{"id":26593,"date":"2013-10-23T00:34:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T00:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=26593"},"modified":"2013-10-23T18:26:14","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T18:26:14","slug":"plotting-with-a-forecast-of-zombies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=26593","title":{"rendered":"Plotting with a Forecast of Zombies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have to be honest &#8212; I don&#8217;t get the whole zombie zeitgeist.\u00a0 I&#8217;d have thought &#8212; no, wait, <em>did<\/em> think &#8212; five years ago that we had reached the peak, that zombies were a fad and their day was done.<\/p>\n<p>Millions of viewers of <em>The Walking Dead<\/em> would beg to differ.<\/p>\n<p>Despite my firm belief that zombies were past their sell-by date, there&#8217;s a zombie concept I&#8217;ve held in my mind for the last few years.\u00a0 I&#8217;d occasionally tell someone about it a convention, an elevator pitch of the hook, and they&#8217;d be excited, they&#8217;d want to read the story.<\/p>\n<p>Slight problem.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t have a story to go with the concept.\u00a0 It was a fun concept, but I could never figure out what to do with the concept.\u00a0 Occasionally I&#8217;d pull out my notepad and try writing something about it on the train, but nothing ever clicked.\u00a0 Even the old adage that stories are about characters, not concepts, didn&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n<p>Something clicked recently, because I&#8217;ve worked out how to tell the story.<\/p>\n<p>I plotted it out last night, pen and paper in hand.\u00a0 Two pages, front and back.\u00a0 I had trouble with it at first, and I wondered if I could see it through to completion more than once.\u00a0 However, when I finally put down the pen, I could affirmatively say that I had an outline for a short story.<\/p>\n<p>It is not perfect.\u00a0 I am going to let it sit for a day of two, though I have already begun to compile a list of things I want to change or background that did not fit the outline.<\/p>\n<p>I am going to write it.\u00a0 By the weekend I&#8217;ll have broken ground.<\/p>\n<p>Not being that familiar with the genre, this story may be atypical.\u00a0 At the same time, it is very much the kind of story I would write.\u00a0 There just happens to be a zombie apocalypse going on. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t even have a title for it yet.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the story.\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to be honest &#8212; I don&#8217;t get the whole zombie zeitgeist.\u00a0 I&#8217;d have thought &#8212; no, wait, did think &#8212; five years ago that we had reached the peak, that zombies were a fad and their day was done. Millions of viewers of The Walking Dead would beg to differ. Despite my firm<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=26593\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Plotting with a Forecast of Zombies&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[4102,384],"class_list":["post-26593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing","tag-zombies","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}