Youngest Son Guest Post: The Eight Diamond Lords

The evening began with my youngest son looking up at me, a sheaf of Colorado's ‘fill in the bubble’ practice writing tests spilling out of his backpack.

“Mom,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks, “my writing doesn’t have any flow. I feel like tearing up everything!”

So he dictated a story while I typed and then we edited together for flow. Here is the result with the editing below:

            The Eight Diamond Lords


There were people falling from the clouds. The sons of the gods landed in the desert in a western town. The eight lords, each wearing their own color, were hungry so all decided to go to a bar, buy some drinks, and play cards. Then some cowboys came up to them and said “Get out of this bar. You’re not welcome here.” All the lords got in a huge argument and then got in a fight with the cowboys. The gold lord, punched the leader of the cowboys in the face and he went flying back and smashed through the wall. The lords decided to leave the town. While traveling they found awesome looking diamonds. Each of them picked one up. Oh, and did I mention that you can’t see their faces?  The diamonds started glowing the colors of the capes and hoods the lords were wearing. And then a beam from the clouds came down that matched the colors the eight masters were wearing. The beam took them back to their home.

Here is our editing: 


We made one word illegal: “they” (we decided we could keep only one “they”). He  crossed out some words and added new ones in blue. He read bits aloud as he made his decisions. Doing this on the computer seemed to add a bit of high tech fun.

There were people falling from the clouds.

They The sons of the gods landed in the desert in a western town.

They The eight lords, each wearing their own color, were hungry so they all decided to go to a bar, buy some drinks, and play cards. Then a some cowboys came up to them and said

“Get out of this bar. You’re not welcome here.”

And so they all the lords got in this a huge argument and then they got in a fight with the cowboys.

The gold one lord, he punched him the leader of the cowboys in the face and he went flying back and smashed through the wall. And then they the lords decided to leave the town. While And then they were traveling and they found these odd awesome looking diamonds. And each of them picked one up. Oh and did I mention that you can’t see their faces, the people, you can’t see their faces. And so each one picked one up. No - uh mom, I already said that. Mom! I don’t want that in my story.
“Is she writing down what I’m saying?” says big brother.

And the diamonds started glowing what the colors of the capes and hoods they the lords were wearing. And then this a beam from the clouds came down and the beam was that matched the colors what they the eight masters were wearing. and they got The beamed took them back to their home.