“GRASSLAND in Namibia. Early morning. This is a pair of cheetahs. Whiptail, the elder brother, has a crescent-shaped white spot on the tail. The younger one, called Blackwood, has a black spot resembling a sapling on the left foreleg. The first ray of sunlight shines on the earth. Whiptail stretches himself wearily. This is the third day that he and Blackwood have started their own lives without their mother…”

This is the beginning of “Cheetah Brothers,” a piece by Chen Pengyu, a sixth grader from Funan Primary School in Futian District. The story has recently been selected into famous animal novelist Shen Shixi’s short story collection called “The Shepherd Leopard.”

To be a good writer, being open-minded is not sufficient. One also has to be rigorous in their thinking. Chen happens to fall into this category. “For example, when a corrected exam paper is handed out, he knows where his mistakes are and makes the corrections one by one, and then carefully sums up the mistakes,” said Chen’s former head teacher.

To ensure the authenticity of the details, Chen does a lot of research. For instance, when he was writing the soon-to-be published “Serpent King,” he would leaf through several books and watch several episodes of “Animal World” to learn whether a king ratsnake is nontoxic and how long a king cobra can grow.

In addition, Chen is currently writing a fantasy novel based on his classmates, for whom he will write a biography of each one. “I’m going to dedicate this book to my classmates, because their personalities, qualities and views about life are all reflected in the book,” Chen said.

In his eyes, every classmate has something that stands out. He could easily name a list of adjectives, mostly affirmative, to describe his classmates. But the characters are not all perfect. “It is not real if the characters have no flaws. Even those in science fiction have a bit of a connection with reality,” he said.

According to Chen’s Chinese teacher, the budding writer carefully observes life, and forms his own thoughts and judgments before articulately writing them down.

“The influence of age or experiences on writing is not as great as reading, so reading more books is my goal,” said Chen.

(Zhang Yu)