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[attachment=1864] Hello fellow readers. I'm a self-publishing author, and if you can, I'd like you to spare a few moments of your time to read over the first six chapters of my zombie-themed novella. This is not the final version of these chapters, nor is it the most recent. This is a rough draft dated December 18th, 2012. Chapters are subject to change, some things may not appear in the finalized version. read it over and post a critique. I'd like to hear all different opinions and voices, good and bad. Just please no bashing. Thank you.


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I'll give it a read, as I enjoy critiquing. I skimmed the first two pages and they are rough, really rough. But I will give it a fair shake.

Well it needs an editor badly,which you probably know.It's too choppy & you throw too many characters
into it without taking time to explain them.

Liam goes from being a total dork(unhygenic,acts retarded,nerd dresser) to being invighted to girls sleep overs
& then to the cool guy who knows all what to do when everyone else is clueless.

The Devin character is just confusing & then you have Liam stab him.

Basically you have 6 too short chapters of total confusion,take some time to develop
your characters so their not just a bunch of names.Then thier actions won't seem so disjointed.

OD

dont be a pretentious literature tool richard....btw Irish daigle has a couple short novels out...they are pretty damn good. This looks like fun. I too am gonna give it a read.

Hello Mr. Cooper,

I have taken the time to read the first six chapters of your short story. You do have some good ideas. I thought the escape from the school onto the bus during the storm was dramatic. I know it takes a lot of courage to open up your work to criticism and it shows you are keen to improve your craft.

It is in need of editing without a doubt. I would get as many people to read it as possible as you are doing.

My main issue with this work is character. I didn't feel invested in them whatsoever. Whenever characters are introduced (and there's lots, twenty two mentioned) we are only told a physical attribute or a piece of attire they are wearing. I don't expect an entire character study but perhaps a sentence or two so we can get to know this person. A narrator can have the power to know the characters better than they know themselves. For example you could introduce a character and say something like
'Sarah was only 15 but had read voraciously and often used quotations. This gave other people the impression she was aloof. In fact she worried she would be perceived as uninteresting.'
If I were you I would develop more who they are rather than what they look like. I would reduce the initial characters down to no more than three.

Liam is obviously your main protagonist and you need to decide what you want him to be. If you want to start him as an outcast that gradually finds strength and character throughout his journey then go for it but it just gets confusing if he lapses into a catatonic, state fouling himself then snapping necks like Jack Bauer from 24 the next.

This is not a bashing by any means I have studied creative writing and I have been part of providing creative feedback for fellow students too. I wish you the very best with this in the future and I hope this helped.

I thank everyone for their critique, it's really helped open me up to more opinions and understand the reader. I've over-viewed some of the major issues discussed and will work to improve them. Samuraitrev's review was by far the most helpful in terms of cutting down on some of the issues and I thank him for this, though for a better half of understanding, I should explain some of the questions, as so that I can work on fleshing out some things, etc.

samuraitrev Wrote:Liam is obviously your main protagonist and you need to decide what you want him to be. If you want to start him as an outcast that gradually finds strength and character throughout his journey then go for it but it just gets confusing if he lapses into a catatonic, state fouling himself then snapping necks like Jack Bauer from 24 the next.

This isn't necessarily my intention, I've decided which way I've wanted to take Liam and it's quite vice-versa. Liam starts out as a wreck of a personality to reflect his mistakes in the past that he hasn't yet gotten over, and throughout the story, this doesn't necessarily change for the better, and rather it changes for the worse. Though those chapters aren't included here, the chapters following the stabbing of Devin, Liam turns almost completely cold to the others and sort of remains this way for the rest of the novel, even when he decides he wants to be like he was at the start, he finds it out of his reach as to show what the apocalypse can turn some people into. The whole idea with Liam is he is a downwards spiral. But not at all can his personality be described in a straight line as with most characters. Because the turn of events have made him jittery, he flushes back between a calm-logical thinker to an out of control Shane Walsh type.

Old Dwarf Wrote:Liam goes from being a total dork(unhygenic,acts retarded,nerd dresser) to being invighted to girls sleep overs & then to the cool guy who knows all what to do when everyone else is clueless.

