A Writing Challenge from Tanaya
Monday, August 9, 2010
, Posted by Sandy Fussell at 8:44 AM
Tanaya from Manor Lakes Specialist College is the first person to share their writing with us all. I've posted Tanaya's wonderful piece of work, with her permission, on a new Tab called RWZ Writers. Have a look. Now Tanaya has thrown down the challenge to everyone else:
I just hope other people will put their writing on there as well ..... PLEASE encourage the others to write their own stuff, because I don't want to be the only one.
I would love to see other work. Doesn't have to be a long story - just an excerpt. But if you would like to send a longer story - you can email it to me. samuraikids~at~people.net.au and repalce ~at~ with @ when emailing.
Hi Sandy! This is Tegan! I'm going to send you this piece of writing I did. I don't know if it is good, because every time I asked Tanaya, she just says: "Its good" Please could you put it on RMZ Writers, cause I don't know how.
It comes in two parts:
It. Was. Awake.
I could hear its gentle sigh as it sat up, and the crunching of gravel underneath its giant, scaly butt. It yawned, most probably stretching its massive wings out wide, although I don’t really know, ‘cause I’m hiding underneath a bush of very nasty carnivorous spickleweed, who are trying to chew my ears off. The problem is, I can’t flick them away, because then I would make a noise, and then something even bigger will chew my whole head off!
The creature’s tail suddenly flew past the spickleweed bush, and the sharp quills in the end sliced my lip. I just couldn’t help it.
“Owwww, that HURT!” my hand flew to my mouth. Instantly a spickleweed started chewing on it, but who cares? I just had to stop myself from screaming, stop the blood from pumping out of my lip, and just hope that the giant thing in front of me is deaf.
Half a millisecond later, I found out it wasn’t.
A very, very BIG claw ripped the spickleweed bush out of the ground, throwing it to the other side of the cave. I looked up and saw this creature for what it was…a very beautiful, MASSIVE, silver bird, with a long neck, and bloodstained quills on the end of its reptilian tail. Actually, the only thing bird-like about it was that it had feathers, and two legs with fierce looking talons on the end of them. The head was very civic like, and it looked very similar to my own thorncivic at home, with a long snout, and razor sharp teeth. They were even black, which made them look even more terrifying. And the eyes. Where the pupil should off been was just white. It was blind, and that could just be my trick to survival.
It stared down at me, and I saw those long ears and large nostrils, which meant that this creature was definitely a civic. But what kind? Before I could ponder about it, the civic roared at me, then cocked its head. Its nostrils were flaring, and its tail flicked back and fourth impatiently.
And the second part:
“Okay, you want some…worms?” I rolled a tub of squirming worms towards the monster, but it just piffed the tub back. “Bread?” No. “Butter?” Nope. “Jam?” No way. It just kicked them aside or piffed them at my head.
“Arrrrrrcccccc!” It demanded, so I gave it the last of the food that were stuffed inside my pocket. “Do you want some brownfish?”
The civic’s nostrils flared excitedly, and it pinned the fish with it tail quills. Lifting them to its mouth, it blew bright blue flames on the fish until they were charcoal black, and munched happily on them.
I slipped past it and out off the cave into the bright sunlight, but not before I picked up a silver feather off the ground.
And, I also finished WyrmeWeald! I'll post the review on here as well!
Here is my review for WyrmeWeald:
WyrmeWeald
Returner's Wealth
By Paul Sterwart, Chris Riddell
I think the only reason I chose to review this book was because of the cover. It had a dragon on the front, and I love reading stories about dragons. The blurb sounded very good, but the first page…ah, it was okay.
BUT, I have encountered heaps books like this before, where they have a boring first page, but got more and more exciting the further I read. So I thought I would give this one a go.
90 pages in, and it still wasn’t getting better. It was just too wordy for me. It had a lot of description, so I really had to concentrate. A few more pages, and then, suddenly, it got exciting!
It was a mixture of romance, adventure, wyrmes (dragon-like creatures), and a boy called Micah. It was almost like I was standing next to him, watching as whitewrymes flew above us, and carrionwyrmes were picking at dead wyrmekith only a few feet away.
Yes, all the strange the names are slightly confusing, but after a while, it all matches, creating an awesome adventure.
And, yeah, it wasn’t one of my most favorite books ever, but I really enjoyed it, and it was worth those boring 90 pages to get to the good bits.
Anyone who like dragons (wyrmes in this case) adventure, romance, a little (maybe A LOT) of blood and descriptive writing, this is the book for you!
Tegan Miller
TEGAN, That is so excellent and I have loaded it up. As a reader I love fantasy. It's double-great that you and TANAYA are encouraging each other (Hi TANAYA). Writers like you two need friends to work with and share. But you are right - it is sometimes hard to get feedback from friends becuase they know how hard you have worked and want to make you happy with a good comment. Every week I workshop with writer friends and we share bits of what we are working on. The rule we have is everyone must say something positive (writers need to know what is working well) and something negative (equally we need to know what is not working so we can improve it).
TEGAN, I just read Tanaya's post reminding me I had not put your story up. Well... I thought I had but when I checked ... no I had loaded the old file again instead of the new one. Now fixed although I suspect I might find some more stories to add as I go through the comments today. Some computer programmer I am hey?! Can't even load the right file!
Hi ALL of you :)
I cannot tell you how proud I am of the amazing writing you guys are doing and sharing here!!!!!
I have forwarded a link to this in an Email to Rohan in the hopes he will wander over and read it.
You guys deserve all the gold stars I can find!!!
Sandy, thank you SO SO SO much for the inspiration and wonderful work you are doing with our Students. You get infinite gold stars too!!!
Tye :)
Well, along wandered Rohan. And he was so proud of 'his kids' he got a bit confused and wrote in the third person. Then I snapped out of it and decided that I would take all the credit for 'my' terrific writers' work. And why not? They're terrific! Congratulations to all and KEEP IT UP!
Not only do we have talented and enthusiastic people here (plus some excellent book recommenders!) but motivators as well! I heard one of the other schools is working to answer Tanaya's writing challenge so she and Tegan won't be alone on the RWZ Writer's page!