A tutor charged with the task of helping a third-grade child with good reading skills improve his writing skills developed a plan to move the student gradually from dictating stories to writing independently. The student had difficulty initiating and maintaining on-task behavior and disliked writing independently, although he had "written" a number of stories, dictating them to another tutor. The tutor's first step in reversing the problem was to copy down the student's stories as he made them up. In their second session, the tutor read the child's stories to him and asked him to write them down. When spelling was a problem, the student was encouraged to use approximated spelling and continue. In a later session, the tactic of cutting the boy's stories into separate words helped him focus on details of the print and revise misspelled words. As he re-read his stories, words he found difficult were looked up in the dictionary and revised, and he discovered that looking up core words, such as "cobra" gave him the spelling for peripheral words such as "snake" and "dangerous." The student came away with a structured way to write and revise his work, making him more confident about his command of writing skills. However, tutors of children who do not have good initial reading skills and vocabulary may have to adapt the program. (Six references and three writing samples are included.) (JC)