Paige's Pages: Writing About Zombies

Hi everybody, I completely forgot that it's a blogging day. O.o Sorry for the late post.

Some people love Edwards, some love Jacobs, but if there was a zombie in Twilight, I would totally be on his team. I love zombies, and someday I hope to publish a YA zombie novel. I thought "The Dead and Dying Embers" would be that story, but I'm not too confident in it. The sequel might have had a chance at being a good zombie story, but the first book was not strong enough. There are several reasons why:

1. I was telling the story in first person, but there were four people I was telling the story through. You have to be a pretty talented writer to pull that off, and I'm not there yet. Two characters were pretty well-developed, but one was a rip-off of Katniss (at least that's what people told me), and the other seemed to have no personality. If you don't have solid narrators, it's hard to keep people interested in the story.

2. It was just another zombie story. Lots of people like zombies too, not just me so there is a lot of competition out there. My story plot was this: Get from point A to B to see if there's still hope. The immune in the group gets kidnapped by the dystopian government. They get the immune back, but there's a small problem: they have to overthrow the government AND fight the zombies at the same time. The more awesome part is in the sequel that I never wrote.

3. The plot was too quickly paced. "The Dead and Dying Embers" was my last pantser book EVER. I don't write well when I don't have a plan. It's easy to get lost in your excitement. Yes, yes, I know zombie attacks are awesome, but PATIENCE, padawan. PATIENCE. The scene will get written, but you need to make sure the scene is done well and that it is perfectly paced.

If you like to write about zombies, learn from my mistakes. Really, what I learned from writing "The Dead and Dying Embers" applies to any novel you plan to write. My three rules: strong narrators, original story, and perfect pace. If you have those in your book, then you're good to go.