For the Sake of Challenges

Challenge... Accepted.

The redundant display of letters scrawled across the board at the hand of her teacher and Penelope fought the urge to roll her eyes. Perhaps the roll of her eyes would jumble up the words into making perfect sense, she scoffed at the idea, eyes instead, roaming over to Ryan.

'Pssst. Ryan,' voice was a hushed whisper, to low to be detected by the teacher still writing on the board, 'PSSST!'

Ryan looked back across the room at her, a twitch of his eye before his lip curled in response, 'What?!' He half whispered. She threw a wad of paper at him before the teacher turned around. At which point hey took up familiar positions, she was watching the board with an intense interest while Ryan pretended to scribble down notes. Notes the teacher would not be privy to. She began to play the imaginary piano on her desk, fingers pounding the figment keys across the hard surface causing general amusement for the brunette. Her green eyes found Ryan's hazel mop of hair before he turned to reveal matching greens. He tossed the note back a hiss sounding from him as it over shot and hit the girl behind Penelope. The brunette whispered an apology to the girl before a loud crinkling sound followed after. 

'Meet me at 4 p.m. after school, Mop.' A nickname given to him when they were small.

'Only if you bring me something to eat.'

'You won't need...'

The note was snatched from her grasp, an indignant cry resounding from the petite girl before green eyes narrowed slightly at the offender.

'That's mine.'

'Obviously not, Miss Latner,' her teacher spoke to her, a gleam of amusement lighting his eyes, 'as it is in my hands.'

'Faulty logic, sir, as everything thing you hold in your hand is not yours,' she nipped back, reaching for the letter in a comic display of teasing.

'You, Miss Latner, and you Mr. Cosler...my office tonight,' he locked eyes with each of them in turn, 'Four O' clock on the dot.'

Author's Note

Experimentation, Ma Petit Lapins...

Reviews

[Nicole]

This was for our challenge? I've been working on mine, and just generally lamenting the piss poor quality of my writing lol...

If so, the first two problems in regards to the challenge that I notice are that probably - "caused amusement" or "look of amusement" are the same as " x feels amused." Describe the body posture, facial indicators, and whatever other details that would make someone think that a person feels amused.

Places where you've made good examples of the challenge:

The sentence is kind of problematic, since your use of eyes was redundant, but the original eye rolling made it evident that the character was frustrated and/or bored.

Your insertion of eye and hair color.

The hiss from his lips, that indicated he was concerned about the fact that he over-shot when he threw the paper.

Her indignant cry to show that she was surprised and upset that the note was taken from her.


Some general non-challenge related issues - check your first sentence, read it out loud. Actually, you should try to read everything you write out loud if you can, like you're telling a story to a little kid. Maybe even have someone listen, this will help you to develop better pacing, and should help you figure out where you've over-used a word or made a faulty and awkward sentence structure.

The ones of immediacy I noticed were that you start a lot of sentence with He __, She ___. Try to mix it up a bit.

Once you display the eye and hair color, it probably doesn't need to be mentioned again. If you're going to, in order to use it as indicator of who the subject of the sentence is, alter or enrich the description in some way instead of using the same word (at least withint 4-5 paragraphs of one another).

Otherwise, you have a kind of straight-forward approach to writing, and don't spend much time on description. While this isn't a horrible thing, because YA isn't a description heavy genre, you might practice it a bit. A good description can set a mood. It's like the difference between a comic book and a manga, which can both be awesome to read, but you'll note that in a mange a lot more panels are dedicated to tone - pictures of the surroundings, people and their postures and facial expressions without words. The locations are given almost a character and personality all their own, one that further immerses the reader in the story. A bad description or over-used one can cause a reader to stumble, but a good one can transform a story into art.