Need advice on how to teach/support/mentor my ds(11) with his writing

[lewelma]

My younger boy (11) this year has really come into his own with his writing.  I think that he likely has some sort of disgraphia as he struggles to form letters, write efficiently, spell effectively, type quickly, or do any sort of art.  So we are remediating with lots of dictation and spelling, and I expect that we are on a 5 year plan before it settles out.  However, he can write!  Oh can he write.  And I need to help him become all he can be.  I have been very hesitant to type out his ideas for him because the one time he did it he said 'wow!  That was easy,' which made me worry that the dichotomy between dictating to me and writing it down himself would be so great that he would get very discouraged.  So I have had him typing his own papers this term, and although he is slow, he is building speed, and very much enjoying writing. He told me tonight that being slow means that he has time to really think about what he wants to say.

 

So what I am looking for is where to go from here.  I've never read kid-written fiction, so I may be off here, but IMHO the boy has some talent. And I don't know if I need to get him a mentor, or study short-story writing with him, or consider competitions, or just get out of the way.  Below is the first piece of fiction that he has written in over 4 years, and it was done completely on his own with me only fixing his spelling. It was based off of a D&D encounter, so not his own in terms of creativity, so I do think that thinking of novel ideas would be a good starting point, as would studying how stories are formed. But if this is what he can do with no instruction, I can only guess at where he might be if I can figure out what he needs to learn and how to teach him.

 

Thanks for any and all advice!

 

Ruth in NZ

 

 

Gloomfang's Last Stand

 

As the heroes stealthily stepped down the dark and dingy stone corridor, an eerie silence awaited them at the locked door. With his expert skill at thievery, the tiefling with its red eyes, long horns, and maroon tail opened the door. Three seconds did silence await them. And then a with a mighty roar drowning out the trickle of water from the four streams which entered the murky lake, a green dragon clothed in a pillar of water appeared before them. Its name was Gloomfang, and it was a magnificent specimen of its species most likely already past its 200^th year. And he was currently wondering when such a group of dainty morsels had last wandered into his beautiful dwelling. The armer mattered not, it was good for digestion; but the dwarf would be chewy, and so would be left uneaten after it was dead. With Gloomfang's ear piercing roar which struck fear into the bravest hearts, the battle began.

 

It was almost quicker than the eye could follow. Gloomfang rose as high as the low ceiling would allow and then bathed the adventurers in a torrent green acrid smelling smoke, obscuring them and temporarily blinding them. But then with a crack the smoke cleared, far to suddenly for natural methods. The wizard with sharp elfin features had a look of concentration on his chiseled face and his orb crackled blue.

 

The next moves took only a few seconds but showed the skill of the spell and blade. Back and forth the battle raged. First the dwarf threw her heavy hammer as hard as she could at the gargantuan muscle that controlled Gloomfang's left wing. She hit the swerving dragon but the muscle lay uninjured. Yelping in pain, it withdrew for a few precious seconds enabling the half-elf to move to a more advantageous position. Next, the tiefling drew on his eldrich powers to summon a fire bolt from the nine hells which blackened the originally vivid green scales. A second later with his extreme agility, the extraordinarily tall dragonborn leapt forward, and before touching the ground, he fired two arrows out of his magnificent two-meter tall bow expertly lodging them in the constantly moving dragon. Immediately afterwards, an eladren warlord used his commanding voice to order the strategically located half-elf to attack the overhead dragon with all his might. His flaming maul flashed forth with fantastic ferocity striking the ferocious flying Gloomfang doing massive amounts damage. Releasing his huge power, the wizard froze the top of the lake while simultaneously conjuring an ice storm on top of the dragon.

 

The next moves passed in a blur, each attacker inflicting excruciating wounds and receiving equally hampering injuries. After an eternity of heated battle, the dragon, beaten, bloodied, and almost dead, fled under the ice of the half frozen lake with a couple arrows quickly following him. Although he escaped, it was still a great victory for the weary heroes. Gloomfang would not trouble any traveler for some time. And there was also the magnificent trove of treasure. The dragon had acquired much ill gotten wealth over his many years – golden goblets, exquisite necklaces, stunning crowns from long dead princes, and of course mounds of gold. All of which was very much needed by the heroes to buy the magical equipment needed to face the next, even-more impossible battles to come.

