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My son who is 13 maintains fairly good grades but the one thing I notice on his test papers is a request for "more detail"? This seem to be a repetive comment for the last couple of months. Does anybody know of any books on the market that help a student "think" in a more detailed fashion to improve their grades on essay questions and the like?

not that i know of; this is actually an issue i struggle with myself at university.
something you can tell him is that what he thinks about is not logical, and ask him to write down everything he think of in his essays, even if that paragraph is 'useless' and 'trivial' to him, i have found that it usually is not to others.

When my 16 year old was younger, we had a writing tutor who explained this with an exercise.

Have the student Write about how to make a pb&j sandwich. Then have the student follow the directions as written. See if they can make the sandwich.

When my son he went to go get the knife that would spread the peanut butter, the tutor said, hey that's not on your paper. When he went to get the ingredients, that wasn't on the paper either.

After that, the tuto explained the details should give the reader all they need without the ability to see what you're doing. The exercise really helped him get what she meant.

Then she said that for every paragraph written, it needed to have opening, 3 details and a closing.

He's a pretty good writer now, taking AP writing classes.

My son is only 11, but I've discovered that sometimes looking for SAT and ACT test prep sites and slightly modifying what they offer has helped him a lot.

I also figured out that he learns kind of backwards from other kids: his head takes in ALL the information, and then he has to organize it in a way that makes sense. "More detail" and "summarize" don't make sense to him, since he assumes that everyone remembers everything in it's totality, the same way that he does. Writing, also, is a bit backward, as kids are taught to start with an idea and to fill it out by researching to add details and structure. He's got all the research in there, already and has trouble figuring out which of the ideas is important and which isn't.

He can't determine which ideas are "important" (takes too much understanding of what other people think) but he CAN categorize ideas and arrange them into groups. So, after I wrote what I'm about to post, I learned to say "Write a sentence about the CATEGORY of things in your paragraph for your topic sentence" instead of "Summarize what you are going to say."


I wrote the following for him on writing a paragraph, which I modified from several sites after searching "How to Write a Paragraph:

How To Write A Good Paragraph
Paragraphs begin with a topic sentence that tells the reader what the paragraph will be about. Each paragraph should end with a conclusion, a sentence that summarizes or describes what was written in the paragraph. The concluding sentence can also bring in information for the next paragraph to make a transition, if one exists.

Sentences in a paragraph should flow – meaning they should fit with the topic sentence. They can either support, or explain the topic sentence, or offer information about the topic sentence. If you read a sentence and ask “where did this come from?” or “how does this relate to the topic?” it doesn’t flow. Remember, your reader doesn’t know everything you know, so make sure your sentences explain your meaning fully.

Words in a paragraph should be content, not filler. This means use only words that help explain the topic sentence, and get rid of redundant words or sentences. Test for filler by asking “can the sentence give the same information without this word?”

Five Sentence Paragraph
(1) Topic Sentence:
____________________________________________________________________________
(2) Supporting Sentence:
____________________________________________________________________________
(3) Supporting Sentence:
____________________________________________________________________________
(4) Supporting Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(5) Concluding Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________


Eleven Sentence Paragraph
(1) Topic Sentence:
____________________________________________________________________________
(2) Supporting Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(3) Information Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(4) Information Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(5) Supporting Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(6) Information Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(7) Information Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(8) Supporting Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(9) Information Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(10) Information Sentence:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(11) Concluding Sentence:

Checklist
___ Is the topic sentence broad enough to include all of the supporting sentences?
___ Do the supporting sentences relate directly to the topic sentence?
___ Do the information sentences provide clear details about the supporting sentence?
___ Does the concluding sentence sum up the paragraph?

Not sure if this will help you, but it's a start.

The Verbalizing and Visualizing program helped him visualize and describe something with many different structure words. Combined with Theory of Mind practice to understand that the reader does not know what he knows, has helped a lot.

Sometimes we practice taking a simple sentence and turning it into a "super sentence" by adding adjectives, etc. He likes that!

For my son, getting too succinct seemed to be a natural phase coming after all that pragmatic speech work about "getting to the point." Progress, really. Next step being to learn what is appropriate detail and when to give it.

http://www.meritsoftware.com/software/index.php

Check out the various online writing software packages offered by Merit Software. (See link above). Also, I have a bunch of links to free writing resources on my website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com. There are also some free writing lessons in the "favorites" section of my Reading and Grammar Channel on YouTube ( www.youtube.com/user/vids4autistickids ) and some links to some other free YouTube channels that offer grammar and writing lessons.