Hello, I've been toying with the idea of starting my own Zombie survival story for the past 12 months, maybe longer. Whenever I originally decided to publish it on a blog however I would actually like to try my chances of having it published. I've been attempting this thing, as I say, for around 12 months give or take and whenever I try and start, I face the same fence. Where do I begin my story? Do I start it pre-apocolypse? post-apolocypse? Do I start and finish it like The Sopranos where you just happen to visit his life one day, watch it for however many seasons, then leave his life while the story will potentially carry on without you as it did before you started watching. There's so many possible ways to begin and it feels like writer's block without having started. I keep telling myself that once I get the intro sorted, the rest of it will flow to me. How do I decide where to begin my tale of the undead? Thank you for your time!
When you are in conflict with yourself, just start writing it. Doesn't matter if you begin the story before or after the apocalypse. You can always add, remove, edit later. What is important is that you begin writing. You can always write down all the possible beginnings and choose the best of them and go on from that. Or have different characters and each of them their own beginning at their own time, whether its before or after the event.
You have to find that sweet spot; that point of access that makes it easier for you to start and continue writing; it is difficult to say exactly but it should feel interesting to you, and build with a good cadence.
Excellent advice from all of you. I shall certainly try. I have been having great ideas about the actual plot since day one, however I still can't get that foot in the door, so to speak. I will definitely make a start, however I feel very self-conscious too, I feel embarrassed to write and I have no idea why.
Even my advice? I really doubt it, but if you say so... In all honesty, if you can't figure out a good way to start it, maybe try starting further into the story, maybe a couple of chapters in? It might be a bit disorientating at first, but if you stick with it, you might just come up with a way to write the introduction. Best of luck!
I think an easy way to figure out where to start your story is to study the first act MUSTS in screen writing. Here is a blog about that very topic. http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-act-story-structure-cont.html It's by Alexandra Sokoloff. Even though she is talking about what is necessary to be in the frist act of a screenplay, the knowledge is useful for novel writing as well. She also writes novels, and uses basically the same elements in the first act. Once you know what elements need to be in the first act, it makes it much easier to figure out how to start the story.
I am thinking a first person perspective, but whether to do that in the form of a diary or as in the character is narrating, there's just so much to try and play around with, however I do feel much better than I did. I shall make a start tomorrow when I'm not falling asleep and suffering from acid reflux. It's 3:17am here! Thank you again for your advice guys!
Whatever you end up doing, I think good advice is to just write something and see where it goes. Like the other guy said... just keep writing and you can always change it later. But one important thing to realize is you could write the story one way... say you do it Soprano's style. And you get mid-way through and you don't like where things are going, you can always start over. And you can still probably keep a few scenes or reference your old story for plot ideas or descriptions. And really... you could get all the way through the story, decide you don't like it and do it the other way. And if you are worried about wasting too much time writing, maybe you don't have to write a full blown story when you do it the first time, but maybe a really detailed outline. And this outline could have missing parts, like you could literally write the words "random comic relief scene" on the line after one of your chapters in the outline, with the intention of eventually coming back and making it into it's own chapter or a major scene in the story. I remember hearing in an interview when Mike Meyers would get writers block when writing a script for a movie, sometimes he would write "and then something funny happens" with the intention of going back and changing it later.
I had a similar problem. I had all my playing pieces organized and the initialization of the plot done. I had several chapters for my two main characters and another for my villain. Once I had all that done where they went next was so open. So broad in its options that I had to grab a pad and pen (for some reason ideas feel more real when I write them down) and just start writing options from where they could go from point A. I ask the question "what can they do now?", perhaps they can turn left and right. So I write out two outlines for left and for right. One of them always shines through, it might take ten different directions but one will shine out.
Again, more fantastic advice. I think the real issue for me is having the confidence to actually write. I've never done it before apart from school projects about 10 years ago, heh. I think I just feel stupid or embarressed writing something I've thought of down on paper for other people to read, so much so that I'm probably trying to make it perfect in my head before I even start to write!
