wasteland beautiful

[TheBeardedGent]

Hello everyone :). I am posting a snippet of my short story I am working on for my writing class, and would really appreciate if I could get some feedback on what I have written. To give you some background information on the story, it takes place somewhere in the post apocalyptic United States. The main character is Joseph, a former farmer now working as for the quarantine zone he resides in, and doing black market work on the side. He ventures back into the city to find his best friends daughter, Kara. He's been contained, fearing that he might have been infected by a fungal virus that has spread throughout the country, and Joseph promises to go find her.

Joseph finds her, and they are on their way to his contact Bobby's safe house. Before they make it, they encounter some of the infected people Joseph is trying to save Kara from. To keep the infected away, they must drop vials of acid in whatever place they've been to, to keep the fungus from spreading in that area. Kara doesn't do it the previous night before when Joe tells her to, which triggers the fungus to start growing and cause the infected to find them.


"Kara.... did you do what I told you last night?" I asked her, with the sound of fear slowly taking hold of my voice. "You told me to do a lot of things last night, Joe." she answered back. "Now is not the time for your smart *** mouth. Did you do what I told you, yes or no?!?" I could sense them in the area, watching us. "Look at the grass Kara, look!"

"Yeah? So what, it's grass, big deal." She didn't have a clue what was going on. "It's not supposed to be here. There was none yesterday. We've gotta move, right now." I pick my backpack from the ground and start heading towards our truck. "Why are we leaving, we haven't found anything..." I cut her off mid sentence. "It's not the time Kara, get your *** in gear and move. Go to the truck, lock the doors and roll up the windows. Don't start it up until I tell you to." I tossed her the keys from my side coat pocket and watched closely for any movement.

Kara quickly makes her way to the truck, her nerves soon getting the best of her. She stumbles and drops the keys. The faint sound of clicking comes from shadows in an abandoned building, followed by an ear piercing shriek. It was one of them. "Get in the truck, now!" I shouted as I drew my gun from my back pocket. It moved with rapid speed, faster than any of the other one's I had ever seen. "I'll have to make these shot count." I saw it heading towards Kara, her body trembling with panic as she raced to get inside the truck. I fired two shots in it's direction, drawing it's focus to me instead of her. It leaped high in the air, landing right in front of me and knocking me to the ground. My gun fell to the side. I struggled with it on the ground, fighting as hard as I could to keep it from tearing any of my flesh. Another shriek comes from the building behind me. I can't handle more than one on my own. I start reaching for the knife holstered on my ankle, keeping this disgusting creature as close away from me as i can. Suddenly I hear gun shots. The body goes limp. Three more ring out and the one behind me is now dead. I sit up and see Kara standing there, shaking violently. I run towards her and hold her in my arms.

"Are you alright?" I ask, trying to calm her down. "What the hell were those things?"

I place my chin on top of her head and rub her shoulders. "The infected. That's why I came here for you. From now on when I tell you to do something, I need you to listen to every word. It's important, and our lives depend on it. Understand?" I feel her arms clench me tighter. "Ok." she replied. "Ok....ok, we need to get out of here now." We make our way back to the truck and head for Bobby's safe house.

The sun begins to fade behind behind the buildings as we make our way to the safe house. Kara is still a bit shaken up, and I see her running questions through her mind.

"Twenty-nine years ago." I said. "What? what are you talking about?" she asked me. "I know that look. Twenty-nine years ago is when it all started. It's done that to millions of people and killed everyone it's infected."

"It? What is it?" she says in a confused tone. "A fungus. Nobody knows where it came from or how it started. All I know is, we need to stay away from it, and the people it does that to."

"Is that what happens to us? What those people, those things looked like? That's what it does?" I see her growing more and more worried with each question. "Yeah. But we'll be fine, we just need to make it to Bobby's place." I tell her, trying to keep her calm. "Is Bobby your son?" she asked me. "What?" I was confused how she came to that assumption.

She points to my hand. "Your wedding ring. I saw it, so I assumed he's your son, right?" I didn't know how to respond. All those memories came rushing back in an instant. "That's not up for discussion." I told her. "It's just a simple question, why no....."

"I said it's not up for discussion, now be quiet!" I yelled. She hunched over in her seat, leaning her head against the window. "Sorry I asked....jerk"

I let out a long sigh. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you." she moves further towards the corner of her seat. "Yeah, you sure do yell a lot for someone who doesn't mean it."

"My wife and kid..... it happened to them. That's what they turned into." There was a long pause between us before Kara said anything else. "I didn't know. I'm sorry." she looked down at her feet, feeling embarrassed at what she had just asked. "It's not your fault kid. Things happen."

"Do you know what happened to them after? I paused, thinking if I should honestly tell her or not. "They're dead........ Killed them myself." I fought hard to choke back the tears in my eyes as she sat even quieter. " No more questions for now, we'll be at Bobby's soon. Get some rest."