[8filltheheart]

Ruth, not addressing your actual question, but the description of your ds.....I would recommend getting professional testing. This is why-- I was convinced our ds had motor control issues which caused him to write so slowly. (He fits the description you give of your ds.) Testing revealed he actually has extremely low processing speeds. Understanding the difference can impact his whole life. I don't know how things work in NZ, but having a diagnosis of low processing speeds here would open up extra time to complete tests, etc.

[eternallytired]

To give you some perspective--his writing is better than pretty much all of the eighth grade students I taught in my final year as an ELA teacher.  (Though most of them completely lacked motivation, which didn't help.)  I love some of the sentence structures he used, and his description is beautiful, especially considering his age. 

 

My best writing instruction happened under college profs, who made me really ponder my writing and be ruthless in my analysis of it.  (There's always room for improvement; in high school I received so many compliments that I didn't realize this.)  I'm not sure what resources would be good for you at this point, so I'm hoping someone else has ideas; I just wanted to chime in to affirm your belief in his talent and tell you I'll eagerly await his first novel! :)

[lewelma]

Thanks 8 for your perspective.  I am very hesitant right now to do any testing because he believes he is a good writer and is willing to remediate spelling and writing speed. So I think he is in a good space for his learning needs, and we are making good progress.  In addition, I think it would poorly affect his self-image to get tested and labelled.  NZ does have extra time allowances for exams, but the testing must be done within a year of the test.  Given his first test is at 15 at the earliest, I plan to wait and see if remediation will do the trick before I go down the testing route.  I have done a bunch of research on disgraphia concerning remediation and accomodation, and am implementing everything except the actual testing.  Basically, I assuming I have the diagnosis and moving forward.  But I will go study up on low-processing speed and see if that also fits. Thanks for the BTDT experience.

 

 

[Tsutsie]

I would read any book written by this author. 

 

But I have no other ideas :) 

[lewelma]

To give you some perspective--his writing is better than pretty much all of the eighth grade students I taught in my final year as an ELA teacher.  (Though most of them completely lacked motivation, which didn't help.)  I love some of the sentence structures he used, and his description is beautiful, especially considering his age. 

 

My best writing instruction happened under college profs, who made me really ponder my writing and be ruthless in my analysis of it.  (There's always room for improvement; in high school I received so many compliments that I didn't realize this.)  I'm not sure what resources would be good for you at this point, so I'm hoping someone else has ideas; I just wanted to chime in to affirm your belief in his talent and tell you I'll eagerly await his first novel! :)

 

The kids have a friend who wrote a novel at 15 and self published it.  He had a celebrated writer as a mentor/editor.  He was a finalist for the new-author of the year award here in NZ and lost to a 25 year old.  So ds is actually considering a novel.

 

DS is willing to spend hours writing, and he is willing to study and learn about writing. Although I have an awful lot of nonfiction materials, I am pretty short on fiction.  I have the AP literature text (Perrines) that has a huge section on short stories and poetry.  I also have MCT poetry which we are currently going through.  8filltheheart once said that her daughter came into her own through poetry, so we are definitely going down that path. I guess I need some short story materials, but everything I have ever seen is pretty childish compared to his writing. I think the best approach might be to read and analyse great short stories and see if he can mimic them.  My selection, however, is pretty high level.  I have the Art of the Short Story with stuff by all the Greats, which is probably over his head.  I also have a collection of Twain short stories, collection of sci fi classic short stories, and bunches of victorian horror/gothic collections that ds will find too creapy to read (Poe, Gaskell, Bierce, La Fanu, Checkov, Lovecraft, Steven King (my older boy likes these which is why I have them)).

 

So perhaps I need 1) High level instruction, 2) appropriately-levelled short stories to study. 

[lewelma]

I would read any book written by this author. 

 

But I have no other ideas :)

 

Which author?  Did you accidently drop a link, or were you referring to my ds? :001_smile:

[EndOfOrdinary]

Anne Lamott wrote a book called Bird by Bird. There is a bit of cussing, but not in an obnoxious way. It is designed to really add in voice and somehow works in that way. There is a chapter called "$hitt¥ first drafts" for example and a story about her son cussing for the first time at the age of about four. Anyway, the book is incredible. It talks about how to bring a story to life and how to see your life as a story. It is completely about how to write, but she uses her life to illustrate the concepts.

