McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Zombies?
Stuart1512:
thanks alot for helping me. I should have Chapter 1 done by the end of the week, now what character to focus on first.
SunPhoenix:
--- Quote from: blgarver on September 19, 2007, 07:46:55 PM ---I vote the corpse littered street. You can explain what happened with the virus during the course of the story.
A rule of thumb for screenwriting that can work for novels too: Start the plot at the latest possible moment in the story.
--- End quote ---
I like that about some stories where it doesn't have a beginning per se but sort of just drops you into the mix.
Stuart1512:
Here's the first paragraph and who's centric it is.
John Lantham
1
Billions died within the first twenty-four hours.
John Lantham was one of the ones to survive.
The layout of the area had changed a lot since my last visit-which was about ten or twelve years ago at the least-I drove down route 19 which would lead into the village off Shirewood, the hometown were I grew up in. I was driven back into town to surprise my folks, I haven’t seen them in God knows how long and it would be good to surprise them with my latest manuscript.
Shecky:
--- Quote from: SunPhoenix on September 20, 2007, 01:37:03 AM ---I like that about some stories where it doesn't have a beginning per se but sort of just drops you into the mix.
--- End quote ---
It's a classic approach called in medias res - "in the middle of the thing". This usually has the benefit of hooking the reader into the action so they'll become interested in the characters and the background, instead of giving that background first and building up to the action. The drawback to this method is the difficulty of balancing the action with a lack of information that would be necessary to understand said action; it takes a lot more planning and crafting to pull off this approach and not leave the reader lost at sea.
RMatthewWare:
Go watch Shawn of the Dead. It will tell you what to do right, and what is often done wrong.
And it's a dead funny movie. Pun intended, even if it's lame.
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