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Om Nom Nombies Edits and Thoughts

Happy Friday!  This week I finished reading back through my first draft of Om Nom Nombies and got some feedback from my last alpha reader.  This means I have a game plan for my first ever revision!
belldandy105
I guess this is a good time to talk about this novel, since I wasn't blogging when I started writing it.  Initially, my idea for this novel was for a group of prepper-roommates that have been getting ready for the zombie apocalypse (stop shaking your head, this is a thing) find themselves in the throes of an outbreak.  What I particularly love about this story is the back-and-forth banter that the roommates have.  When you let the nerd voices in your head out, they argue and they quote nerd culture and they make awful (but funny) jokes.  This is probably the only thing this story will have in common with any of my other stories based in our present world.  That, and an ensemble cast rather than a single main character.  Neither The Neif nor Spitfire have ensemble casts, but my next two ideas that are ruminating do :)
zaidoigres
So, here's the plan for the story, roughly:
  1. My beginning is a little slow.  There's a chapter and a half that I could cut without hurting the story.
  2. There's a part in the middle where I kind of went, "how do I get them from this mental point to to that one?" when I was writing it, so I just decided to pretend that I had and kept writing.  I think I can fix that by keeping one character comatose for a little longer, raising the tension and anchoring all parties involved to that spot.
  3. There are a few scenes at the beginning end where I just summarized the action in parentheses to get on to more exciting parts.  That obviously needs to be fleshed out.
  4. I was over-eager to make my roommates funny and instead I  made them silly at times.  That pushes them toward the incompetent side, particularly when this occurs at the beginning of the story.  I can rewrite that.
  5. One alpha reader pointed out the surprising lack of bodies in my story.  (facepalm)  Yeah, I need to fix that.
  6. There are a number of media quotes and also references to things about Texas A&M and this area (since this is set in College Station) that I need to decide whether or not to keep.  Some of them, sure, but others are more just inside jokes I'm telling myself that others might not get.  Everything will stay in for this revision, but it's something I'm definitely keeping in mind for the final version.
belldandy105
So I have my work cut out for me!  I'm starting a "Novel in 90" program tomorrow where the daily wordcount goal is 750 words.  This is doable, but probably still not doable once school starts back June 1st, so I'm going to get as much done before the end of the month.  Wish me luck!


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  1. UnknownMay 15, 2015 at 9:27 AM

    Good luck! You can do it! So excited to see where it will go :-)

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