It's one thing to ask students to read classic literary works written by master wordsmiths. It's quite another to turn literary classics into an interactive learning tool that prompts your kids to ask for more time to read. With 21 worksheets in all, your students get to read from classic passages in novels such as Black Beauty and Huckleberry Finn. Each worksheet highlights a positive character trait you want your kids to develop. The lessons also motivate students to build associations between personal traits and the ordeals faced in life by the primary fictional characters. These worksheets will help you analyze specific characters within a body of work of just about any type. As you look over this section you will see that we picked out various famous works to practice this skill with. Has reading time become an exercise in academic futility? Change glum student expressions into eager smiles by using these awesome worksheets in your classroom.
Printable Character Traits Worksheets
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A Tale of Two Cities
The passage below is from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Read the passage. Then list ten character traits of Sydney Carton.
Page 2 of Tale
List three character traits of Miss Manette that are opposite of Mr. Carton’s traits.
Huckleberry Finn
The excerpt below is from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
Little Women
The passage below is from the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
Matching Traits
Match each sentence to the character trait it represents. Not all of them that are present will be used.
Identifying Character Traits
Read the passage. Then name the 10 of them that are clearly displayed by Sherlock Holmes.
Contrasting Traits
: Name three character traits of Watson that contrast with those of Sherlock Holmes.
Three Traits
Think about someone that you know. What do you like about them? List three of their character traits, and explain how the person that you selected has demonstrated these traits.
External and Internal Traits
Choose one of the main characters from the story. Identify the character's external and internal traits.
Read Into It
Identify 10 character traits of the speaker. Consider both internal and external conflicts that arise when you read the passage.
In the Text
Read about each interaction. Identify a character trait in each one, and write it on the line. Explain your answer by referring to the text.
My Best Friend
Think about your best friend. What do you like about them? List as many of their character traits as you can think of. Draw a picture of your best friend.
Working with the Story
Choose a character from the story. Identify three main traits of the character. Cite text evidence to support your answers.
What are Character Traits in a Story?
Writers employ them to define a character's genuine personality and bring their story to life. If you want to become a good writer, you need to learn how to portray distinct unique qualities through language and identify their uses in literature.
Fictional characters, like real people, have a unique tone about them that can be either good or bad. It is essential to understand these traits to get familiar with their personality, behavior, and interactions with other characters. Describe the behavior of each person in specific situations. As a result, you'll be able to develop a memorable character that readers will love for the rest of their lives. Even characters from films, television shows, and literature can be recognized by their personality traits.
Character traits can be both positive and negative, depending on the context. A person's individual qualities can be discerned by their behaviors or reactions to a certain scenario or simply by how they interact with others. Depending on your vocabulary, you can use many words to describe how someone carries themselves. Honest, kind, happy, sincere, and patient are some examples of positive character traits. On the other hand, rude, angry, mean, mad, deceitful, or greedy are some examples of negative personality traits.
Authors use various literary strategies to convey the personality aspects of their characters in literature. Having well-rounded or multi-faceted characteristics helps link the reader to the characters in the novel. In most stories, authors don't express things like XYZ is hilarious directly; instead, they reveal the attributes of a character to the reader through their actions, words, and relationships with other characters.
Dynamic Types
A dynamic character is constantly changing and growing throughout the story. A reader is likely to notice these changes in the protagonist of a novel.
Static Types
Characters whose characteristics are unlikely to change throughout the novel are called static.
Why are They Important in a Story?
Meaningful Experiences
Those who say that character is a paradigm of features assume that a cultural norm exists that allows these traits to be perceived as a meaningful whole. This code is also used in everyday life, where people's perception impacts how credible their role is, and the way the are presented in stories can change how they are regarded.
The cultural code also incorporates information exclusive to fictional characters, such as stock characters and character types depending on a specific genre. It's still possible that the concept of a cultural code is overly broad because it incorporates different characteristics or levels.
Unique Focus
A narrative can be thought of as a series of scenes or situative frames, each with a unique focus. There may be various characters in an active situative frame, but only a few will be highlighted in the text that follows them.
Components of Character Traits
The critical components of character traits are as follows:
Introduction
"Introduction" refers to the first active frame where a character is expressly referenced. In the following functional structures, a character may go from view and reemerge later in the story. It is crucial to evaluate if a role appears in an active frame for the first time or if it was previously introduced and reappeared at a specific moment in the story.
Identification
Identification is determining if a character in the present scene has already appeared in a previous one. False, delayed, and impeded identifications must be distinguished. In the case of a false identification, a previously mentioned character is identified, only to discover later that another character was being referred to.
In delayed identification, the reader can eventually identify an equivocally portrayed character. On the other hand, impeded identification doesn't let the reader identify any specific character.
Final Words
Introducing character traits in a story is a great way to give it a certain quality. It enhances the process of writing. Most writers and readers of the time prefer oblique characterizations over straightforward ones.