Young Writers Society

This is just my first work, and I'd like some advice on how I could improve it. It's not a story as such, just an observation of an event. I apologize for the one huge paragraph, I just feel that the story flows better that way.

The leopard flicked her ears as the cry of some large scavenger echoed through the African night, but otherwise she remained still. She crouched lower in the thorny scrub and focussed on the scene before her. In the centre of a woodland clearing, a herd of impala were having a final graze before settling down for the night. The leopard took another tentative step towards her intended target: a young male impala at the edge of the herd, his curving ebony horns glinting in the faint moonlight. The leopard advanced one silent paw step at a time. Suddenly, she tensed as she felt something on her whiskers: a shift in the breeze. Sure enough, the young buck’s head flew up, his eyes wide with alarm and his nose full of the predator’s scent. His warning bark was cut short as the leopard streaked out of the brush and leaped straight onto him, scattering the rest of the herd. The leopard had almost lost the element of surprise, but her attack still managed to knock the impala off his feet and she immediately wrapped her jaws around his neck, plunging her canines deep into his throat. The dying impala continued to flail around, his hooves almost catching the leopard on several occasions, but she didn’t relax her iron grip until her prey’s struggles slowed, and then finally stopped. She then sat up, and scanned the area for a suitable tree to climb and store her kill in, but instead she met the eyes of a lioness sauntering into the clearing. The leopard was on her feet in an instant. Every cell in her body screamed at her to flee up the nearest tree and abandon her kill to the larger predator, to save herself and hunt another day. She fought her instincts however, and stood her ground against the approaching lioness. The leopard was starving; that was evident. Her protruding ribs spoke of her hunger, as did the spark of desperate madness in her amber eyes, madness that drove her to crouch down before her kill, flatten her ears and snarl her fury at the approaching plunderer. The lioness hesitated, surprised. She had never seen a leopard defend its kill against a lion before. Nonetheless, she continued on, confident of her size and strength. As the lioness came closer, the leopard’s snarl steadily increased to a low, continuous growl that would have sent any lesser creature scurrying. Suddenly, with blinding speed, the leopard lashed out at the lioness, her wicked claws slashing across its face. The lioness reacted instantly. With a roar of pain and fury, she pounced onto the leopard, her massive body pinning it to the ground. Still the leopard fought, kicking and scratching at the lioness’s belly with her hind claws, spitting and snarling all the while. With a swift, fluid movement, the lioness grabbed the leopard’s throat in her jaws and bit down with enough strength to instantly break its neck. The leopard’s struggles suddenly ceased and the lioness loosened her grip. She stood up and pawed a while at her scratches, clearing the blood from her eyes. When she had finished, she moved over to the impala carcass, pausing to cast one last glance back at the fallen leopard. It lay there on its deathbed; its snow-white belly fur matted and stained crimson, its once-bright eyes now glazed and unseeing, its teeth bared in a permanent snarl of defiance. The lioness turned back to the impala, grasped it by the neck and dragged it off into the brush. At the opposite end of the clearing, a pointed snout and ears emerged from the undergrowth: a jackal, attracted by the sounds of fighting. It padded over to the dead leopard and glanced around cautiously- for the scent of lion was still heavy in the air- before lowering its head to feed, flicking its ears as the cry of some large scavenger echoed through the African night.

This was an all-around excellent story; I saw no mechanical errors, and the story flow was great. Your descriptions of action and setting were just at the right level, not too distracting from the story, and not so scant as to leave the reader lost.
Even though it was brief and not really a 'story', you made it very involving. It really felt that these were animals - not spruced-up or overly dramatized, but realistic.

However, I would strongly recommend breaking it up into paragraphs. I agree that it still flows well (as I said before) but these huge blocks of text often deter readers; it does make it easy to lose track of where you were in the story, and I saw a few points where it could have been broken up without hurting the story flow. Just a suggestion, of course.

Also, at the end, you start to call the dead leopard an 'it'. I was just curious if this was an intentional change? It seems to take all characterization out of the animal, and truly reduce it to just a body. If that was your intention, then well done, and I like it.

This was a pleasure to read. Keep up the good work!

Thank you for your advice! I'll go through it again, and try to split it up into paragraphs this time. If I see anything else worth changing, I'll do that as well.

Great piece. I appreciated how the words vividly expressed what took place. As the previous review stated: the story is truly engaging and overall an excellent story. I would've to have been aware that the leopard's ribs were protruding and that it was desperate, but that's honestly a minor detail.

She crouched lower in the thorny scrub and focussed on the scene before her.

Focused.

In general, it would've been great if there was more variety when it comes to sentence structure; you know, playing with length and perhaps minor embellishments such as dangling modifiers. Here's an ideal example.

Sure enough, the young buck’s head flew up, his eyes wide with alarm and his nose full of the predator’s scent.

I would've suggested. Stylistically speaking, the shorter the sentences the more abrupt and even urgent it sounds.

The young buck's head flew up. His eyes grew wide with alarm. The predator's scent overwhelmed his nose.

The dying impala continued to flail around, his hooves almost catching the leopard on several occasions, but she didn’t relax her iron grip until her prey’s struggles slowed, and then finally stopped.

There weren't any references that the impala began to flail. Also, struggles is plural. Perhaps, this will do?

She didn't relax her iron grip until her prey's futile struggle lost its feverish strength: until it became limp.

Her protruding ribs spoke of her hunger, as did the spark of desperate madness in her amber eyes, madness that drove her to crouch down before her kill, flatten her ears and snarl her fury at the approaching plunderer.

I put emphasis on madness because while my recommendation is stylistically -it would be beneficial to practice more word variety especially if you notice the same noun multiple times in the same sentence.

I felt this portion went on for quite a bit. Then again, I may be biased. I am a minimalist by nature thus I would've preferred:

Her protruding ribs spoke of her hunger. The spark of desperate madness drove her to crouch down before her kill. The predator flattened her ears; snarling furiously at the approaching plunderer.

Overall, I observed you used "and" liberally throughout the piece. My advice is to highlight the repeated words. If you feel the repetition isn't serving to drive forth emphasis: it may be a good idea to employ another one in its place to spruce things up a bit.

I loved that. I've always loved wildlife, but I never thought I'd be completely interested in a story like that. As someone else said, it has a great flow to it. I love how it showed a topic of the circle of life. Going from the leopard being predator to prey, it gave a nice view point on what can happen. I have a real respect for this because I feel as if it's tough to write wildlife observations. For me, there's a small chance I could've pulled it off. Overall, I think it's very good. Keep it up!