Tuesday Tips: Destroying the World in Three Easy Steps

Greeting, readers! As always, my Tuesday Tips comes with a guest blogger. 

This week is zombie fanatic/expert, Hannah.  

She's going to tell you how to write a great zombie book. 

You could actually apply her tips to just about any book, really. 

Get ready to laugh as well as learn.

Hannah says:

Hallo there, Blog-stalkers!
The Ferocious Moo here, future ruler of Antarctica, to warn you of the impending doom of the coming apocalypse!

Okay. No. Not really.

I’m actually here to give you a few “tips” (for lack of a better word) regarding one of my favorite subjects/obsessions: Zombies.
You’ve seen them in the movies and a few TV shows; you’ve bashed their heads in with skillets and electric guitars in Left 4 Dead 2—maybe you’ve even read a few books. And now you’re hooked. You’ve seen their potential and you want them for yourself.
Or maybe not...
Maybe they scare you to death and you don’t want anything to do with their barbaric, flesh-craving ways. In that case, please allow me to duct-tape your wrists to the arms of your spinny-chair and imprison your attention for just a moment longer. I’ll try to keep it short-ish at three simple steps.
Alright! *Revs chainsaw* Let’s get down to business.


1. We must create our world BEFORE we destroy it.

As with any genre of story, (I think…I’m not well versed in general-fiction chick-lit myself) it is crucially important to KNOW YOUR SETTING.I know some of us would much rather jump right into the blood splattered fray and throw all planning to the wind—*Cough*GUILTY. But your story won’t survive without a bit of decent prep-work first.
Is this our world, eons in the future, or another universe entirely? Have the survivors had a chance to regroup and form a new civilization, or is the world still struggling in vain against the initial chaos of the apocalypse? Is your character surviving on the war-ravaged streets with zombie encounters at every bend and back alley? Or in a dystopian-style empire with a high steel wall between them and the monsters?
As the sadistic little author of this disaster, you have some important decisions to make.

2. Give us characters that we DON’T want to see eaten.

No flaw will plague your story like cardboard characters. I once read a book in which the only thing that kept me reading by the end was that it had a reputation for killing the characters off one by one in horrible ways, and I was tired enough of the characters to want to see it. 

Give us a survivor we can root for; someone that we want to survive.
Take Tallahassee from “Zombieland”. Not only is he completely BEAST in a fight, he also makes us laugh and we DON’T want him to die!
Even with epic fight scenes and spine-chilling horror, if we don’t care about the characters then we might as well be rooting for the zombies. And maybe some of us are... 

3. Create-a-Zombie. (Like build-a-bear, only better!)

Okay, so far these tips could probably apply to writing in general, (I’m going to assume you don’t want the main characters in your chick-flick eaten either...) so let’s get right to the guts. It’s time to tackle the delightful creatures themselves.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “Um, yeah...I know zombies. I’ve even thoroughly researched them on Wikipedia! You can get on with the next step now.”
First of all, there is no next step today. And second: Good for you! But you’ve only just begun...
Zombies are not a cut-and-paste ingredient; you can’t just take them from someone else’s work and expect them to still jump off the pages and nom on the reader’s face. Depending on the specific requirements of your own hopefully-unique storyline, your zombies should have their own specific features and attributes to match.
Now, obviously, not everyone’s zombies have to be a deep metaphor for runaway consumerism or a symbol of American xenophobia. If that’s the kind of book you’re writing, be my guest, just please don’t make everyone die in the end as an example of the horrible fate we’ll all meet without uniting in a global economy… 

If you watch enough zombie movies, you’ll notice that they are NOT all the same. Some are so undead that they actually require the head to be severed from the body in order to “kill” them. Others are more like rabid human beings. Some are lightning fast and others shamble slowly across the screen with bits of skin falling off in a trail of decay.
So what about yours? Do your zombies really crave only brains, or will they attack anything that moves? Another important question is: How were they “created”? Was it a biological weapon gone horribly wrong, or a virus spread to boost the sales of hand-sanitizer?
Research is great, but these are your zombies. Don’t just grab the first animated corpses you find. Figure out what you want and then make it fit your story’s needs. If you want to base them off the Chinese hopping “Jiang Shi”, then you are awesome, and I look forward to seeing how you fit this with the plot.


I could gush about the epic-ness of zombies forever, but alas I have essays due and a family to assure that I’m still alive after hermit-ing myself away in my cave to write this... 

And so, in closing, for those of you who are still more interested in keeping zombies out of your book, I have one more word of wisdom. The best thing about writing a zombie book is that if you’re ever stuck with writer’s block, you have an entire horde of flesh-hungry, undead, monsters to threaten your characters forward with.
Peace out, my zom-diggity friends. Survive, stay epic, and always have a weapon ready BEFORE you check the shower curtain. Because finding the monster is not nearly as important as smashing its face with a frying pan.

Tuesday Tips: Reckless Writer, Ruthless Editor

Hello again.

This week I've asked Jasmine to be my guest blogger. 

