1. Rahl

    Rahl Member

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    Zombies too cliche?

    Discussion in 'Science Fiction' started by Rahl, Feb 20, 2017.

    Just like the title says "Have zombies been run into the ground?"

    I just hate being paired with the walking dead when I write. Its a great show. Don't get me wrong but it just seems like when people see a book about zombies they role there eyes and think "This guys just cashing in on a popular TV show." I love stories about zombies when they are done right. I use to sit up all night with my cousin talking about what we would do if it happened and where we would live and such. But it seems like the shows and video games have taken the wind out of those sails for people anymore.
     
  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    This question has been asked many times and my answer is always the same: Just make your story more than a) Zombie Apocalypse happens, then b) a scrappy crew of survivors hear about a c) "Safe Zone" (always somewhere up north) that they then try to get to.

    The film Warm Bodies is a zombie film that is actually a scathing indictment of addiction to portable technology.

    The British zombie series In The Flesh is clearly about the integration of people living with HIV into the greater community.

    That's my answer, at this point in the Zombie game. The trope can work if it serves a purpose greater than just rehashing its own well-known props.
     
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  3. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    In my personal opinion the market (television/movies, video games, and apocalyptic/post apoc. stories).
    So to me yes zombies are actually more cliche than burnt toast.

    Having said that, who gives a shit if the Zombie thing has been done a trillion times over. You can reinvent
    it in your own unique way. :)
     
  4. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    I'm sure books and movies with zombies will be written and rewritten for at least the next thousand years. Just like the vampires and werewolves. Mostly, people will keep writing them because people will keep buying them. If you're worried about the cliche, then give us something wildly new to make it stand out.
     
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  5. Rahl

    Rahl Member

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    Well I'm working on it, I just hate the instant reactions people have to the genre these days.
     
  6. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    What I really look for in zombie fiction are new terms for the creatures. I shudder when I see the word zombie.

    And @Wreybies, makes a really wonderful point about doing something outside of the obligatory narrative structure.
     
  7. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Zombies are just a representation of people who think different than you, but still ARE mostly the same as you. Spend too much time around them, and they literally destroy your brain and turn you over to their beliefs- I mean, infect you with zombieism.

    With that I mind, I'm sure there's something cool you could do with it.
     
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  8. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    If you have nothing to add beyond the usual shit, then yes, definitely. It's never been my favorite horror genre. I've always found it mindless, pardon the pun, and better left to film than literature. Maybe it's the endless head shots/stabs. You have to get creative to kill a vampire. A zombie? They're nothing without numbers on their side. I'm sure somebody has done creative things with zombies, but I can never get the films out of my head.
     
  9. Robert Musil

    Robert Musil Comparativist Contributor

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    I'm a big fan of anything with zombies. I was a fan before they became popular (again), I'm still a fan now that the pendulum has swung the other way and everyone thinks they're cliche. I'll still be a fan the next time they become re-popular in a couple decades, and I'll continue to snootily insist that I was into them "before they were cool". So for purely selfish reasons I'm all in favor of more zombie fiction whatever the medium.

    It's important to separate what your work actually is, from how you represent it to people. If people have a negative reaction to the word "zombie", maybe don't tell them that it's about zombies right off the bat. Tell them it's about directionless twentysomethings in Brooklyn or a depressed humanities professor in Iowa or whatever, and then tack on a "...but with zombies" at the end if you want. Then instead of being "oh how cliche" people may be more like "oh how interesting", even though the only thing that's changed is their own expectations.
     
  10. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I think what I dislike about zombie stories is that they ...well, zombies just don't exist. Dead bodies do not 're-animate.' So I find this precept uninispiring. Okay, vampires and werewolves probably don't exist either (and I'm not terribly keen on them either) but they do make interesting characters—in that they are intelligent, sometimes sexy, and partly human. Zombies? They just clomp around in stinky, disgusting form, eating people and infecting people, and the only real story is about how to escape them and/or stop them—like we'd stop any plague. And the 'fact' that they need to 'eat' people at all? When they're dead? No. Again, it makes no sense. So I really can't get into stories about them. Sorry.
     
  11. Ettina

    Ettina Senior Member

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    Never refrain from writing an idea that seems good just because someone popular did something vaguely similar recently.
     
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  12. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Challenge Accepted :cool:

    I've been toying with the idea of my Urban Fantasy maybe-maybe-not turning into a Zombie Apocalypse eventually, and if I do this, I'll do it in the same way that I'm planning on my villain protagonists learning Elemental magic (Earth, Air, Fire Water) based on their personalities (Earth = focus, Air = flexibility, Fire = passion, Water = tranquility): a necromancer creates a curse that copies the common traits of a zombie infection because the concept being ingrained in so many millions of peoples' minds would make the curse more powerful.

    That way, not only is there an in-universe reason for the common cliches that connects it to earlier in-universe developments, but there's also the protagonist-antagonist dynamic of the Apocalypse not being about a plague, but rather it being about bioterrorism :twisted:
     
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  13. Paul Kinsella

    Paul Kinsella Member

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    Just remember it's not about the zombies. It's about the people who are surviving the zombie outbreak and how the disaster is affecting their relationships with each other. "The Birds" is not about the birds. "Giligan's Island" is not about the island. They are about the people. In a book about zombies, show how the characters evolve because of the crisis... The pizza delivery boy becomes a hero. The high-priced lawyer becomes a cannibal. The soccer-mom becomes a thief. People who normally would never socialize with each other are suddenly forced into close quarters and must work together to survive. The town drunk, spoiled rich kid, hooker, gangster, nerd, cop, etc...
     
