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Understanding Story Plots from Actions and Dialogue

Understanding Story Plots from Actions and Dialogue

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Basics on the topic Understanding Story Plots from Actions and Dialogue

Learn how we can use dialogue and action within a story to understand a story plot.

Transcript Understanding Story Plots from Actions and Dialogue

"Zayd! I just finished the last book in the river tails series, what should I read next?" "Don't worry, Ari, I know just the series for you to read next." Zayd needs to retell the important parts of the new series. We can help him by learning about understanding story plots from actions and dialogue. Have you ever heard of the word 'plot' used to describe a story? When someone talks about the plot, they are talking about the events that happen in a story. We get clues about the plot from the actions and dialogue of the characters. Actions tell us what the characters are doing and dialogue tells us what characters are saying. We can find actions in the plot by looking for verbs and look for inverted commas around a character's words to look for dialogue. Knowing the plot helps us make predictions about what will happen. It also helps us to understand and enjoy the story. Let's hear the plot of Zayd's series. "It starts with Lucas and Kale who team up to defeat a robo-bear that is trying to attack their peaceful town." "They gear up and run to the town square to defend it." Did Zayd use action or dialogue to talk about the plot? Zayd describes the characters' actions of gearing up and running towards town. We can use this to make a prediction about what we think might happen next. For example, we might predict that the main characters will defend their town. "Then Kale goes up to the robo-bear and says 'please stop! the people of this town are kind and don't deserve to be attacked'." Did Zayd use dialogue or action to describe the plot? Yes, there is dialogue when Kale says, 'please stop! the people of this town are kind and don't deserve to be attacked.' We know this is dialogue because of the inverted commas around Kale's words. Sometimes authors include both action and dialogue in the plot of a story at the same time. "'So, Lucas turned to the mayor saying 'thank you, mayor Leche for the medal.' but before they could finish, Kale gasped looking off into the sky and said, 'this isn't over yet.'" Can you find the dialogue in this text? Here, the dialogue is what Lucas says to mayor Leche. Can you also find the action? Here, the verbs turned, thanked, gasped and look tell us the actions of the characters. What can we predict from this? We can predict that the problem isn't over yet, and the series will continue. Before we see how the series might end, let's remember. Today we learnt about story plots from actions and dialogue. We learnt that the plot of a story includes the events that happen in it and that we can use the actions and dialogue of characters to help us understand better. Remember, when trying to find the action in a sentence of the plot look for verbs, or, what the characters do. And when trying to find the dialogue in a sentence of the plot look for the inverted commas around the words that a character says. "Well, what do you think, Ari?" "Oh! You've already started it!"

Understanding Story Plots from Actions and Dialogue exercise

Would you like to apply the knowledge you’ve learnt? You can review and practice it with the tasks for the video Understanding Story Plots from Actions and Dialogue.

Connect the terms and examples.
Hints

The plot is the events in a story, from beginning to end.

Characters carry out the actions in a story.

Actions are verbs, such as run, jump and play.

Solution
- PLOT is events that happen in the story.
- ACTIONS are what the characters are doing.
- DIALOGUE is what the characters are saying.
- CHARACTERS are who is in the story.
Find the actions.
Hints

Verbs and actions are what someone is doing. Play, run, say, jump and go are all verbs.

Verbs can be in different tenses.
Example: Jumps, jumped and jumping are all different tenses of the verb jump.

Dialogue is what someone says. Dialogue has inverted commas (" ") around it.

There are 5 verbs to highlight.

Solution
The verbs are:
- turned
- saying
- gasped
- looking
- saying
Connect the terms and their examples.
Hints

What the characters say is called dialogue.
You can recognise it from the inverted commas (" ").

Actions mean things that are done, such as to swim, sing or play.

Characters are who is in the story.

Plot is what happens in the story.

Solution
- Turned away and jumped up are actions.
- Lukas and Kayle and Zayd and Ari are characters.
- "Yes you did," she said. "No I didn't," he answered, are examples of dialogue.
- Lucas and Kayle defeat a robo-bear who is attacking the town is the plot.
Find the actions.

Hints

Actions, or verbs, are what someone is doing. Play, run, say, jump and go are all verbs.

A person, place, or thing is not an action, it is a noun.

An action can be a single verb (jump) or a verb phrase made from a group of words (jumped over the moon).

There are four actions in this text.

Solution

In the text below the actions are shown in bold text.
Very slowly, another robotic-bear flew across the sky over the town. The mayor, frightened, dove under the table. Lucas and Kayle looked at each other and ran in the direction of the new bear.
Name the text.

Hints

Notice the inverted commas around the text. These look like this " ". When do we use inverted commas?

Verbs are actions, such as swim, sing or play.

There is one correct choice.

Solution

What the characters say is called dialogue.
You can recognise it from the inverted commas (" ") around what the character says.
Find the actions and dialogue.
Hints

Read through the entire text first, then go back through and look for the dialogue. You can recognise dialogue from the inverted commas (" ") around the words.

A person, place, or thing is not an action or dialogue.

There are 7 examples of actions and 4 examples of dialogue to highlight.

Solution
Slowly, the robo-bear straightened up and began to float down to the ground, his eyes glowing red and horrible gusts of wind roaring beneath him.
"Hurry!" yelled Lucas, running as fast as he could. "We can't let him reach the ground!"
"YOU hurry up! I'm in front of you!" Kyle yelled back.
"I'm not scared!" yelled the mayor, from under the table.
ACTIONS
- straightened up
- float down
- roaring
- yelled
- running
- yelled back
- yelled
DIALOGUE
- "Hurry!"
- "We can't let him reach the ground!"
- "YOU hurry up! I'm in front of you!"
- "I'm not scared!"