 

Stephen King wrote "On Writing." It is one of the only books I have ever liked by Stephen King. Somehow when he is not cranking out craptacular over dramatic fluff, the man has some depth.

 

One semester I was forced into a creative writing class. I felt very horrific about my plight as I was a very strong STEM kid. The entire class was designed around taking known stories and reworking them. You could take a fairy tale, a Bible story, a comic book character, a classic, a myth, anything really well known culturally and you had to change one large aspect of the story. You could reverse the gender roles. You could change the time period. You could change the racial background, the setting, the family dynamics, whatever as long as the central conflict and storyline remained the same. Details obviously would change (and that was the point) but the audience was supposed to be able to have a strong feeling about what the writing was based on. We wrote four different stories that semester and every one was like this. It was actually kind of fun! It was a lot of fun to figure out what others were writing about and see what they changed.

 

Is your son parts to whole or whole to parts? I think that might make a whole giant difference in the type of instruction.

[lewelma]

Is your son parts to whole or whole to parts? I think that might make a whole giant difference in the type of instruction.

 

Definitely whole to parts.  Definitely.  Which is why we have focused on analysing National Geographic to help with his nonfiction writing, rather than doing something like WWS which I used with my older.

 

Will look up the books you suggested.  Thanks!

[madteaparty]

I am in a similar spot except that my DS writes on his own and rarely lets me see, but what he does let me see blows me away(and I'm pretty cynical about this stuff frankly). I buy his notebooks and the specific pens he wants, but have not done anything else about it. I mean he also went to a talk by a certain very popular author and takes the advice " just finish it" to heart. I kind of don't want to mess with it right now and just let him do his thing.

[madteaparty]

The kids have a friend who wrote a novel at 15 and self published it. He had a celebrated writer as a mentor/editor. He was a finalist for the new-author of the year award here in NZ and lost to a 25 year old. So ds is actually considering a novel.

 

DS is willing to spend hours writing, and he is willing to study and learn about writing. Although I have an awful lot of nonfiction materials, I am pretty short on fiction. I have the AP literature text (Perrines) that has a huge section on short stories and poetry. I also have MCT poetry which we are currently going through. 8filltheheart once said that her daughter came into her own through poetry, so we are definitely going down that path. I guess I need some short story materials, but everything I have ever seen is pretty childish compared to his writing. I think the best approach might be to read and analyse great short stories and see if he can mimic them. My selection, however, is pretty high level. I have the Art of the Short Story with stuff by all the Greats, which is probably over his head. I also have a collection of Twain short stories, collection of sci fi classic short stories, and bunches of victorian horror/gothic collections that ds will find too creapy to read (Poe, Gaskell, Bierce, La Fanu, Checkov, Lovecraft, Steven King (my older boy likes these which is why I have them)).

 

So perhaps I need 1) High level instruction, 2) appropriately-levelled short stories to study.

DS and I are really enjoying the short story selection for one of those Great Book anthologies, Roundtable some-such?

I have not pursued writing competitions and wouldn't know where to start. For now, I am following Rilke's advice on external validation and just focusing on developing the discipline (which will take a lifetime for both of us)

[EndOfOrdinary]

My whole to parts kid really liked it when we broke down the periods of literature and the styles of liuterature into some specific headings. We were doing it for him to analyze and write academically, but it might work in this realm too.

 

For each style or period we made bullet points for central feel, audience, and language usage.

 

 

Realism

Central feel: intense, connected through physical setting or action to the place or character, historic or personal, feelings of reality ground the story and give credibility so the reader trusts the author or characters.

 

Audience/purpose: Social commentary through fiction, early periodicals, casual audience

 

Language Usage: extreme description, description through events or character discovery; proper nouns and lots of names; progression through time is important - events are stacked, flashbacked, forwarded often; third person view point with small amounts of omnipotent writing for central character. Very rarely a split narrative or split viewpoints.

