A little extra work has paid big dividends.

Eleven Landisville Middle School seventh-graders each earned an award in the Young Writers Contest sponsored by Young Writers USA.

Every seventh-grade student received a prompt for a classroom assignment. Students had the option of taking their stories home and editing them and then entering their works into the contest. The stories were required to be 100 words or fewer in the category "Stranger Sagas."

The winners and story titles were Etta Miller, "Where the Sky Forgot to Shine"; Mackenzie Sebergandio, "The Outside In"; Keagan Meck, "Gone"; Sophia Gregg, "The Unfounded"; Ellie Hess, "The Last Puzzle Piece"; Jenisha Dhakal, "Run"; Gwendolyn DeLaney, "Ten Walls and One Me"; Hope Skuya, "Noon"; Megan Sanchez, "Stuck In Between"; Oliver Durbin, "Rooms"; and Benson Shank, "Not Quite Right."

"My story was about this person that felt like they fell from the sky into this unknown place where they just really couldn't find their senses or see anything," Etta said. "And then something abruptly hit them."

She spent an hour on the story, and she was excited to win. "I was happy," said Etta. "I was pretty optimistic because I spent a pretty long time on it trying to get it right."

Mackenzie said of her story, "This girl falls into this strange world, and she lands on this glass road and shatters it, and she's in a place called The Outside In. It's a colorful place, but it's not happy. It's gloomy. ... I was very happy and was a little surprised that I won."

Keagan's work touched on a topic that is becoming more prevalent with each passing day. "AI has currently taken over the world, and this one man tries his best to resist against it and tries to save his friends in this city but eventually fails to do so," he said. "Honestly, I was very surprised to win. I was very thrilled and also kind of shocked that I got it."

Ellie wrote about people in a hurry to discover the truth. "My story was about a girl who was trying to find out a mystery that was in her town," she said. "She's racing to find the mystery before other people find it out, because there's other people who are also trying to figure it out. And when she finally gets really close to finding the last puzzle piece to the mystery, the other people come in and try and steal all the information."

In addition to the work in the classroom, Ellie spent 20 minutes at home on the editing process. "I was very shocked because I didn't think I was going to win because I was one of the last people to be called," she said. "I kind of lost hope of winning, and then my name was called, and I was very surprised."

English teacher Joy Hosler was proud of her pupils. "It was very exciting to see so many kids putting in the extra effort to perfect their pieces and then be recognized for their hard work," she said.

Hosler was also happy with the way the students are responding to their instructors. "I think the teachers here (at Hempfield) really encourage students' creativity and pushing them to try new things, and this was definitely a challenge for some of them to write a story in 100 words or less," she said.

Hosler hopes the students' success will inspire others to enter competitions. "Just as I was leaving my study hall, two of the girls said, 'I should have submitted mine. Mine was really good. I bet I could have won,'" she said. "I think that if we do another contest like this, more kids will be interested in submitting, knowing that they could be recognized."