Pseudopod listeners are beginning to post responses to my story “The Skull-Faced Boy.” See here and here.
Overall I think the feedback is pretty positive. Deflective writes: “This story is everything Pseudopod! A classic scenario with a twist. An action-driven plot with a hint of meaning. Just right for audio. Well-performed audio at that.” Sylvan calls the piece “a fascinating story that takes the zombie genre to new places,” and M. says it’s “some of the best listening I’ve done in a while.”
Chivalrybean writes: “The whole smart zombie aspect was brilliant. Not done before as far as the extent that my zombie experiences reach. Commanzomdos [commando zombies]. How cool is that?”
Many listeners seem to think that the story could or should be longer, either because they think some aspect of it is underdeveloped (boo) or because they think the setup is just really neat (yay). For example, Clinton Trucks notes, “This is the first Pseudopod offering that I thought could be expanded to novel length without suffering a dilution of its central idea.”
One thing I’ve noticed in writing workshops is that people will often say of a short story “This should be a novel” or “I wanted to see more of x,” and I almost always disagree. (Not just about my own stories, but with stories in general.) Part of it I’m sure is just taste. I know that I tend more than most people to prefer stories that are short and to the point and that always feel like they’re going somewhere. I also think it’s natural if you basically enjoy a story to feel that you want more of it … but that doesn’t necessarily mean that if you actually got more of it you’d be happier. I think there’s a lot to be said for leaving the reader wanting more. It certainly seems to me that it’s preferable to err in that direction than to err on the side of boring the reader. (There are also practical limits to how long you can make a piece that you’re hoping to sell to a magazine.) Still, given the number of listeners so far who seem to want more, more, more, it’s certainly something I’ll be thinking about vis-a-vis future stories.
Finally, I also came across a nice mention of “The Skull-Faced Boy” on this amusing blog post about zombies:
Just thought you’d like to know, your story “The Skull Faced Boy got me hooked on podcast fiction. It was perhaps the first I’d ever listened to, although I have always been an avid audiophile. To my point, in 2009 I started my own short fiction podcast. I just ran across your story in my Itunes again today and gave it another listen. It strikes me you and your story are somewhat responsible for what I’m doing now. For that I thank you, and also for that my wife would like to kill you. Keep writing original ideas. -Jason Warden- The ShadowCast Audio Anthology