[hillwalker]

The first thing you need to sort out is how to punctuate dialogue correctly.

1) start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes - even if they only say one word.
Otherwise we lose track of who is talking
2) a sentence of dialogue followed by phrases like 'he said' needs a comma at the end rather than a full stop.

So your first paragraph is actually 3 paragraphs:

"Kara.... did you do what I told you last night?" I asked her, with the sound of fear slowly taking hold of my voice.
"You told me to do a lot of things last night, Joe," she answered back.
"Now is not the time for your smart *** mouth. Did you do what I told you, yes or no?!?" I could sense them in the area, watching us. "Look at the grass Kara, look!"
The longer your story goes on the more confusing it becomes because you fail to follow this simple rule.

I have to add that I'm not keen on things like ?!?. If he's asking a question a ? is sufficient.

The next thing to sort out is whether you're writing this as if it happened some time previous - in past tense - or is happening right now - in present tense. You can't have both.

Yet you begin in past tense - 'asked' - 'answered' - 'could' - 'didn't'
then for some reason you switch to present tense
I pick my backpack from the ground and start heading towards our truck. "[I]
then past tense again
[I]I tossed her the keys from my side coat pocket and watched closely for any movement.
then present again
Kara quickly makes her way to the truck. . .

It's a mess isn't it?

As for the paper thin 'plot' - it's more hysterical than intriguing: people running around and doing a lot of shouting.

Then there's the weird conversation with Kara where your hero explains everything about the fungus - for the reader's benefit presumably since Kara should know all this already. If she doesn't, where has she been for the last 29 years?

And the fact that she can work out Bobby is his son because of a wedding ring? Confusing to say the least.

H

[Shaman_Raman]

Hillwalker pretty much addressed all of my feedback, thanks H lol.

I will add though that you don't have to explain your story before posting it. I could see by the story alone it was speculative fiction, considering there's the part about "it started 29 years ago." But I'll agree with H, your character sharing this to enlighten the girl is a little odd...where's she been, under a rock? I would phrase it in a more subtle, yet revealing way like: "29 years hasn't made these bas tards any less hard to kill..."

As for the character Bobby...maybe she could ask if he's part of Joseph's family, at which point joseph could say no, and allude to the fact they're dead or were turned, whatever the case is.

As a first draft, I think the content itself is redeemable through revisions.

[TheBeardedGent]

Thank you for the input, especially the dialogue punctuation, and staying consistent with past and present tense. I went with putting it all together for the sake of saving space on my physical paper, but i will definitely be changing that.

I didn't really think the plot through too much. I saw a rerun on BBC about Cordyceps fungus, and thought that would be an interesting spin on an infection type story, and sort of went with what ideas were popping into my head at the moment. Any other pointers you could give me? I really appreciate it.

[TheBeardedGent]

Thank you as well Shaman :). I should probably scale back the time period from which it started. I intended for the girl to be a teenager, but I see now how that time frame is conflicting with the story.

[Shaman_Raman]

Oh, by the way...this seems more fitting as a chapter to a more extensive story, rather than a story in itself. But if it's an assignment for a short story, I would either include Bobby in the story in the present time, or leave him out. Frankly, I think the girl getting unfortunately attacked and turned into an infected fungus zombie would make out better, lol. In end of the world scenarios, people love the unexpected dynamics, like losing important characters at a random given moment.

The more I think on this, the more I'm intrigued. Please post a revised story when you get the chance, I'm interested to see where this goes.

[TheBeardedGent]

I definitely will. This was just a piece of the story I had written down. It's pretty far off into it a this point, this just so happened to be the only part of the story I could find among my stack of papers lol. Bobby plays a significant role after this part. Would you have any tips for filling Bobby out as a character? I already made a specific role for him, but I like to see what other people would think happens once Joe and Kara make it to the safe house.

I feel what happens next is very unexpected, but I'd still like to see where others think the story could go.

[Shaman_Raman]

The two reach Bobby only to find an infected Bobby, they blow a tire on the way and Kara gets bit, anything you want. What are your guidelines as far as length of the piece?

[TheBeardedGent]

Sounds interesting. The way I originally wrote it was, Bobby plans to kill them both so he can get Joe's pass for entrance into the quarantine zone. The story has to be 15,000 words max I believe, but I do plan on working on this in my leisure time when I turn it in. This is my first short story in about four years, so I'd like to work on it some more to get back into the feel of things.

[hillwalker]

It's concerning that you don't know where your plot is heading and expect others to come up with some ideas for you.

In my experience the only way to work out what happens next is to keep writing and allow your characters to decide for themselves how the plot unfolds. The problem is, your characters are so unreal and their dialogue and behaviour so mechanical that I don't believe in them (and you probably feel the same way).

H