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NOTES:
YOUNG WRITERS' SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2008/2009
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Please note: this work is copyright by the author and may not be used, copied or shared in any way whatso-ever without his/her express written permission. If you wish to be put in contact with this author, please contact us.
This story text appears exactly as sent in by the writer. No changes or corrections have been made; however, all stories to be included in the published Anthology will be edited for grammar and punctuation before printing.
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"Everest Adventure"
by Matthew Higgins (9 yrs) - Burnham, Buckinghamshire, UK
(Ages given are at time of entering the competition)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Matthew Higgins is nine years old. He lives in Burnham, Buckinghamshire. Since he was little he has always loved reading books. His bedroom resembles a library! His favourite genre is fantasy and includes Dragon Rider, Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia,
The Lord of the Rings, and Muddle Earth. His other interests include cricket, playing with his friends, making up plays and acting them out, and attending cubs. Matthew was inspired to write Everest Adventure because he loves climbing mountains. He has climbed Snowden in Wales and Skiddaw in the Lake District. His aspirations are to climb Mount Everest and write a fantasy series.
COMMENTS FROM JUDGES:
Great imagination and creative flow! Lots of promise shown. Exciting events, and with a little more work the narrative could be spiced to display those events more richly. It's lovely to see so much crammed into one story, but as you hone your writing skills try to concentrate on plumping out the happenings more - turn each one into a miniature story with more detail and description, more backstory if necessary, so that your readers have time to get into each event before you move them on to the next one.
This also makes the story more credible for the reader, and he/she will trust you more as a writer.
Also remember that everything that happens in a story must move the story on. The car on the cliff had no purpose, no follow-through, so although it's an exciting cameo, it should be cut out. Be tough with yourself - or, as we say in the film industry, "Kill the darlings!" In other words, we writers like to put things into a script or book just because we love that little piece of writing, we're proud of it - so it's
like a beloved darling baby to us. But if it doesn't have a good reason for being there, we have to "kill" it! :-) Become your own editor, and be hard on yourself. Streamline your writing, to give it the highest impact.
THE STORY:
Jonathan and Luke were brothers and lived with their mum Poppy. Their house was situated by some steep craggy cliffs overlooking the beautiful blue sea.
The boys were very excited. They had been planning a trip for a long time to Nepal with their Uncle Matt.
Matt always had a vivid interest in Mount Everest and suggested that he took his nephews Jonathan and Luke.
The day had finally arrived. The boys were full of excitement but filled with trepidation at the same time.
“Now boys have you got everything?” reminded mum
“ Yes mum,” shouted the boys as they leapt out of bed and threw on their clothes.
“Just one rule then – no dangerous stunts,” said mum concerned.
“Oh mum, of course we won’t do anything silly”, said Jonathon who was the sensible one.
“We will be careful,” Luke added
‘Ding Dong!’ The doorbell rang loudly.
“That must be Uncle Matt –are you both ready?” mum asked.
“Hi Poppy. I’ve come to collect Jonathan and Luke,” said Matt with a friendly smile.
“Boys, Uncle Matt is here,” shouted his sister who was drinking a cup of tea to calm her nerves.
“Hi, nice to see you- guys get in the car” said Matt
“Right, off we go,” pleaded Matt as the two boys were still lingering around.
The boys jumped into the car.
“Wahey!” shouted the boys excitedly.
They drove off and drove along the cliff road in order to start their journey to the airport. This was well known to be a dangerous road.
The road was empty apart from one other car, which overtook them a bit too closely and pushed their car towards the edge of the cliffs.
Suddenly, they found themselves at the edge of the cliff about to fall down.
“What’s happening?” shouted the boys
“Help!” screamed Matt.
The car was creaking precariously over the edge of the cliff.
“Don’t worry, let’s all get out quickly,” coughed Matt hoping his nephews wouldn’t notice how anxious he was.
They piled out of the car, which tilted dangerously, and they all let out a sigh of relief.
“We will have to abandon the car and hitch a lift to the airport. We can let your mum know and she can sort the car out. There’s no time now,” proposed Matt.
“Okay,” shouted the boys.
