Short Story / Trapped Within (Analysis)

I must admit I myself have been tempted to dabble in the zombie genre, just for kicks and grins. I like the idea of the perspective being post-infection, and the dissolve into a mindless ‘meat puppet’, however the execution of that man-into-brute part was awkward to me. Maybe a less-sudden change, one that is more drawn out and agonizing, such as a scene where he is stalking prey and fighting himself at the same time. I think that might be more effective. Also, the (guttural) stuff was confusing, I know you are using it as a noun but its a bit weird.

It’s a nice twist but make sure you avoid comparisons to American Werewolf in London.  Since we are supposed to be reviewing the level of writing and you have already mentioned you just peeled this off and do not bother about the spelling my one potential point of improvement is to avoid politically incorrect allusions.  Hollywood doesn’t want to eat homeless African children.  Your alliteration at the end in mimicking the sounds of transformation does not work.  End it professionally and clearly after “feed it”, and get rid of the ”....”.  Punctuation such as this is seen as a crutch or admission by the writer that he or she is not skilled enough to use proper diction and punctuation.  This might be a humourous horror piece if developed properly.  Good luck.

i think this will definitely make a good short story. i did kinda feel like your narrator was rushing his sentences a bit, though, and sometimes rather abrupt. i don’t know if that’s the style you’re going for or not. for example, it seemed abrupt on page 2, 3rd paragraph down, i believe, where you say, “This causing a sudden shock-wave of paralysis.” this seems just rather sudden and out-of-the-blue to me.
   i do detect a sense of humor in your character. great job!!

Good job, just needs some work on the point and paragraph structure. Not sure of the point you’re trying to make in the short paragraphs that I read though but also, I know that some people are into zombies and may understand it better than I.

This story is a little over the top for my sake, but zombies are intriguing in a dead kinda way. the phrase, I am frightened by my own thoughts, kinda makes me also frightened by your thoughts. There is a piece for everyone though.

I like the idea of the zombie trying to have a will of his own; I hope you build on this when you get around to writing something more concrete. The idea of fighting the need to eat the flesh of a human is interesting. It also interests me that you make the zombie be faceless to the victim.

You could build on the emotions of the struggle to make this stronger (the struggle against the asailant, I mean). The quickness of the event leaves out a load of detaisl that could make this more of a gory, horror flick style of writing.

Since you mention Hollywood, why not build on the phobia style of horror classic to it to be ironic? The irony of the bright lights against a human struggle against eating another human could prove interesting.

I believe I read your first version, and I am still intrigued by it. You start out talking about Hollywood, and make the reader think you are talking about one thing when its another. I did like this but feel you could have put in more of the visciousness in which the beast went after you. If you are like me sometimes you don’t want to put to much in, just enough to whet the readers appetite. Yet to me there was a lack of action in here, when you talk about it going for your neck or throat share with the reader how the blood oozed out or even gushed out. To me that would have certainly made the creature more evil. But overall it was a good story, and you did leave room for more to be written.