My husband and I were doing some spring cleaning the other day, and I found something I thought I had long lost: three A4 pages of scribbled story that I began writing over a decade ago. I remember showing it to him when we met and being proud of the acknowledgement that it was ‘pretty good’, although we had only just met at the time so I am not sure how accurate that description was. My husband is discerning and honest but would never be brutal about it.
This work is significant, because (as far as I remember) it was the first bit of original writing that I did as an adult - the first piece of fiction that I wrote for myself, not based on other fiction or for work.
I started to read them when I dug them up (they’ve survived 3 house moves but not entirely unscathed, so some Sellotape repair work was required), but put the story down quite quickly, as I quite quickly spotted some elements that made me cringe.
It will come as little surprise to my regular readers and friends that this story opening was in the zombie apocalypse genre: I do have a ‘theme’ apparently, even if I don’t have a ‘style’ yet!
This morning, I thought it would be an interesting activity to read it through and ‘workshop’ as I did with the writing of fellow students on my course. In the workshops, we took four categories and reflected on these as we read the work of our colleagues, providing feedback that would help them improve on their work, so that is what I will do now. Perhaps – for my next blog post – I will type up the original work along side a new improved version!
1. Give feedback on characters, dialogue, point of view and narrative voice:
This is a short piece – approximately 1000 words – is told in the first-person past tense of one main character. We get very little information on this character; we know they had a brother called Marc but not whether he was older or younger – the reader can not make assumptions of gender, only that they are comfortable hugging and holding hands with their friends in ‘the mansion’. This makes it hard for the reader to create a picture in their minds of the character in the story environment: at this point in the story, it is not a major issue but feels a bit like a first-person shooter game. Other characters are named, and the relationship between them is revealed through showing (and telling in the case of Marc), but no physical description is given as of yet.
Dialogue is somewhat effective, though in several places it is too lengthy and unnecessary. Speech tags are too on the nose – showing would be more effective in these places. E.g. instead of ‘she scolded’ ‘her tone made me feel like a kid at school’.
In places, the point of view wavers, with our main character being privy to knowledge that they do not have.
The narrative voice is close to the narrator, being first person, but so far is quite generic. This person doesn’t seem to have any quirks or twists – they are quite neutral other than the emotional responses to being in a traumatic situation.
2. Give feedback on setting, ideas, structure and plot.
Some aspects of the setting are well described – inside the house, more detail is given, but the outside is not described, nor the time of day in the opening scene. A later mention of ‘rural English villages’ and ‘a jeep in town’ tells the reader a little more, but gives little to help picture the scene. The idea is fairly standard for the genre – a group of survivors holed up in a house and running raiding missions for supplies; the downside of this is its potential as something which has been overdone – I would recommend working on the plot plan to ensure that the work will do something different. The extract is clearly an opening scene, and the mise on scene is a good opening – action pulling the reader straight in and given us someone to care about from the start – if the story is developed further, using this as the first scene would be a good idea, although it is one that has been more used now in the genre, there are still a good portion of Zompocalypse works that start before the outbreak (e.g All of us are Dead (2022) – while the zombie exists at the start, the outbreak’ is part of the narrative; Army of the Dead (2021) to name some recent movies that keep to the classic structure). It isn’t clear where the plot of the story will be going, but it is safe to assume that the house they are in will serve them only temporarily.
3. Give feedback on language, style, genre and reader engagement.
This is where I focused most of my analysis. At first, the story starts well – as mentioned, the mise on scene is an exciting start that invests you a little in the character – but the lack of character detail makes it hard to remain engaged even in a piece of this short length. The action described in the scene clearly puts it in the zombie genre, as well as other aspects such as the living arrangement, offhand comments about sleeping in clothes, and little details like eking out cigarettes – these are quite effective, which is contrast to other elements which seem forced. In one conversation, the characters have a conversation about a handgun which has been found and a long winded (hard to read) monologue explains how the character found such an unlikely weapon (the UK not being known for guns). This whole section screams ‘look how much research I’ve don’ and would be best cut entirely; far better that the characters make weapons from what is more likely to be found in their vicinity (MC’s explanation about finding the gun on the corpse of a US soldier who has taken their own life rather than be made a zombie only raises more questions about why US soldiers would be driving around rural English villages in the first place!).
I have already mentioned the POV issues. This is another area that would need ironing out, to ensure that the narration is consistent. It might be a good exercise to experiment with third person or a different tense – especially as I found issues with the past tense I had used as well!
There are many places where the narrative could be tightened up – long run sentences, poorly organised clauses, and further overwhelming info dumps make it a dense read in places. The work would also benefit from a closer look at opportunities to ‘show’ where ‘tell’ has been used.
4. Give feedback on your overall view of the work.
Well. This was a fascinating exercise; I have always found it hard to edit my work, due to being quite attached when I write it and the obvious concept that nobody likes being told they’ve got something not quite right, however, it pleased me greatly to be able to look at this early writing so objectively and to see what really wasn’t very good. I feel obliged to say that while I am going to work on it, I am under no illusions that my new improved draft will be ‘final’ as I am only a few steps on from where I was when I wrote the piece originally. I also am not sure if I will ever use it – as I have advised myself, the concept isn’t particularly original, and when I wrote the scene, I had zero idea of where the story might go. If I do decide to use it, I will definitely have to see where it might fit in a whole story.
Safe to say I might try this technique of workshopping my work in future, although I won’t have the luxury of a ten year break between writing and workshopping, it still might give some deeper insight.
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