While the dork part is true, the rest of it kinda falls to misunderstandings. Liam is invited to a sleepover not on the portrayal that he is now supposed to be some bad ass who has just escaped from the fifth layer of hell but rather on the note that because of his personality in the past many of the characters have sympathy for him, most of whom are females, and in this case Heather. Do they instantly want to jump into bed with Liam? Not at the least, and Carly's role in the story is exactly that, she portray's how the outsider views Liam and the negative vibe around him that wouldn't really be visible in the story otherwise. Heather on the other hand who is pretty much the sum of all kindness and sanity in the group. She is merely a girl who's been shaken up by the events that happened in the school and this new survival lifestyle that's definitely not her's, as such she aimlessly searches for someone who's stronger and more resistant to the changes that have occurred. She find's that in Liam, but Liam is still more or less just as confused as her, and the only reason he can appear as a know-it-all is through a few of his personal traits, one of which is to over-observe everything he see's, which is why small details like the silhouette in the window or the school bus, stand out more to him than the others, the second is that as stated, Liam is a huge fan of zombie-mythology, more than his friends are. Most zombie fiction that have zombie-movies or literature existing in their respective universes portray them as cheesy and unrealistic. Liam exists in a world much similar to our own, so the zombies that he is facing are very similar to those he may have seen in a Romero film, or the earlier Resident Evil video games. This gives him an open advantage over the other survivors who know zero to nothing about zombies other than the fact they are reanimated corpses or what they have seen physically. The final personality trait Liam has is a strong sense of logic and understanding, though it's shown in story that through times of trial Liam severely lacks this. At other times when he can think straight and has a clear head he has complete control of it.

Old Dwarf Wrote:The Devin character is just confusing & then you have Liam stab him.

The Devin character exists to be the perfect villain for Liam. Mostly because he would work perfectly well if Liam were to drop his desire to be the good guy and let lose the personality Liam is trying to hide and forget. Devin clearly has sociopathic tendencies and also prior connections to Liam. His connections, and coincidental hiring as a substitute at Liam's previous school had triggered him to do quite a bit of digging when he first hears of him as "the killer" by some of the primary grade students. It clearly becomes his fascination. He's manipulative on the others just from the way he acts, but his manipulation has little to no effect on Liam. That is why he openly tells Liam about digging into his past as it' Liam's only weak-point. It's Devin's attempt at breaking opening Liam like a coconut in order to overcome this "resistance". Devin wants nothing but complete control, he's power hungry and want's nothing more than to have the other survivors kneeling before him and not even realizing that he's pulling the strings on them to do so, this is why Devin tries to use a vote to overrule Liam rather than just attacking Liam and taking them all as his hostages. Liam notices this scheme and tries to stop it in any way possible. Eventually, he gets tired of Devin's bullshit and stabs him as that seems to be the only way to stop his scheme, something he could've done from the beginning but never did, as this expresses the fact that Liam isn't necessarily a good guy either, which is why he throws comments at Devin afterwards. (Where the knife came from and why the hell he has it is explained in the next chapter).

JT I had to get moving to work this morning so I cut things short.This is an
interesting project & I'll be interested in following it.It needs work but it has
potential.

Keep us updated on it's progress.

OD

Hello and thanks for letting us get to know the characters a little better. I for one would like to see more of Liam's journey. Keep it up!
I keep reading the names Liam Kennedy as Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil and Devlin as Devil. I'm guessing the similarities are intentional

+1 Rep

(01-04-2013 07:30 PM)samuraitrev Wrote: [ -> ]Hello and thanks for letting us get to know the characters a little better. I for one would like to see more of Liam's journey. Keep it up!
I keep reading the names Liam Kennedy as Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil and Devlin as Devil. I'm guessing the similarities are intentional

+1 Rep

Actually, no that wasn't intended, but if you look at it that way, then Devil could be Dante. Which would be ironic because Devil May Cry was originally Resident Evil 4 :P

But I'm working on improving what I have so far, and will post an update shortly with the newest version. It would also be helpful if you guys could give me a few tips and suggestions on how to make the chapters longer? Thanks in advance.

CHAPTERS
Chapters should only be as long as they need to be. Artificial length is just that, artifice. There are several processes of thought for what makes a chapter a chapter, and different authors approach this differently, and even some authors approach it differently depending on the style of story they're telling.

