my novel Options

[alicia_musa]

hey everyone upon my role-play of a zombie apocalypse i am writing a novel about one. using different people. here is chapter one
"mom. mom? mom answer me!" i just sat there. waiting for my mom to wake up. finally she made a mumble noise. i sall her eyes they were the eyes of death. i took my sword and said "sorry mom." and with that her had came off. i ran to the window, opened the blinds and looked out. nothing to see only the woods and a couple of zombies. "mark!" i ran out of the room. he was shooting them with arrows.
he looked at me and told me "look in the closet i don't think im running out any time soon." and sure enough he was right. there were bags and bags of arrows. "we should get going." i told him. i turned around and went into the kitchen. i opened the fridge and all my dads beer fell making a loud noise. "what happened." my brother said running down the stairs falling on his face. i ran over to help him.
"no i don't need help but we both need it." he pointed to the radio and jumped up. i ran to the radio and turned it on. "hello. please do not go near the city. there are allot of zombies and you don't want to lose any of your group." i hung up the radio but did not turn it off. "brother we should-" i looked around and i did not see him. then he jumped behind me and scared the **** out of me. "lets get our stuff together and get out of here.


(on paper it is 2 pages long by the way)

[W.I.N.X]

If I may offer some constructive criticism :)

Not only that, but you're already moving a little fast. Your character just offs her, I'm guessing, mother without remorse. Now this I could understand if she had been a seasoned killer, but from this it just seems like she's a young person with the ability to but who has only really killed a few times before. I feel like she'd actually show some sorrow killing her mother.

It's not even that she killed her mother without waiting, tha wouldn't be the problem, but you need to put more details to shape your character. Otherwise, we just have a boring Mary-Sue. And your character can be cynical and hardcore, but even those characters can have a weakness. That's good. To go with a similar genre, look at Tallahassee from Zombieland! He is die-hard, but his one undoing is the fact he lost his son to zombies.

Basically, I think you need more detail to better your characters. Otherwise, it's just a lot of narrative played out by cardboard cut-outs. I want to know something about these people to be actually interested in their story. For that reason, a little more background information could be good. Like, you don't have to do an introduction chapter saying "I am _______, I am ___ years of age, the Zombie apocalypse started ____", or anything. In fact, I'd say it's okay to retain some ambiguity in the first chapter. But more details like "Kills were never hard for me" (for example, tying in with my first gripe) could just make your story that bit better.

At this point, the grammar is probably more important, but this is good stuff to keep in mind for after. Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm sure you'd like to deliver your best and be proud of what other people are reading, so I just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents =)