Question

Hello, I hope everyone is in very good health. I am writing a story for school and it can be any topic I want. The topic is to be interesting,, catchy, creative, and original. With your blessing of health, I would very much like your opinions on how I can make it better story-wise.

The book is about a zombified invasion in which there are 10 main characters.

I plan to kill off five of them (maybe more down the stretch) and send their deaths into good reasons to die (i.e. helping the team accomplish a win. Should I enable the zombies to have enhanced attributes? Should they know how to do parkour? Should I have volatile zombies (able to explode on impact)? Should I give the zombies a sort of IQ? What can I add to make the story better? Should I create nefarious backstories for the characters? Should I intend an untrustworthy character?

Thank you in advance for your help. The best answer will receive a medal Have a wonderful day! 😁

Answer 1

You sir, are in good hands. Writing books and stories just happens to be my specialty. Let's see what I can do for you.

For starters, I would enhance the zombies. Regular zombies just shuffle slowly and the only time one would be in real danger is strictly if they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. I think the zombies should have enhanced strength, unlimited stamina, and enhanced speed. They also shouldn't be able to feel pain.

Next, no volatile zombies. It's rather impractical and there's no real reason as to why they should explode. Not to mention, zombies usually come in hordes, meaning that the explosion would take out the other zombies as well.

An IQ system should definitely be used. Now zombies are rotting corpses, so they really shouldn't be able to compete with human intellect. However, I'd imagine it would be like this: Fresh zombies (ones that have just been created or transformed), should have close to average human IQ. Zombies who have been around for a little longer should be a bit dumber and rather have a "hive-mind" with their zombie horde. Zombies who have been around for a week or so should just go off of animalistic instinct with almost no other intelligence.

For the characters, don't just make some good and some bad. The world isn't black and white; more often than not, it's gray. I would suggest making all of them antiheroes. Give them good and bad attributes and play around with it. It keeps the reader in suspense and unsure of who to choose as the hero.