1. Chapters are self-contained short stories in which each chapter has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and the collection of chapters leads to a cohesive whole. This is the mode of thought I use most often, and it can lead to a wide range of lengths for chapters.
2. Chapters are used to bridge scenes together, nothing more. A new chapter starts when a new event occurs in a scene, or a scene changes to a different scene.
3. Chapters are self-contained to one character's narrative perspective, so any time you change the narrative perspective from one character to another, that would indicate a chapter change. Dean Koontz is well-known for this method. It can lead to very short chapters.
4. Chapters are ended as a matter of convenience or for plot twists or cliffhangers. See: Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Dan Brown, James Patterson, and a host of other mystery writers. Cliffhangers should be used sparingly as they lose all effect when every chapter ends in an OMG moment.
5. Chapters are fluid and do whatever you want, whenever you want. Stephen King is perhaps the emperor of this with the Dark Tower series, in which chapters just abruptly end, sometimes in the middle of a sentence or thought. And "chapters" as a term is pretty loose because each chapter is broken up into other mini-chapters at what seem random intervals.

If you want to increase the length of your chapters, either extend the events that happen in each chapter, add more descriptive prose, or simply decide which chapters can be bridged together and still maintain the mood and tone of the chapter you'd like.


NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE
You should decide first on a narrative perspective as a whole (you're toeing the line currently with Third Person Unlimited and just general head-hopping). Google "third person unlimited" and "third person limited" if you aren't familiar with the terms. In general, it's very jarring to a reader when they can be subjected to any given character's thoughts at any given time. Scenes lose their coherence and gravity when you jump from Liam to Carly to whoever else and back to Liam again, all in a few paragraphs. Third Person Unlimited gives you the freedom to explore multiple characters' perspectives, but it has to be structured and separated a vast majority of the time (probably 95% of a story should be structured to clearly separate scenes between specific character perspectives. The other 5% can be used for special sequences in which it's extremely important to know something someone else is thinking during a different character's narrative perspective. It can be the difference between a forgettable scene and the scene everyone remembers because you bucked form and tradition to great effect.

For the most part, you need to stick to the rules. I call it the 5% rule, wherein it is sometimes more effective to break the rules, but try not to overuse it. Discovering when and where the rules would best be broken or bent is up to you, as it is not really something that can simply be taught, but must be figured out over time with lots of writing experience to see the difference.

SYNTAX

Syntax is punctuation, and yours tends to be all over the place.

1. Proper form is usually to use single quotations for an excerpt that already takes places in a snippet of dialogue. "She told me to 'swing away,'" for instance as opposed to be "She told me to "swing away,"".

2. Dialogue can be pretty tricky to get punctuation down, and some of it is up to personal preference. The main things to note when doing spoken dialogue in written form:
a. Periods, commas, question marks, exclamation points, colons and semicolons belong inside the dialogue box if they are part of the dialogue.
b. When you have a snippet of dialogue that ends with "He went to the store," she said. it's important to know that the "he said" "she said" "said Tom" portion, when used after a bit of dialogue, it still part of the same overall sentence, and does not need to be spaced with a period and a capitalization. Comma and lowercase works fine unless it's a proper noun being used (Tom, Liam, Carly, Devin, etc.), in which case you'd use comma and standard uppercase for names.
c. You can also reverse "b" above and let He said, "She went to the store." function the same way syntactically.
d. You can get away without the "he said she said" modifier in about 80% of cases, as through context alone a reader should be able to tell who is speaking at any given time. This is especially true when just two people are having a conversation, and it starts to need the speaker's modifier the more people you toss into the mix. For example, if Liam and Heather were having a discussion, where they spoke individual lines of dialogue back and forth a total of 42 times, you could probably leave out 34 or so of the "he said's". But if you have five people having a discussion, and they're all speaking a lot of the time, probably each time a new set of characters begins talking you need a new speaker modifier somewhere. You can also use context clues in the prose to identify someone who is about to speak by describing an action they take, like "Her head snapped to the side, and she glared at Liam as she said, 'You'll never understand.'" You could conceivably use instead "Her head snapped to the side, and she glared at Liam. 'You'll never understand.'" This way you use fewer words and lose literally nothing in the translation. Shorter is typically better, so you actually gained a tighter, more concise sentence that reads easier and still flows contextually.


TENSE

You hop quite a bit around past and present tense when describing things, and this can jar a reader right out of a scene if they have to keep trying to adjust their mindset for past and present tenses. Action that happened, or action happens, or action that is happening, or action that had happened, are all different tenses. Mostly you should be sticking to either present tense when telling the story, and switching to past tense when describing events that happened prior to the moment in question, or past tense when telling the story while switching to past perfect tense (had happened) to describe events that happened further in the past than your already past tense storytelling.



As far as characters and plot goes, Samuraitrev basically addressed what I would have anyway, so kudos to him for saving me time.

I'm interested to see where it goes, but I'd rather wait until the prose is a bit more polished before I begin reading again.