She most certainly is the queen of grammar and has a pair of angry grammar eyes that you don't want to see -so take her advice. She knows what she's talking about. 

Tuesday Tips: Reckless Writer, Ruthless Editor

Deena asked me to be her guest blogger today, requesting I write something on grammar since I’m apparently “the queen of grammar.” I started writing about apostrophes, but my recently revived computer decided it needed to update and in the doing so deleted everything. In no mood to start the same thing over again, I opted for rebellion. I hope that’s acceptable.

I’ve heard it said that math makes sense because the rules are always the same. I’m not here to argue this statement; I’m here to say that, for me, English makes far more sense because the rules are sometimes unsteady. You can bend them without getting beaten over the head with an English textbook. Which hurts, believe me.
I am not saying you should go on a grammar rule breaking rampage. In fact, there’s very little that rubs me worse than a misplaced apostrophe or capitalization negligence. What I am saying is that when you’re writing, you can be reckless. Fragment sentences are not a complete no-no. Catachresis is okay in your first draft. Mitsakes are allowed and no one can tell you otherwise (well, they can, but they shouldn’t).

How to be a reckless writer:

1. Auto-correct is your friend
Okay, sometimes auto-correct clearly has no clue what it’s talking about. That’s why it needs a little help. The auto-correct list on my previous computer was ridiculously long because it knew almost every typo I’d ever made. Every time I’d make a mistake in my typing, I’d open my auto-correct options and add the mistype and what I meant it to be. My personalized auto-correct would probably drive someone else insane, but for me it was perfect because it was tailored to my own quirky typing.

2. Spell check is NOT your friend
Spell check lies far too often. If you misspell a word and you have no idea how to spell it correctly, then leave it. You can go back to the red line later during editing and correct it using another source such as Google or your favorite dictionary.

3.Outline or don’t
Some people outline. I don’t. Correction: I can’t. If I know what’s going to happen in the story then I can’t write it because it’s boring for me. Just as I never re-read a book. I already know the story. I certainly don’t think outlines are bad, in fact I admire those who can actually follow one. I’m telling you to write in whatever way you’re most comfortable with. Outline or no.

4. Don’t show, don’t care, don’t edit
 No one needs to see your work until you’ve at least finished the first draft. Some might argue that they want to show their early chapters to someone so they can know if it’s worth finishing. NO. No one else can tell you if it’s worth continuing because you can’t care what they think at the early stages. Too much criticism and advice too soon will do nothing but stifle creativity. If someone asks to see it, tell them they’ll have to wait. If they’re truly interested, then this will give you some added motivation. Also, do not edit too much until you’ve written the last chapter. Editing is exhausting and I know I’ve never finished anything I’ve edited while still writing.

5. Don’t listen to everything I say
Seriously. Just don’t. Everything I just listed and everything I’m about to list is what works for me. I’ve realized the “rules” of how to write vary from one person to the next.


How to be a ruthless editor:
(Here’s where things get bloody.)

1. Practice
So, you’ve finished your first draft. That’s great! Now put it away and let your eagerness to polish steep for a while. Find another something to edit. A friend’s essay or a total stranger’s book you found on a writing website. Believe me, editing someone else’s work is far more fun than editing your own and it’s good practice. Most will thank you, some will hate you. Ignore the latter.

2. Put the red pen to your work
Now that you’re more comfortable with your slaughtering editing skills and really know how to shred writing to pieces, take those skills to your own work. It’s hard to detach yourself, but try your best to do just that. Edit with as much harshness as you can muster – more than what you gave to that stranger’s book if possible. Edit like there’s no tomorrow and when you start to tire STOP. Take a break. Read some published books and ease yourself out of “editing mode.” You can finish when you’re ready.

3. Enlist your friends
Once you’re decently satisfied with your new draft, send your story to a few trusted friends and tell them to go crazy with the red ink. In my experience, most will only mark a few things. Especially if they’re not writers themselves. That’s okay. In fact, I’ve learned that the feedback from regular, non-writing readers is sometimes the best. Then again, if you’re lucky, you may have that one friend who will really be nit-picky and you’ll get the copy back with more red ink than black.

4. Enlist complete strangers
After going through your friend’s editing marks and deciding what to keep or not, share your book on a writing website. Maybe just a few chapters. It may be hard to get people to read, but if you can get even one person who’s completely apathetic to go through and tell you the ugly truth of what needs fixing then it’ll be worth it.

5. Pat yourself on the back
By this point your book has probably improved a lot since the first draft. It’s true what they say: there is always room for improvement. If you’re anything like me you’ll probably never be perfectly satisfied, but that’s okay. You did it. Go have some kippers and relax.

Ta-da. I have written a list of things you’ve doubtlessly heard before. I hope I didn’t bore you to death, and if I did . . . Disclaimer: Jasmine is not to be held responsible for any deaths or injuries (mental, physical emotional, or otherwise) that may have occurred during the reading of this piece. Furthermore, Jasmine is not the absolute authority on writing and so everything stated above may be disregarded at the reader’s leisure. Thank you.