Brief observation

[chipotle]

So I'm tweaking the horror story and thinking I've got to make this suck more. And it occurred to me that this is about the only genre where that's a positive thing.

...Of course, I mean "make this suck more for the characters," but it's still sort of perversely amusing to be looking critically at the text and thinking how do I maximize the gut punch effect without increasing the word count?

(N.B.: thanks to shaterri the story's tentative title is "Carrier.")

Comments

[revar.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think that 'Carrier' as a title is a bit of a give-away.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Well, keep in mind that at the start of the story she's delivering/guarding the one person known to have survived the syndrome...

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Well, the reader learns the story is about an epidemic pretty early on in the proceedings, so I'm not sure I'm giving too much away by giving it a title that one can connect back with a disease. (In a slightly newer rewrite, "carrier" is also echoed a bit on the first sight of the ferals: one of the workshop comments was, in effect, that it should be a little clearer that the ferals are the infected ones, not that the world has both civilized and wild anthros in it.) If there's a mystery aspect to the story, it's about learning what the disease's effects are.