Anna's Nuclear Winter - Alternate History/Apocalypse Now

[JustSarah]

Anna's Nuclear Winter

1. Anna lived in relative comfort in her fathers independently founded village, after protecting her from the eyes of the paramilitary police, a paramilitary who toppled Americom (American Communist), when her father escaped into the nuclear winter wasteland.

2. Anna sees death for the first time, when her best friend who was her babysitter, turns out to be a paramilitary agent. Her babysitter is taken out and shot because she ratted their existence out.

3. Anna was sent to boot camp with 21 other children her age, because in any ordinary circumstance, it would be her parents job. However the current fighting force is aging and dying of radiation poisoning. Anna has two possessions, a diary and a middle grade novel.

4. Anna is beginning to have psychiatric problems, after she was almost forced to execute a delinquent conscript in her ranks. This causes a mental meltdown, and she is sent to the brig. Anna writes in her diary, and over hears the conscript being killed another my willing conscript.

5. Anna starts to hear voices in her head, and it slowly begins to overtake the writing in her diary. When she returns for boot camp, her drill sergeant notices her personality seems differently.

6. Anna gets a fearing respect from her drill sergeant, when she does not hesitate to kill another conscript. Meanwhile in her mind, Anna was asleep and was not aware of her actions.

7. Anna is sent out into the field with her Unit, when the paramilitary force invades her village earlier than expected, and she hesitates to kill another soldier. However she fall asleep again, wakes up and finds herself sleeping in camp, and the group is celebrating their victory.

8. Anna wondered what happened, and she had missing time. Anna is shipped off to in a snow truck with children in her Unit, and they make their camp in the outskirts of the first American concentration camp.

9. Anna's group is running out of logistics to fight the paramilitary, so their group splits up. The make group stays behind to hold off the security guards of the camp, while the female unit tries to negotiate with the weapons supplier, and place them on the winning end of the war. However Anna chooses to stay behind and fight.

10. It was a long time for them to try to negotiate with the supplier, however the supplier had their own political agenda, and they come to aid the male force. However they find both sides wiped out , and Anna is lying dead in a pile of soldiers.

11. The supplier takes the job of the children from here, leading to the main novel, Charles Nuclear Summer.

This does not include character profiles, as some parts of profile building are giving me trouble.

Edit: Ok, I printed off the sheet for American drought zones, Fema sectors, and New York Superstate boundaries.

[notw]

Before I delve into the synopsis, I'll try and give as much useful feedback as I can, but grammar is not exactly my strong suit.

Anyways, this is the first draft of my story outline: (Yes its cliche sorry)

Richard crashes his star ship in a barren desert with no memory before the crash. I might consider taking one of the crash(es) out of this sentence. Along the trek in the desertHe? finds an oddly colored lake, drinks and vomits.<---The last part of this sentence is choppy. Finds an abandoned small town, that he finds out the name is Sauna Creek. Finds an abandoned convenience store, that stores a drink who’s language he does not recognize.Last part of this sentence does not make sense. We see our protagonist run into the convenience store to get his wits together. He decides to explore the town until he can contact help to get him off this planet. He sees blood and dead bodies along the road. In this opening paragraph you use a lot of "Finds an..." it might be helpful to switch out these words. Also instead of telling us can you show us how he gets his wits togethe what seeing the dead bodies is like?

He runs back to the store, wondering what he just witnessed. He finds a map in the managers office. He wakes up, to find the girl starring at him, banging her palms in the convenience store window. Then she runs off giggling. He then turns around to get her a drink, figuring she must be in a similar situation. He turns around, and she’s gone. He assumes he was just seeing things, finished his drink, and falls asleep. Again this paragraph you use a lot of "He" and many of your sentences are telling instead of showing. So instead of opening up with "He runs ack to the store window..." you could try something like "Richard runs to the window, wondering what he witnessed. Searching for answers he digs around in the managers office where he finds a map." This example I just gave probably stinks but showing us what he does invites the reader to get sucked in :)

He goes out the window toso look for the girl. Once he finds himself outside the window on Janulo St., the girls seemed to have vanished. This sentence is confusing. In the sewer, he finds odd creatures that resemble something like humans, but a little more on the insect side. How did he get in the sewer? What do these human/insects look like? He heres hears an odd noises in the sewer, and he decides to follow it. After finding the source of the noise, the creatures sensed his presence, considered the protagonistYou can just insert his name instead of protagonist. food, and try to chase him until he is able to get out of the sewer. Then he see a young girl about fifth-teen Fifteenstanding along Beardsonbluff Rd. He wonders if the girl is in the same situation as he is. But then then creatures get out of the sewer, and try to attack the protagonist. When he dodges, they mistake the girl for the protagonist and drag her off as food. The Protagonist runs back to the store to get his wits together.

