Recently, as part of my first-sentence prompts class, we did a holiday story. As has been the case with every class we’ve done together, I ended up with a completely different story than my student. While hers was about Christmas, mine involved a leprechaun. Our first sentence was “Shawn snuck quietly down the hallway, hoping no one would hear him in the silence of the night.”
For the class, I created a list of 100 first sentences (or occasionally first two sentences) for stories. Before we get started, the student picks a number between 1 and 100. As long as we haven’t done that sentence before, we use that sentence as the first sentence of our stories. This means that neither one of us knows before class what the first sentence will be. While we’ve had some that are a bit of a stretch to fit that week’s genre, some, like this one, work out better.
We each have 20 minutes to write the stories. When I first started the class, I wasn’t sure how well it would work. Twenty minutes to think of a story to write and to write it is not a long time. The girl in the class has always finished her story within 20-23 minutes, which is pretty impressive. I’ve had at least two that weren’t quite done when she was ready to be done. Fortunately, I finished this one in just over 20 minutes.
A Leprechaun Surprise
Shawn snuck quietly down the hallway, hoping no one would hear him in the silence of the night. He’d been planning this for weeks. Shawn snuck quietly into the living room. Pulling the papers out of his bag, he quickly started lining them up on the floor, taping each piece of paper to the floor, one by one. Shawn squinted to see in the dark. He didn’t want to turn on a light, even the flashlight on his cell phone, because he didn’t want the light to wake anyone up.
Once Shawn had finished taping the papers to the floor, he stood back to admire his work. This was going to be fun. Shawn pulled the final piece of his plan out of his bag and set it at the end of his paper trail, scooting the big chair in front of it. He excitedly snuck back to bed, setting an alarm on his phone so he’d wake up in time to see his little brother’s reaction to the surprise.
In the Morning
Several hours later, Shawn woke up even before his alarm went off. He could hear his little brother in his room. Shawn peeked his head out of her door, looking down the hallway. He definitely didn’t want to miss his brother’s reaction. When his younger brother, Travis, came out of his room, Shawn was waiting.
“Good thing you’re wearing green,” Shawn said.
“Why?” Travis asked, looking down at his clothing.
“Well, I think I heard a leprechaun last night, and if you’re not wearing green, you can’t have the treats he left behind,” Shawn said.
Travis looked at him like he wasn’t sure how much to believe of what his brother had said.
“A leprechaun?” Travis said.
“Yes, I think it might have left us something,” Shawn said.
“Really?” Travis asked, excitedly.
“Really, maybe we should go in the living room to see if it left anything,” Shawn said.
Travis, at five years old, wasn’t sure if leprechauns were real. If his brother said there was a leprechaun, though, he wanted to believe it. His brother wouldn’t lie to him. Right?
The Reveal
Travis looked at his brother for a moment, as though trying to decide how much he believed him. Then he went running down the hallway. As he turned the corner, there were little leprechaun paper footprints in the living room. The tiny footprints created a trail around the room. Travis followed the footprints, zigzagging throughout the room. They finally ended just behind a large chair.
“Maybe, you’ll have to look behind the chair,” Shawn prompted.
Travis pushed as hard as he could to get the chair to move forward. It scooted a few inches, but it didn’t move far.
“Did you need some help?” Shawn asked.
“Yes,” Travis responded.
Shawn pushed the chair forward. Behind it was what looked like a small golden pot. Inside were small gold coins.
“The leprechaun came! The leprechaun came!” Travis said excitedly.
Shawn smiled as Travis grabbed a few gold coins out of the pot.
“Are these chocolate?” Travis asked, staring at the coins like he’d won a million dollars.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Shawn said.
Travis ripped the wrapper off one of the coins and shoved it into his mouth.
“Yummy,” Travis said, enjoying the chocolate coin.
“I guess the leprechaun was able to find our house. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” Shawn said.
Thoughts on the Story
As I was sharing my story with my student and as I was rereading it later, I noticed a few places where in a rewrite, I would have changed some words, mainly ones that I felt like I used a bit too much. Except for the subheadings, this is the original story. I thought this class would be fun to allow my students to learn how to write different genres, but it’s been a great way for me to be forced to come up with a story fast. It’s also forced me to write in unfamiliar genres. I’ve been impressed with how well my student writes.
