14 Year wrote a Very graphic horror story

[Whynotchoose]

My 14 year old Son has got into trouble from his school for writing a VERY graphic Horror story, personally I found it very well written (I'm even considering publishing it with Amazon/Kindle).

He is the youngest of three, His brothers are 25 and 18. His Mum and I have always let are Kids have a fairly free reign (within reason).

My Question is, is it wrong for a 14 year old to be writing this kind of story or as I think a good piece of creative writing (Think Stephen King at his best).

It is only a story. But it was the wrong kind of a story for a bullied child to take into school. It's good that you can see that.

He's obviously got a flair for creative writing, does he write other things?

It would be a safeguarding issue because children often reveal bullying/abuse in this way before they have told anyone. I would be extremely remiss not to raise this with our safeguarding person. In ops case, his son has suffered bullying-it would be appropriate to investigate this, and these revenge feelings to ensure the child is ok.

FWIW as a secondary teacher I had to explicitly ban graphic violence in short stories too, particularly in KS3. Boys write violent stuff all the time and it is really really boring.

Having said that, given the circumstances of your DS I probably would have flagged his up too. The only times I've ever done this were for children writing about domestic violence etc. that I suspected might be a bit too real

That's the point I watched and read horror from a young age.
I'm 41 and grew up with films such as Halloween, nightmare on elm Street, books like carrie.
In the UK we have some rigid gun controlled laws, also I don't own a nail gun and he's a bit young to hire one. It's just the product of a very vivid imagination.

I'm sure it is OP but school might have been concerned because he's been bullied....it might have been considered a cry for help or a warning.

I also read Stephen King from 14 onwards but your son (who you say is bullied at school) has written a story about how a boy being bullied at school goes on to torture his tormentors.

I work in a school. We had a safeguarding update last week, as it happens, and this rings massive alarm bells for me. I would be very concerned by what your son wrote, sorry OP.

I'd also be concerned about the parent being so blasé TBH.

I love the logic that the school are being OTT because he doesn't have access to those particular weapons...like that means he doesn't have access to other weapons should he so wish.
I'm sure the OP is probably right in her assessment that this was nothing more than a story, but I think the school are right to be cautious and suggesting they are making a fuss about nothing because the OP doesn't own a nail gun is rather missing the point.

It's not the weapons that cause the concern. It's that he's used his vivid imagination to plan out, in detail, taking revenge on his bullies. It could be the best book ever written, and literary genius, but it's an also an insight into his head.

I read Stephen King from about 13, and I lived in the horror section of the library for a while. There is a difference, though, between reading and writing. There is a difference between enjoying someone else's story, and writing a horror story that almost fits your own situation.

It may be an extreme comparison, but it's not unusual for the parents and classmates of those who carry out school shootings in America to say, we thought he was joking, we thought he was just being creative. Infact, those joking conversations, those creative drawings and writings, were planning. They were an insight into where those children's heads were, and how they were processing their situation at that time.

Please don't think that because he seems okay to you, and because he doesn't have access to a nail gun, this isn't a concern.

I mean, I can watch or read all the horror that I like, and I can even write it. If I start writing a graphic story about how I'd like to kill my boss, though, it would be concerning. It's a step away from just enjoying horror films, it's applying the violence from horror to real life.*

*For the record, I don't want to kill my boss!

As a teacher I would flag up any story a child handed into me which contained graphic sexual content or violence because, as others have pointed out, it is often a sign of things going amiss with the young person, especially when bullying has been an issue. It doesn't sound from what OP has said that this was a school assignment but something the DS wrote of his own bat, and decided to take into school to show the teacher. I'm not sure OP what you mean by 'got into trouble'? If the school punished him directly rather than just having a word along the lines of 'not the most appropriate thing to bring into school' or 'are you having problems with bullying again' then the school is over reacting. But they are not over-reacting, in the climate of child protection we now operate within, to flag it up as a concern.

"As a teacher I would flag up any story a child handed into me which contained graphic sexual content or violence because, as others have pointed out, it is often a sign of things going amiss with the young person"

Ok, as an example - when I was 14, we were asked to write about the ancient Egyptians. Anything about them, it was our choice to choose. It just so happened that the evening before the report was due, there was a BBC documentary on them, and happened to be about the hidden aspects of ancient egypt in their hieroglyphs (specifically, about masturbation, sex etc). For some insane reason I thought that it would be a great idea to make my report about that (shudders in horror - God know what my teacher thought when she read it). My point is, in the news are daily reports of the atrocities ISIS are committing - beheadings, rape, torture etc. I'd be surprised if a 14 hadn't heard some of these descriptions - kids can often then incorporate these things into things like stories they write. A bit weird, maybe, but I wouldn't immediately think "psycho alert!".