 

Authors read : Jack London, Stephen Crane

 

 

 

We did this for romanticism and dark romanticism, realism, naturalism (as a subset of realism), futurism, puritanism, rationalism, and on and on. It might help your son decipher how the author is doing what he/she is doing with the words. If he then knows what feel or language he wants to use he can find an author to mimick or even just go at it himself. He is so widely read that the exercise might not be very hard for him. It helped my son filter the larger spectrum of the whole book or whole style into some more specific language to work with.

[quark]

Probably not helpful Ruth, just to say thanks for this thread and that I am enjoying learning from it.

 

I do adore literature and children's books and the one thing I just cannot bring myself to do for now is interfere with my son's writing. I usually call him a reluctant writer here but he is not reluctant in creative writing, he is just unable to dedicate a lot of time for it due to so many competing interests.

 

Whenever I read his work I notice a number of different influences. You may read two of his (unfinished) stories and come away guessing they were written by two different kids because he likes to experiment with different and sometimes even contrasting styles (think a young Asimov vs a young Tolkien for example).

 

We are mostly doing what we always do, reading good books and talking about them. I do subscribe to the Brain Pickings blog and do "my" research this way, throwing him some articles now and then to digest as he wants to.

 

DS has signed up for a fan fiction wiki site (I can't remember what it's called...he does this very independently on a friend's recommendation). He was inspired in part by posts there and wrote some humorous portions of stories (finishing a story hasn't happened yet!). But there is also some social stuff that happens that you might not want to expose a young tween to. Perhaps there might be other sites like these but moderated more carefully for younger ages/ more sensitive kids where your son might like to submit his writing?

 

ETA 1: Has your DS tried blogging his stories?

 

ETA 2: For appropriately leveled short stories, remember the Scott Foresman America Reads Patterns in Literature text (ISBN 9780673293794) I mentioned some time back? We just bought two more texts in the series because I found them cheap used and in fairly great condition. One is a level below Patterns (Explorations in Literature ISBN 9780673293787) and one a level slightly above or maybe similar to Patterns (Traditions in Literature, ISBN 9780673293800). We don't plan to use these for academic reasons (they make some fun bedtime reading/ reading in the car) but the short stories are usually (I haven't checked them all) quite mild and age appropriate for tweens. They also have non fiction works, poetry etc included.

 

I think this is the chronology, rough grade levels for the series but I could be wrong:

Beginnings in Literature (5th-6th?)

Discoveries in Literature (6th-7th?)

Explorations in Literature (7th-8th?)

Patterns in Literature (8th-9th?)

Traditions in Literature (9th-10th?)

The United States in Literature (10th-11th?)

England in Literature (11th-12th?)

Classics in World Literature (11th-12th?)

 

So far all the texts that I have seen have a writer's handbook of some sort at the back, one is on literary terms for e.g., one is on writing about plot, and there are other relevant materials for writers/ lit lovers.

 

[lewelma]

Great stuff, guys.  I really like all these ideas.  Recently, I've had him record his ideas and then type them up.  This has allowed him to make sure he does not forget what he was going to say, and allows him to edit when he types, so the first written draft feels good to him. 

 

I asked him today to start thinking about a short story, and he told me that actually he wants to do a literary analysis comparing Swiss Family Robinson to Mysterious Island. Well, OK, not really what I expected.  :001_smile:  I've just been letting him write whatever interests him.  We did start reading the Sparkesnotes on Cat's Cradle.  Wow.  I missed a ton of stuff when I read it. I think I just need to set a ton of time aside for him to discuss and read.

 

 

[Grover]

I don't know what their distance courses are like, but the face to fce ones are amazing, so I'd hope similar

http://www.schoolforyoungwriters.org/correspondence_Programmes/

 

there's also this

http://ultranet.giftededucation.org.nz/WebSpace/410/

[lewelma]

But the best thing a budding writer can do is read. A lot. A very, very lot. 

 

Well this is the one thing I have covered.  My ds reads 4-5 hours a day. And given that he needs 11 hours of sleep, it seems to us that all he does is read!

[Julie of KY]

Brave Writer

 

If nothing else, I'd sign up for her daily emails which contain a daily recommendation of how to mentor your student in writing. Many of these would be great for you, others not.

 

I also think the Brave Writer online classes would be great at mentoring him. They are really good at helping kids take that next step whatever it is for each student.