“Let’s hope we get to the airport in time and catch our plane,” they said,
“Let’s hope this isn’t a bad start to our adventures”
“We’ll get there don’t you worry,” responded Matt pulling himself together after the shock of the cliff.
They managed to flag down a passing car that got them to the airport just in time for their flight.
“Thanks for the lift” Matt said to the man “You saved us just in time”.
They had a smooth flight to Nepal.
“Well, we have landed in Nepal now” said the chief air stewardess.
“This is Nepal – wow it’s amazing,” laughed the boys as they looked out of the plane window. “ Mount Everest is taller than I expected,” remarked Matt with awe at the majestic, towering mountain.
Meantime on Mount Everest two evil men called Nava (the chief) and Gaddy (his associate) were cunningly planning to capture a scientist who had a map to some artefacts that had special powers that they wanted: -
“We must capture that Brian Peterson and get the map off him. That will tell us what he is doing here. Then it will be all ours”, sneered Nava.
“We could capture him and blindfold him, then he won’t know where he is going,” suggested Gaddy.
“Great idea” said Nava. “Let’s do it tonight.”
“Yes Sir, straight away,” stammered Gaddy.
That night they found their way to Brian’s hideout and did as they had planned.
The following Day
In the morning after a goods night’s sleep the boys had a meeting to decide what they would do that day. The choice was to climb Mount Everest or go exploring in the village.
“I say climb up Mount Everest,” said Luke.
“Me too,” said Jonathan.
“But Luke, Jonathan your mum warned us not to do anything dangerous” said Uncle Matt.
“Hey, chill out Matt. We’ll be okay. The ‘Sherpas’ will help us. They know it like the back of their hand,” said Luke knowledgably.
Luke had read up all about it in his research in geography books and on the Internet.
“Okay, all right, I suppose so. We can give it a try, but any dangers and we’re coming back down ” Matt told them.
So the boys set off on their adventure to climb Mount Everest. With the help of the Sherpas they reached halfway up Mount Everest to one of the base camps.
“Wow, this is harder than I thought,” said Luke struggling to catch his breath.
“Matt can we stop now please, I can’t go on any more until we have a rest,” pleaded Luke tiredly.
“Oh, okay,” said Matt also feeling weary.
Half an hour later Luke whispered, “Matt, there is fog coming and I can see some people coming towards us armed with swords”.
“It’s just your imagination. I know you’re feeling tired but the lack of oxygen has made your imagination run wild” said Matt.
Luke and Jonathan leaned against each other and were just starting to fall asleep when suddenly….
“Boo!” screamed Gaddy, “Ha, ha, ha”.
It was Gaddy, Navapeapan, known as Nava.
“Get them,” shouted Nava.
“Luke, Jonathon, wake up,” shouted Matt.
“Don’t worry about us”, said Jonathan to Matt.
“Luke is a black belt in karate and he is on our side of course,” Jonathan added quickly.
“It is all right, use Luke to fight,” said Jonathan
“Great idea” replied Matt. “We’re going to need all the help we can get”, he replied.
Nava ordered Gaddy to help fight for him and started to fight with the boys believing they were on the trail of finding out why he was on Mount Everest.
“You will never find out what I’m doing up here and no one else will either,” snorted Nava with a sneering laugh.
Luke was doing well with his karate moves and already knocked out Gaddy who eventually staggered to his feet.
“Keep it up Luke,” cheered Jonathan.
“Give up now, let’s go back to the cave,” commanded Nava, “ten out of ten to the boys. That was awesome fighting, especially from that little one,” pointing at Luke who was looking embarrassed, but pleased with himself.
“Well I vote we find out what this Nava mystery is all about since we’re here,” said Jonathan.
“Yeah, let’s solve it. Nava and his gang went this way,” added Luke.
“Hey hang on – are you sure about this” said Matt, “I mean we don’t know what we’re letting ourselves in for here. I promised your mum to keep you safe”.
“Yeah, we’re sure. Look how we managed to fight them off. We’ll be okay Uncle Matt. Think what news there’ll be when we solve this mystery” said Luke, always up for an adventure.
They trudged along the winding path.
“Let’s stop. Brrrrrr, it’s getting cold,” muttered Luke shivering.
