview the monster

Conduct an imaginary interview. With real questions and everything. Imagine what the monster would think about global warming or the price of gas. Ask the monster about its time in high school. What it likes and dislikes. Even its favorite movies. Make the monster real... and scary.

Don't forget to re-write things!

Thoughtful Golem
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Read more books!
Really, it'll help.

Really, it's fun...and you'll find new, cool words and ways of saying things.

Draw the monster

First decide what pose you want to do. Is it a leering scary pose? Or a reserved official portrait! Is the monster in a good mood? A bad mood? Is it hungry? Sad? Don't leave any parts out.

Do a sketch first!

Lay it all out in a sketch. Just a stick figure so you see where the monster will be standing and what'll be in place around it.

Now use pencil to draw, draw, draw

What is the most important part of the monster? Its eyes? Accent them. Its teeth? How about its hair?

Methinks it's time to ink. Yep, ink it! So you can copy it a thousand times.

Iced Brain
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Books are vitamins for your brains.

Just carefully, carefully go over your pencil drawing with black ink. This step is so that you can copy it thousands of times. If you can sell each copy you'll be able to buy a house, a new car, and two pizzas.

Read your interview aloud

That way you can see how it sounds. Maybe there will be something that needs to be longer, shorter, or changed.

Show your interview to people

Friends, teachers, parents, people passing by on the street-- let them read your interview and see what they think. Maybe you've forgotten to add something that they need to know to understand the interview.

Publish it!

Does your school have a school paper? What about the local newspaper? Is there a contest you could enter? There's nothing more fun than having something published. Except getting paid for it, of course...

Download this guide as a tidy single page pdf! [900kb]

Perfect for teachers and other people who like paper!

CREATE A MONSTER

Right-click (Windows) or control-click (mac) the button above to download.