Sunday 19 June 2011

Rewriting

Tonight I had the pleasure of rewriting the first zombie short story I ever wrote.  I'd never intended to write about zombies, a friend of mine was working on a project that involved zombies and wanted some friends to write short stories for it.  I'd always thought I'd write fantasy, but I desperately wanted an excuse to write, so I tried.

My first attempt was quite poor, which is of course what can be expected.  The action was fuzzy and the setting was like a cardboard cut out.  In my defence, I had never thought about the mechanics of a chase or fight before I started to write this story.  I certainly found it an enjoyable process to think through.  And I showed my little story to some friends, who were very nice in their encouragement.

I wrote another story, also to do with zombies but without any actual fight scene.  I seemed to do better with that one, and felt encouraged.  So I went back and attempted to rewrite my first story.  I'd done some more thinking about how my zombies were to look and move now, and I found that I was able to describe them and the action much better.  But my scenery still left a lot to be desired.  I went on and wrote another few short stories.

Then I decided that I was enjoying what I was doing enough that I wanted to try and write a novel in the same story world.  While I started planning some simple structure for my novel, I had a breakthrough moment in the setting for my first short story.  But while I now had a clear place in my head for the conflict to happen, I still wanted to see it for myself.

I took my children with me as we went downtown on a Sunday afternoon and went for a walk down an alleyway.  I'd intended to go through quite a few really, but the first I found had pretty much what I was looking for.






As you can see, I'm not much of a photographer.  But I really enjoyed the opportunity to see my setting for myself, and to walk through it.  I just wish I was able to go back and walk the same passageway in the evening.

Now tonight I have finished the very rough draft of my third rewrite of this story.  The actual story is going to stay the same now, but I'm hoping that by the time it's needed it will be of a higher quality. 

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