Flash Fiction from a Six Year Old. Kids can amaze you sometimes.
I had an interesting experience with my six-year-old today. I thought it would be fun to share.
He has a project due tomorrow. Unfortunately, we haven’t been going through his book bag every day, so we didn’t notice it until late last night. (If you’re a parent, I’m sure you’ve been there before.)
Anyway…
His project is to write a five page story, (two sentences per page) and illustrate it. When his turn comes up (which is, of course, tomorrow) He has to stand in front of the class and read it.
I went to work today, and called him half an hour before he had to leave for school.
I said, “Do you know what you want to write about?”
“No.”
“You need to pick something. A trip to the store? Something that happened on vacation?”
“Tron”
My husband perks up in the background. “No, pick something easy. Do playing outside or something.”
“No. I want to do Tron”
I said, “If that’s what he wants to write about, then let him.”
While on the phone, my little guy talked, and I typed. Then I emailed it home to my husband for him to print so my son could illustrate it. Tonight, when I get home, I will help my little guy practice his story.
I tried to get him to make it shorter, but he was pretty adamant about his plot once it started flowing. I heard my husband laugh in the background. I don’t think he could believe it either. His story is 14 pages (about 28 sentences).
This is my child that really doesn’t want to learn to read. I hope I don’t have a hard time practicing it with him tonight.
Anyway, this is what he came up with. Mommy just helped with the typing, and I had to slow him down because he was spitting it out faster than my little fingers could swipe across the keyboard.
When I read it back, I was a little surprised. There is setting, introduction of the good guy and the bad guy, conflict, progression to climax, and the one thing that seems to elude my older children… a definitive end.
Now keep in mind that I typed it EXACTLY how he said it, so don’t go looking for clean syntax. He’s only six. Just check out the story arc. This is actually a very good story synopsis. Pretty Cool.
Title: Tron has to do a battle with the boss
By: Littlest Dude Eaton
Tron has to do a battle with the boss.
The boss has a big hood, a cape, he is on the orange team, he has a big disk and he throws it and when it hits a guy, the guy gets defeated and the disk comes back to him.
Tron knows he will be okay. Because he has a strong disc and he is brave.
Tron is at the battle stage. First Tron throws the disk
The boss hits Tron’s disc with his disc and the disc comes back to Tron, and Tron catches the disk in his hand.
The boss closed a big giant gate that flashed blue. Then Tron uses a powerful move on it and he threw it hard and a giant blue wall blew up.
Then the boss sends his minions who don’t have disks. They have sharp fingernails and they stab you with them. Tron defeats them.
Tron ran to the boss. And the boss ran super-fast somewhere past the orange gate.
A giant ship that has four bad guys on it with disks comes. One bad guys jumps off the ship and starts attacking Tron.
Tron uses this special move that has lots of disks and the guy gets defeated.
The other three that were really powerful and fast took these soft things that have horns coming out of their helmets and they go super-fast. They ran into Tron and threw a disk and almost hit his head but he ducked.
They all came and then Tron used a special move where he jumped and the disk hit the ground, and the ground went all over the place, and then the guys flew back and hit the walls.
They got defeated so Tron could go through the orange wall now.
And then he attacked the boss and the boss got defeated.
The end.
(Yes, he said “The End” So cute!)
You may have also noted a few explosion in there… a boy after my own heart.
Amendment: After practicing with him, I found out that he could say all these words, but he couldn’t necessarily read them. Rather than frustrating him, we cut the story down to the key points and made it five pages, and made some of his sentences shorter. We worked on reading it for about an hour. I’m proud of my little guy for not giving up.
With his active imagination I know he would just LOVE reading if he’d just give it a chance. I really hope this pushes him in the right direction.
P.S. – I found out this is a scene from a video game. Funny.
So, I sat down one day and began reading what I expected to be a dull, boring drama.
.
Jennifer M Eaton 