This summer, I worked with a small group of homeschool kids in a weekly writing class. We explored fiction writing including story elements and the hero’s journey. The goal was to develop a protagonist and antagonist, outline a story line including setting, characters, plot, and problem and resolution. The students then learned about the “hero’s journey”, a narrative that dominates most fiction, and structured their tale around that format. Each student chose one part of their story to stretch out using sensory details to make it more interesting. The writers were of all different abilities and had varying experience with fiction writing. Each student was immensely proud of his story! The following is written by Mason.

Max vs. Trash

by Mason

Max’s dog Rufus wakes up before Max and looks outside. At first it’s looking really nice. Then he blinks and he sees trash. He gets really mad. He wakes up Max. Max looks outside and he gets mad too. When Max wakes up, he sees his dog Rufus, trash, toy cars, trucks, and his lamp and table. He smells trash, dead fish, and hot dogs. He picks up his bedside water and takes a sip. He hears cars honking, footsteps, and sirens. He is touching his bed, dog, and his FLAME THROWER and he feels really frightened and determined. He uses that Flame Thrower to burn all the trash. It does not work that well and he got burned a little bit. He sees his old enemy Trash-O-Lanch launching trash. Max tries to light him on fire but he got launched. Max asks Rufus and his friend Hulk to throw most of the trash into a volcano then it erupts and all goes back. Max starts to recycle and it stops it a little bit so Max builds a giant recycled robot named RUMAX. He sees Garbodor, an evil piece of trash, and they fight. Max WINS. After that he sees his friend DOGGON at the dog park and they see Trash-O-Lanch but he is a cat. It is KAT, Doggon’s arch enemy.