A WriteShop StoryBuilder Assignment, John the Detective

My son, age 9 and dyslexic, is a very reluctant writer. He has great ideas; it's just getting them on paper that poses a problem. I recently gave him a writing assignment using WriteShop's StoryBuilder cards (read review here). The assignment was:

• Select a card from each category.
• Write a story using the ideas in the cards, writing for as long as you like.

It was a pretty open ended assignment, but I didn't want to put a lot of requirements on him. I just wanted him to practice writing in a way that wasn't threatening.

He originally selected the following cards: detective, clever, a strange telephone call and secret room.

Before he even started writing, he decided to select several more cards from each category and then eventually grabbed the whole character pile and headed to the computer.

Below are the results, with punctuation and spelling only corrected for readability. I wonder what will happen next? If you would like to know the ending to this story, feel free to leave an encouraging comment to be forward to the author!

John the Detective

Chapter 1, The Mysterious Phone Call

Hello, my name is John. My story begins one day as I was sitting on my couch when I got a mysterious phone call. It was the state police! They said they needed me in England. Some of the Queen’s jewels had been stolen! Knowing the stories of Sherlock Holmes, I dashed out the door to the airport and got the last plane ticket to England. Ten hours later, I got off the airplane. The Queen’s palace guards took me to the palace. There I met the Queen herself! After they led me to my private chamber, the next day the Queen told me what had happened.