on writing (III)

A squirrel with a bazooka.
Though I'm  honestly concerned that this is not
an actual squirrel, but I care too little to check.
I'm thinking gopher?

Progress on my zombie serial novel is coming along well. The past two weeks have been spent (at least in regards to writing) revising and reshaping Act 2 (and tweaking Act 1 here-and-there). I put the bulk of the story in past tense, and already I'm seeing the benefits: it's quite easy to deal with the passage of time, to telescopically zoom out on events, and it keeps the story moving quickly. Contrary to popular belief, writing something in present-tense doesn't automatically make the story move quicker; the speed of the story has more to do with style than anything, making the text simple enough to carry the reader forward (something Hemingway knew quite well), and sometimes present-tense narrative can distract the reader from the story, since the reader's found himself burdened by a new style. I've also sought to make the story more story-driven than character-driven, and have added lots of material (and cut lots of material) to try and move towards that end. I'm content with where I'm at in the zombie story right now, and I'm anticipating having the first book done maybe by the end of next month. 

I was telling my pal Andy just the other day how I'm not sure how it'll be received; the other two zombie stories I wrote ("36 Hours" in 2004, redone in late 2009, and the "Dwellers of the Night" trilogy completed in spring of 2009) did remarkably well, the first gaining points for its story-driven plot and the second gaining points for its character-driven plot. One "Best of" list for post-apocalyptic fiction ranked the first alongside Stephen King's "The Stand" and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". Point of all this being, I know that my readers will be probably be expecting something along the lines of both where the impending crisis happened immediately, at the off-set at the book, but with this serial novel, things are gradual, and there's only one real "zombie encounter" in the first 300+ page novel. But that's okay, because I wanted to do it this way, and perhaps one day I'll let you know why.