“Let’s find somewhere to shelter,” suggested Matt.
The boys searched around for a while and then they heard a shout.
“Look,” shouted Matt, “Over here”.
Matt had discovered Nava’s cave.
“Help, help, help, help me!” called a voice in the distance
“What was that noise?” said Luke to Jonathan.
“Someone’s shouting for help,” said Matt.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Matt remarked, “Let’s go and find out where it is coming from”.
“Hold on, don’t go so fast, wait for me” shouted Jonathan
The boys went inside the cave and came to a narrow part where they heard the voice coming from.
“Hurry up boys,” said the voice “please get me out of here before Nava and Gaddy comes and finds you here”.
“Not until you tell us who you are and how you got here” said Matt.
“Alright, my name is Brian Peterson, I am a famous scientist in geography and working on some important work in Nepal to do with an experiment and finding some old artefacts, and these two Nava and Gaddy don’t like what I am doing. They want to get hold of these maps. So they found me and captured me. I thought someone was watching me but when I looked behind me there was just my own shadow. Then suddenly someone came from behind me and grabbed me. They blindfolded me, tied me up and brought me to Nava who lives up Mount Everest to hide me in this cave.
The map leads to some important artefacts with special powers, which Nava wants to find and use. He has the map now, so all my work was for nothing,” he said sadly.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get it back for you,” promised Luke.
“Thank you boys,” said Brian
Luke, you come with me,” said Matt, “While Jonathan stays with Brian”.
“Luke, let’s try that path around the corner”
They raced off to find Nava, Gaddy and the map.
After a short time they were in luck as they found the two men sleeping in a small crevice.
They managed to take the map from them and sneak away.
“Quick, back to the cave before they realise the map is missing,” shouted Matt.
“Now we can free Brian, and find the artefacts,” said Luke.
“Hurrah,” said Luke.
They ran as fast as they could back to Jonathan and Brian.
“Come on Brian, lets go Jonathan, let’s escape” whispered the boys not daring to shout.
“Not so fast boys” shouted Nava who had woken up. “You won’t be escaping just yet,” said Gaddy.
“RUN!” screamed the boys to Brian.
‘Biff’, ‘Uh’ Luke did his karate once again and Nava ended up hanging on the edge of the mountain.
“Wahl, help me” shouted Nava, “ please save me – HELP ME GADDY,” he screamed looking over the side of the great imperious Mount Everest. Luke had knocked out Gaddy with his karate chop, and Gaddy was lying on the floor not hearing Nava’s cry for help.
Nava was trapped and so the boys decided to be kind and called an ambulance and Jonathan called the police.
“I would have got away if you boys hadn’t started meddling in my business,” said Nava. “I’ll be back,” he added.
Brian was very happy and thanked the boys for saving his map.
“The police will deal with Nava and Gaddy don’t you worry. They’ll be locked up and shouldn’t trouble us again,” said Brian.
“I think we should all go home,” suggested Luke “I think we’ve had enough adventures today”.
“What do you think mum will make of this?” asked Jonathan dreading of what mum might say.
“I think she’ll just be glad we’re all safe,” said Uncle Matt.
“Maybe we can help Brian with finding the artefacts,” said Luke
“I think we should leave that to Brian, don’t you?” said Matt to the boys.
“Oh, you are a spoilsport”, laughed Luke and Jonathon together.
The boys were so tired from their adventures they fell asleep as soon as their heads touched their pillows and dreamed of all their adventures that day.
The next morning they flew back home. Brian decided to go with them and have a holiday from his work on the experiments.
At the airport they met their mum. “Hello boys I heard that you had a great time and you met a worldwide famous scientist looking for artefacts”.
“ Yes, that is me. My name is Brian.”
“ Brian, how nice to meet you.”
“Mum can Brian stay for tea?” the boys asked excitedly.
Well of course he can,” replied mum,
“We could make a story club” about our adventures,” suggested Luke
“That sounds a lovely idea,” remarked Brian. So for the rest of the afternoon they had a wonderful time writing a story together. And the story they wrote is the one you have just read.
Copyright (c) 2009 by Matthew Higgins - do not reproduce
without the author's written permission!
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