Day 125 - Kian Writes His 1st Book, "Link's Cool Story"

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Remember our post about slow traveling and how much we love it? (Though we are about to eat our own words for the next half of our trip...but more on this later). 

Well, you might also remember Kian's love for Link and all things Zelda, thanks to "Zelda: A Link Between Worlds", a Nintendo 3DS game that he loves playing with daddy's help (when he is allowed and when daddy has time). 

The Idea

Last night Kian decided he wants to write a story about Link.  This started a long conversation about how much work actually goes into writing and illustrating a story.  He really wanted to do everything last night, but it was really close to bed time, so we came up with a draft and the plan remained that he would begin working on the final pages today.

He actually was so excited about working on his little project that he told us he woke up two times during the night and saw that it was still dark out. "I think this was a really long night, mommy" he said to me!

Here is how we went about writing the story.  If you are not a Zelda fan and don't know who Link is, all you probably need to know are the following:

  • Link is the hero of the game
  • Link fights bad guys
  • Link has to save princess Zelda and her kingdom of Hyrule
  • The really bad guy is Ganon

Story Board/Draft

We started explaining to Kian that every story needs some thought put into it.  I demonstrated a simple story about a boy who loves Christmas and writes a letter to Santa on 4 panels/pages.  I did it quickly and explained to him that the final pages would have much more drawings on them and the pictures would have to look great (just like the books he reads with daddy at night). 

OK. Example done. 

Next up, Kian's turn to create his draft.  He decided his story needed 7 pages (4 pages seemed too brief)!  So he drew quick drafts and came up with the story.  We did slightly modify some parts, and explained to him that the story has to have a flow so the readers are not confused. 

With the draft done, he was sent to bed.  We told him that he can start working on the final version first thing in the morning. 

Final Version

He had a lot of dedication for completing his story.  He worked on it all morning, with a break to play with Hannah, and then quite a bit of the afternoon.  He was very determined he was going to finish in one day! 

The concept of a 'draft' was a bit lost on him.  He didn't quite understand that he was supposed to keep all the final pages more or less the same as his draft panels.  We probably did not explain this well enough.  Also, he said afterwards that it was "cooler" to draw new pictures.  Either way, the actual story stayed fairly true to the draft.  After reviewing his work, we had to:

  • Change a few sentences
  • Ask him to draw a new page to provide continuity to his story (he kept wanting to put more words in without pictures being there). 
  • Reject one of the pages he had drawn, since it did not fit into the story line!

Yes I know, we are ridiculous critics.  He is 5 for heaven's sake!  But we wanted his 1st book to be awesome :)  And he was not upset, even at me rejecting one of his pages, he even threw it away himself!

Note: I did do the actual writing for both the draft and the final copy because Kian does not really know how to spell yet and he would either have to copy what we wrote or we would have to sit and spell everything out for him. 

So without further ado...Here it is.

Link's Cool Story - By: Kian Morton Age: 5

 
 

Both Kian and Hannah love to listen to the story at bedtime, after daddy has read them other books.  I did overhear Kian saying, "hmm...7 pages is really short!" ;)