Fiction Update: Zombie Story Rough Draft

The biggest note for today is that the first rough draft of the current story is complete. Here's the link for the story if you want it. If you don't want it, reading on will be kind of silly, since I'm going to talk about the experience of writing it.

Like the other stories I've linked to, we're just going for a first rough draft that we can later revisit. The goal is to keep pushing forward with one page, minimum, of fiction a day. I'm not particularly happy with this story as a whole. I don't feel it really captures the genre very well. First of all, our characters don't really clash enough.

They have disagreements, but they are also too reasonable. I'm crediting that with being at the start of our little crisis, but even then, it just doesn't "feel" right. I'm actually not a huge fan of this story at all. It gives me a lot more respect for people who can write something like this and make it consistently good. What's worse is that I really feel like going to first person was a bad idea here. It really limited the tension that we could create, and worse, it kept us outside of other people's heads. I think if I were to ever write something like this again, I would try and move to maybe a view point character, but not first person.

The other weakness is that we spent way too much time with nothing happening. I really feel like we're not moving the plot forward frequently enough. Not only that, but the characters are all relatively flat. I think the main character gets a little fleshed out, but even then, not really. He's just a different variant on the standard hero protagonist. I wanted to make something interesting and unique, but I just couldn't quite hit my stride.

Anyway, next week we should have fewer Secret World related interruptions.

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P.S.,

For Across the Gap and The Church Behind the Graveyard, check those links. For the two versions of the Parskins story, check here (for the version I dislike) and here (for the version I like slightly better). For those who care, only Across the Gap and The Church Behind the Graveyard are at what I consider average or better. The others are extreme rough drafts. So, read at your own risk.