A couple of hours after arriving back at the convenience store, the protagonist decides it would be safer to leave the store for now, while he goes to search for some parts to fix his ship.Even though the bugs are out there? When he arrives at a cross section, he hears a girls scream from Bristlebrick Avenue, and goes to check it out. Here he has a confrontation with the creatures from earlier, and is forced to kill them so the girl would not be eaten. Why doesn't he go after her before? However due to the girl also being frightened by the protagonist himself, he was forced to knock her out so he could take her somewhere safe.

Eventually the hero burst into an abandoned house, and there they make their shelter. After trying to communicate with the girl about what was going on in the town, the only thing the girl was about to due was grunt and giggle, for she could not speak. It was getting late, so he sent the girl to bed, and himself slept on the old couch. The next morning, he goes to her room and finds her missing.

The Protagonist goes out of the house to look for the girl, having to follow her track through the green fog, and through the sewer. Then when he thinks he has caught up with her, he loses track of her at the cave near the end of the sewer. There he finds the nest bed of the creatures, and begins to weed out any creatures that attack him for food, hindering his progress to locate the girl. Eventually he has to trek through the entire cave to finally catch up to her.

Once he knocks her out again to take her home, he begins to wonder why he is even interested in her keeping him company. After looking in the mirror, he wonders to himself why he wants her to keep her as company.This sentence can be gotten rid of cause it repeats the first. Is it so he can have company, so he can raise a daughter of his own? Or is it so he could have a reason to solve the mystery of Saunacreek? How would she help solve the mystery?

Fearing for his own life, he finds new urgency to rebuild his ship. Why is he afraid more now? Then he tries to get off the planet once and for all, but his engine fails. Going back into town, he investigates into the mystery of Saunacreek. The protagonist gradually discovers that the people that reside here, are the same species as him. However unlike him, they were artificially built. But the race discovered unintended side effects, and destroys the race, fearing that they will war amongst themselves. After further investigation into the creatures creation, he begins to freak out when he discovers his own race was listed in the credits of building the creatures.

ProtagonistRichard realizes something that he should have known a long time ago. Not were the creatures he has been murdering all along mutated humans left over from the war, he was the alien sent sent down to destroy the race once and for all. This sentence is confusing. The reason he was not able to come in contact with his crew, was because they wanted him to finish his task. Realizing his mistake, he goes to find the girl that was evidently the only normal human left. after After finally grabbing a hold of her. he Heteaches her how to properly speak his language, and tags her along as he rebuild humanity from the ground up. In the right way.

Protagonist takes the girl back to his home world. He begins to develop a bit of feelings for the girl, after getting to know her as a human being better. Even though he looks upon her as his equal, his race look upon her as just one of many of their failed test subjects. Due to all the abuse she suffered, instead of allowing her to be destroyed by his race, gives her a lethal dose of EuthanasiaThis isn't the word you are going for right here. He cannot give her a lethal dose of a mercy kill. He can give her arsenic or somthing like that.so she would not suffer any more.

Two years later, the protagonist goes back to contorting with prostitutes, and carrying out missions. However remember his once true love, he retires and plots a rebellion against the established order of creating artificial life to suit the aliens purposes. After defeated the dictatorship, he has a daughter that resembles something like his first love. He decides to name her Samantha in her memory.[/synopsis]

My main query is were the main areas characters need to develop, and what areas seem to be inconsistent with other areas of the story.^^

I also am not the best at grammar so I can totally relate :) I posted my comments above and hopefully you will find something helpful. Nathan has a cool blog post about writing a synopsis that I found really useful. http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/08 ... opsis.html Good luck!

[JustSarah]

Updated main post with corrections.

[JustSarah]

Alright, I updated my outline a bit, so it would be less confusing. I'll critique others when I get them chance to enhance my own grammar.^^

[JustSarah]

Ok I figured since more then seventy two hours have passed, it might be ok to update.^_- I wont edit the synopsis if a critique does not mention both the good and the bad. I've avoided critiques cause of this weird habit of some places only mentioning the bad. Oh and, leave pop cultural references to established writers and comic scripts out please. Its kind of a pet peeve. I'm my own writer.