Player Comments on Too Many Zombies!!! (part 1)

It could be better.

I don’t often comment on very short stories that are likely to get unpublished, but when I do… well, I don’t. But in this case you’re clearly very new and I’m going to try and help you see what’s happening here on this site. There are a lot of readers and writers that use this site. It has been around for many years and over the years, the personality of the site has changed. However, there have been a number of constants.

Readers here want quality stories. Longer is almost always better. A story doesn’t have to be long, but if you’ve got a longer story, that’s clearly taken more time and ends up with a better quality. When some readers see that 1/8 in the play length, they know there’s not many words there and the story is likely to be of very low quality. Readers will know little time was spent on the story and will be prepared to dislike the story before they even read it.

Second, on this first page there are perhaps three other huge red flags that will clue the readers of the site in that this is likely going to be a low quality story: 1) starting the description out with a lower case letter. I know, it might not seem like much, but that’s a huge red flag that the author doesn’t really care. Use capital letters where they are required and it will make the story better every single time. 2) (part 1). In general, readers here do not like anything that’s broken out into parts. If you have a story that can be told in more than one part, each part should stand completely alone and be long and complete by itself. Seeing anything labeled as part 1 immediately says that the story isn’t complete yet it’s published. 3) comment if you would like to see a part 2. See that bit about capitalization and parts? That’s doubly amplified here. No one wants to be forced to do something to see part 2. The majority of readers here would rather the author just wait until the entire story is done and then publish the whole thing instead of breaking it into parts. Also note, per the site rules, that you’re not allowed to publish parts of stories, anyway.

I would strongly suggest you read a number of the stories on the site, specifically ones that have higher ratings, to get an idea what is an acceptable story. No, you don’t have to write a masterpiece your first time out – but you do need to write a coherent, complete story. You will see that consistently with stories that get good ratings.

Now, on to the story: again, capital letters and complete sentences are really a requirement. If you don’t have those, no one will like your story and you’re likely to get some pretty detailed comments about how bad your story appears. If you’re going to add an item into your story (pistol), go ahead and put an image in there. It takes a few minutes and improves the appearance greatly. Seriously, though, you really need to work on a complete story. There are a number of zombie stories you can read here that have a story with a beginning, a middle, character development, and an ending. Also, feel free to practice your writing and writing ideas in the forums where you can really get help learning how to write stories. Good luck!

This is way too short, and there is no way to win.

2/8