Personification Activity
Personification is the attribution of human qualities to objects or abstract notions.
Anything can be painted with feelings and emotions, and anyone can learn to identify with these
emotions. Personification allows you to take notice of the world around you through differing
viewpoints and perspectives. For example, in the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks’s character
survives a plane crash and becomes stranded on deserted island. He is alone and more
importantly, lonely for companionship. Hanks befriends a volleyball he dubs “Wilson.” Wilson
enables Hanks’ character to help maintain some level of sanity. His personification of the
volleyball helps deliver a profound amount of emotion, and provides incredible depth and
creativity to the story.
In this creative writing activity, you will use personification to highlight and justify the
actions of a distinct human emotion. Since the average teenage brain is developing its pre-frontal
cortex, we have learned that teens can be termed as highly emotional and are known risk takers!
Teens are experts in displaying a myriad of emotions, so the concepts of emotions are ones that
teens know well. (Even if they don’t always understand them!)
Choose an emotion to personify. Give it a voice, and make it react to life. Paint qualities
that are unique and special only to it. Make it come alive through personification and creative
wording. Think about the emotion’s perspective or viewpoint. You can describe what the
emotion looks like, or give it a voice that conveys its thoughts in a teenage brain. Allow it to have
epiphanies that shine new light on how it views the world.
Your creative writing assignment can take any format you desire. Poem? Vignette?
Ballad? Rap? Comic? Short story? Children’s book? You will present your project to the class!
Whatever format you choose, you’ll be graded on grammar and mechanics and on the Common
Core Standards of:
ELACCW3: Write a narrative to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
a. Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a
narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and
logically.
b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop
experiences, events and/or characters.
c. Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence, signal shifts
form one time frame or setting to another, and show the relationships among experiences
and events
d. Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to
capture the action and convey experiences and events.
e. Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.