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  14. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I guess I struggle with zombies being a crisis because ...well ...they don't exist. I'm all for people coping with a crisis, but I just can't buy into the concept of 'zombies.'
     
  15. KhalieLa

    KhalieLa It's not a lie, it's fiction. Contributor

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    What if the zombies were intelligent, super fast, reanimated humans, that are also super sexy because they were porn stars while living? Suppose that the virus that reanimated them was actually a sexually transmitted disease running rampant in the sex industry. Assume the best zombie hunters are cancer patients because cancer tumors emitted a smell that confuses zombies making them think everyone with cancer is already dead. And what if, instead of eating people, zombies were sex crazed, chasing people through the streets, raping them, because that's how the virus spreads? Now, instead of killing them, the goal is to corral them on porn sets because, being dead, the labor laws no longer apply to them, so the porn industry wants to exploit them for their sexual prowess. (Insert crude joke about male zombies being stiff here.)

    Would you read that book?

    ETA: Come to think of it, using the dead to avoid being subject to labor laws and wage & hour regulations is a damn good idea. I'm going to write that book!
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2017
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  16. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Porn stars are sexy?
     
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  17. KhalieLa

    KhalieLa It's not a lie, it's fiction. Contributor

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    Oh come on . . . It's fiction! If zombies can be real, porn stars can be sexy.
    Some people just refuse to suspend disbelief. . . jeeze. . .
     
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  18. Pinkymcfiddle

    Pinkymcfiddle Banned

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    I think zombies, like vampires and werewolves, need a lengthy break.

    I kinda thought zombies had run their course with 28 Days Later, which made them interesting again by giving them real threat (I know they weren't officially zombies, but if it quacks like a duck...) and Shaun of the Dead, which exploited their fundamental absurdity for comedic effect. But then The Walking Dead came out and became an immensely popular soap opera with zombies as the backdrop, something I still don't understand. So they still seem to be popular. But then people still seem to watch vampires and zombies as well, when, for me, they were killed stone dead as interesting concepts with Twiglet.

    But surely all three have had their heyday?
     
  19. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    I like the idea of writing a zombie apocalypse story from a zombie point of view ... may be the brain remains sentinent but loses control of the body or something so the Mc is this poor guy who's seeing himself do all these gross things without any control over his actions.

    I had a similar idea about the war against the machines trope - that it should be written from a machine point of view where people are just a damn nuisance and need eradicating

    both of those are ideas for another day though
     
  20. Olle1087

    Olle1087 New Member

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    I don't mind zombies if it's a motif that enables a writer to say something about the world,
    or if zombies lead readers to an overarching theme of the book.

    if you present zombies for the mere sake of suspense, or to arouse unnecessary emotional reactions in the reader, that is not literature. It's fan-fic.

    Good examples for zombie fiction/movies : The Girl With All the Gifts, I am Legend
    A bad example : Wayward Pines.
     
  21. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    iZombie. The CW.

    Oh. OK, no apocalypse.
     
  22. malaupp

    malaupp Active Member

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    You can write a zombie story without falling back on the tropes. Like, you can actually have the government/army of a country still standing. You can have people actually being organized in the face of the chaos (because there are a variety of things put in place to prevent major disasters). Or you could have the zombie hoard created by another country in a form of biological warfare.

    Essentially, I would love to see a story in which the zombies represent the major conflict, but not the end of the world as we know it. There's literally no reason we couldn't have zombies AND wifi.
     
  23. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Mira Grant. Feed.
     
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  24. Neovarch

    Neovarch New Member

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    I think it all depends how your zombies are being presented and utilized.
    If you're going to use the formulaic zombie apocalypse method:
    1, A mysterious government virus is unleashed.
    2, The cities of humanity turn into war-zones and mass hysteria,
    3, Out of the chaos, I ragtag group of survivors know wander the "ruined" countryside scavenging supplies, but never running out of bullets

    ....I personally would've stopped reading at the first chapter.
    It's actually a shame, but the concept of a zombie ought to be gut-wrenchingly harrowing!
    A dead corpse re-animated and sustains itself by cannibalized live people!
    That concept is so unnatural and vile that it should be terrifying within any story, but I think because all media facades have been fraught with so much poor, crass, and "lazy" story-telling... the zombie mythos has lost its flame.

    Maybe tell a zombie from a different lite, such as go back to the original cause from Black Magick instead of a virus? The supernatural is always more scary than physical nature because its beyond our understanding and outside of our control.
    Or perhaps, zombies with some humanity left such as the ability to problem-solve or even communicate and organize themselves into a army to strategically hunt down "Live Flesh"?

    Intelligence is the backbone of creativity.
     
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  25. Jun

    Jun Member

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    I agree with just about everything anyone has said above me so instead of being a broken record, I think I'll just go on to say..... personally I'm sick and tired of seeing the whole theme of "humans are the real monsters" within the zombie genre. I get it, we are selfish, greedy, arrogant and terrible beings who will betray one another at first sign of some sort of apocalypse. And yes there are always those of us who are good and trust others (cough cough MC) but every antagonist? Nah, they are demons straight from hell.

    With that being said, my knowledge for zombie genre in general is rather lacking. But I did drop Walking Dead TV show after realizing its just a rinse and repeat of:
    Step 1: Zombies! Run!
    Step 2: Safe place!
    Step 3: Bad guy! Worse than zombies!
    Step 4: Someone dies! Sadness!
    Step 5: Return to Step 1 if you have profits.
     

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