A year-long study of the writing growth of eight seventh grade children was conducted to determine whether knowledge of reading rhetoric could be directly applied to personal writing behavior. It was assumed that active comprehension of a distinctive literary model would provide awareness of the structure of narrative prose and improve the student's own writing. Guided verbal interaction, which focused on story elements or author's styles, was designed to bring about deeper understanding of prose construction. Sequential activities were incorporated into seven steps of a "listen, discuss, write" model. Preliminary assessment of the writing samples of three of the subjects suggested that students tended toward more vitality in their writing as time progressed, using fewer words, more verbs, and more verb phrases. Students showed increased attention to the areas of coherence and characterization/detail in the second writing samples, which followed discussion on descriptive writing. The less able writers showed greater improvement using the "listen, discuss, write" procedures, but good writers also appeared to profit from the targeted discussion of narrative elements. As a result of preliminary analysis, a recommendation was made to include every attention to developing a "sense of audience" in the student writers. (RL)