Critics column - 2

Review - 45

User - WritersLife0818

Title: Trying Our Best

The title I thought fit the story perfectly, I mean throughout the first chapters all your characters were doing was trying their best to survive and the I guess the same can be said for anyone that was stuck with the dead ones in their area. Another thing I quite liked about the title was that you didn’t saddle the fandom into it (I’m taking the Carl Grimes part like some sort of subtitle), I think it helped flesh out your book as its own entity and not completely rely on the fan fiction aspect.

Cover:

I’ve noticed it’s quite typical for a fan fiction to have the subject matter as its main focus on the cover, so I wasn’t quite shocked that was the same for you, and don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with that at all. The cover itself was nicely done, the person on it was shown nicely and for those of us who haven’t watched The Walking Dead we were able to get a glimpse of how Carl looks like, so in conclusion the cover was quite nice.

Blurb:

For me I felt like the blurb was everywhere and once again for a person who is not aware of the fandom the blurb is most likely going to chase them away. Now during such reviews, I usually read the story itself before coming back to the blurb and stuff so I got the gist of everything, but a normal reader reads the blurb first and the way you structured the blurb you made it seem that we were already aware of who Rick, Negan, Lucille and others was. I’m not saying what you wrote was completely wrong I’m just saying it could really work with a little reconstruction:

Eg: The apocalypse began, and the worlds civilization ended. (Y/n) and her family of three, Jason, Thalia and Milia have reached Alexandria. They have to go through some devastating times during this period and they don't think it will ever end. (Y/n) is no longer herself as someone she loved very much died in her own arms.  Once in Alexandria she meets Carl Grimes who will try to bring (y/n) back to being herself or at least near it. Hopefully the group allocated there would also eventually warm up to the new additions of their group. But after Alexandria so called 'falls', the group goes on a journey back to familiar places, to keep themselves from losing any more of their family.

 

Now although I tweaked your current blurb as my example, I’m not saying that that should exactly be it, I just put that there as a sort of guideline for you to see what exactly I was talking about in my explanations above. Though you are obviously entitled to making adjustments to your pleasing, what I’d mostly suggest is for the last sentence the one with Negan and stuff to be omitted because that was the line that really came off as confusing, but apart from that it’s all up to you.

 

Story:

Well this being a fan fiction I have to admit that I won’t be a best of help in the plot department mostly because I’m quite unaware of the fandom it was based on. One thing that I did notice was that it felt like the story was more made for people who are familiar with the fandom rather than those who are not, something that I see is quite familiar with many fan fictions based on books or tv shows. I say this because on the matter of the dead ones they practically came out of nowhere and we were literally given no explanation of what they were (although I’m guessing their zombies cause the book I based on the walking dead), how they came to be and stuff like that you know so as to get a better grasp on the story. Now if these book is made for people who are already quite familiar with The Walking Dead then I’m guessing it’s okay how it is, but if is also made to attract new readers then I’d suggest adding that information in order not to not leave people slightly confused on such matters.

One thing that I did notice that was quite unique about the book was the way you made the identity of the girl anonymous and leaving it up to the readers to fill in the blanks of her outlook, identify and matters a like. I liked it because it was unique, I mean the only other time I had seen it before even the gender is up to the readers, so this felt quite fresh.

Apart from all that getting into the technical aspects of your story I have to say that the book would fare better with a little more tweaking. For instance, you had a slight problem with your tenses, where you’d kind of switch from one to the other throughput the chapters. That in the long run can be a problem for it might end up confusing some readers hence chasing them away, something that is never so good, so my suggestion to that is picking one tense of your choice (past/present) and then editing out the unwanted tense from your story. There were also some slight errors in the story that I help point out to which hopefully would make it easier for you to spot them out while editing.

Another thing that caught my attention is that you tend to have a slight telling over showing. I mean like the stuff your characters went through were traumatizing, I know if it was me running away from zombies and such I would be an emotional mess. And of course, I’m not saying that you should have made your characters crybabies but then I just would have quite enjoyed seeing a little bit more descriptions on their emotions and feelings, like the fear they were going through on the first day that it all happened or the suspense of always being on the run, stuff like this really helps to reel in readers because it allows to emotionally connect with your characters.

Now maybe it’s just me but I quite enjoy when a book goes a little slowly with me, not on a tortoise pace of course but like being shown piece by piece of how things came to be. I point this out because there were some parts where you kind of rush into things, for instance on the fifth chapter where she went to that library we were out of the blue shown of the dead ones chasing her. I think it would have really helped if we got little details of maybe her hearing a twig breaking or hearing noises that indicate that the dead ones were near instead of just showing up out of nowhere, I believe those little details helps to add more flare to the story and that’s always a good thing.

Overall, I think people who are familiar with the fandom would find this book to their liking cause as I suspect this is like a romance of sorts with the Carl Grimes guy due to the little mystery of knowing each other from somewhere else (which by the way was a nice touch as well). I really do wish what I’ve listed down here ends up helping you in the long run and I wish you all the best with your future updates.

By - Epicadrenaline