Please help me to help my son write a story.

[bishybashyboshy]

Ok I have been looking on tinternet all morning to try to find a solution to this, my son really wants to enter a 'write a story' competition on the tv this can be about anything so long as it is as exciting as possible. He has actively tried several times to sit down and write a story but he just can't, we have sat down and talked through what will happen, setting, characters, then when he sits down to do it we have tears because he can't do it which then escalates to he will never win because he is useless and no amount of reassurance works. He wants me to help him but other than repeating what I have already done and me actually writing it for him (which defeats the object of the competition really) I don't know how I can do this. He can write very neatly although very time consuming. Reasons he has given me are a) he just can't do it?? b) he can't spell and he will get it all wrong c) he can't think what to write (although we have gone through it all repeatedly) even as he is sat with the paper in front of him. Can someone give me any advice? he is really enthusiastic about doing this but the getting from brain to paper is causing him big problems, and I would really like to help him to do this.

what about doing it comic book style with minimum words and plenty of pictures?

Every story needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's hard to just start writing, he needs to be inspired. It usually helps me if I read a book. Make the plot of the story something that he's interested in. If he likes rockets then a story about space etc. Sometimes it's best to just start it and see what happens. Tell him to write something that he'd like to read.

Tell him that he can do it. It doesn't matter about his spelling, they just want to read his story.

Best of luck!

How old is he? Start with a sequence of three - beginning, middle and end. Make him choose a 'who' (at least two characters) and a 'where', and then just take it from there. Tell him in advance that there will be an initial version and a final version. There is a book I find useful when writing stories (for school homework) with DS (6.5, dx of ASD): Just Imagine

Thanks for the replies, devient I forgot to mention it is a 500 word story, which to be truthful when we heard about the 500 words I thought my son would just say forget it but he didn't he was still really interested. ladymary I never thought to read a book to him, will definitely try that. He already decided what he wanted it to be about which was robots, set in a factory, I'm not going to go too much into detail just in case someone pinches his idea and gets it published it sounded really good! Just wish I could help him put it onto paper, I already pointed out about the spelling and that they would only be interested in reading the story, and that he can do it but it just isn't helping. It is making him so sad because he really wants to do it.

Would it help if I offered to proof read it for him? I write children's books (they are with an agent at the moment, not published). I won't steal his plot though, I'm more of a 'dragon and witches' author.

Could he write it on MS word/Office first? It will check the spellings for him.

sorry missed your post sc13 he is nearly 8, Could possibly have ASD. Thanks for the tips, although I have suggested a rough draft then final which he raised his eyebrow at the book you suggested looks good I will have to wait til next week to get that I think (I have a feeling it will be quite beneficial as he progresses at school although funnily enough he doesn't seem to struggle with this at school ) I have spent a small fortune on books about various things to help my son over the past couple of months. LadyMary Thank you that is a really kind offer I will run it past him later and see what he says.

Any time. It's very difficult to write if you're worried about getting it perfect. Tell him I've had to rewrite my book 15 times, so that's 15 times 37,000 words! It's worth it when it's finished though.

500 words? That's 5 chapters of 100 words each. Work out the broad plot in 5 sections, then write each section individually. Then proof read and edit. Much more manageable :)

I agree, every story should have a begining a middle and an end, and also a problem that gets resolved... could you get him to tell the story and draw it in pictures first, then act it out, several times so its fresh in his mind (like Pie Corrbett)... then write it in chapters like suggested... good luck

Hi there, we used to have similar issues with ds1 (he is now 10 and has AS). Vocabulary is actually one of his biggest strengths and he was always full of ideas, but he struggled to get anything down on paper - at most we'd get two paragraphs.

I found Xanthippa's blog really useful for getting my head around what the problem was.

In ds's case it was mostly perfectionism. He hates to get things wrong, but also hates to revisit and edit and of course anything written by hand is difficult to alter anyway.

We've found the problem has slowly improved since he learned to touch type and is allowed to use a pc for school and homework.

The other thing that's helped is approaching the 'creative' part by sort of mind-mapping it. So, drawing big circles on pages with either pictures or words for the ideas, then arrows to indicate connections or progression of the plot and eventually filling in some of the connectives along the arrows. He can't do this alone, but it definitely helps if we do it together. Basically, we get the bare bones of the plot as just a few blobs on the page, then start fleshing it out and scribble down any great phrases he comes up with while we are doing this. When we get that it seems to become less scary and once he starts typing he can usually keep on flowing.

He absolutely hates doing the school style planning of opening, middle and end and if I mention 'drafts' and 'final copies' panic and temper set it, so it has to be very carefully handled.

500 words is a lot and I can see why that is making things even more daunting for him in terms of getting started.

Interestingly ds's teachers also insist he doesn't struggle with this at school, . he's in the top group for literacy, but then he is never expected to write more than a page, uses cloze worksheets 99% of the time and is now allowed to use a pc anyway.

Having seen his exercise books, I have to disagree with his teachers - not least of all because several of the 'stories' he's written have been practically word for word re-writes of programmes he's seen on TV.

I told his teacher this once, in relation to a piece of work she was telling me was amazing and clearly demonstrated he didn't have any problems there. It was word for word, move for move an exact transcript of the Pokemon episode he watched the evening before - even down to the characters' names, however that didn't stop them grading it high and holding it up as an example of what amazing 'creative writing' he can do.

Bee is an avid storyteller/writer. Instead of sitting down and writing, she tells a story and I record it. If you have access to an iPod/iPad, there are many programs where they will record a spoken story (and many have comic book style illustrations to add to help him make the story flow). She cannot hold a pen, and typing is painfully slow for her because of her tremors, but when we get rid of those barriers, her true abilities come out, and her stories are amazing.

At school, she uses a touch screen computer with predictive typing software - she types the first few letters of a word, then chooses from options. It is more difficult than just dictating, but a skill that will give her more independence in the future.

He talks and you trpe, scribe everything down. Then he can go through and make changes himself. Prompting questions like 'what happens now' and can we make that more exciting are worth doing.