Hello fellow writers! My name is Tanis and I'm currently working on a zombie apocalypse survival guide. I've got some general ideas as to where I'm going to be going with chapters and contents but some extra input would be greatly appreciated! Also, if you have any zombie survival tips and tricks, feel free to post them. The more info we have, the more likely we are to survive this impending disaster
It's your story. Why do you need others to throw their ideas at you? That's not how writers operate. Trust your own imagination, and exercise it.
Uh, I have to agree with Cogito on this one. In fact, I would even say this is stealing from other writers, because you obviously intend to use our ideas in YOUR guide. Kinda doesn't do a lot for showing how good WE are at ideas.
Still doesn't really help us... But I still agree with Cogito. Use your imagination. If you want a secondary source, Google it.
You can get some ideas in the extensive book "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks. He offers the more conventional methods of survival against zombies, though not necessarily against zombie apocalypses. I would imagine that there are several schools of thought on the matter.
As much as I dislike zombies, I wouldn't want to be "credited." If 'm working on your book, I want to be paid. I'm not much off a son, a husband, an employee or a next door neighbor. But I'm one crackerjack mercenary, and I get paid.
If you're really looking for more insight into surviving a Zombie Apocalypse, The Walking Dead (the comic) goes into full detail on that. It's so authentic that it almost feels like the creator himself was transported to a parallel dimension where there was a Zombie Apocalypse and survived it himself, because he made it look real. Plus it's also one of the best comic books I've ever read and the characterization is better than a lot of novels imo.
This is this the problem for me. There are some stories and stereotypes where we all *know* how the plot must develop. In other words, Little Red Riding Hood dresses in red and ultimately meets the wolf. I've seen some moderizations, and there's no reason why the girl can't burst onto the scene in a red 'Vette. And that's the weakness of the zombie franchise. To be a zombie you either have to catch some virus or be the product of an evil scientist. You can scrample the way it happens (the germs can be on a meteor, or the scientist can actually be trying to help before corpses start ordering out for brains) but the overall story has a well-defined arc. So when you say "authentic zombies" now, you are just repeating a story, not creating your own. I think a "where are they now" story might have legs. We all know how an 'authentic zombie' story ends, but how about you write one twenty or thirty years after the fall? I mean, by then the zombies will have moved out to the 'burbs, some have run for office and are now senators, they have vegan children who won't eat the brains and protest the practice in college, and one of the jobs The Department of Public Works has is to maintain plowing equipment to keep layers of mottled flesh off main thoroughfares. "Zombies 2050." I can see the poster, "I don't like my uncle--so I'm just eating the vegetables..."
I saw a version where Red Riding Hood was the big bad wolf, and the red clothing was designed to keep the werewolf transformation in check by her grandmother. I liked that spin on the story. Also Red is super hot!
That's what I'm talking about. If we're going to have zombies, why do we have to have the same stale opening font for their creation? If the zombie arc is that they are diseased, and diseases mutate, why can't the mutation take the entire arc in a different direction? Maybe copious amounts of mottled flesh is the new clean green fuel. Maybe they actually shake the disease and get better, then find out they are the next step in the evolutionary chain. Maybe zombie organs have incredible healing powers--after all, they keep a half rotted body ambulatory--and rogue nations are fighting over the new found wealth. Yikes, we could come up with twenty new arcs with just the members here!
I think you took my wording of authentic the wrong way. By that I meant it felt so realistic that the minuscule details that breathed life into the series made it seem like it was so real that it couldn't have been made up. It was not a reply to the genre itself.
And that mindset is ultimately going to kill the genre. Do you know when a "cool guy" becomes 'uncool'? It's the morning when everyone considers him cool, and then the afternoon when he becomes a caricature of himself. Then the guy with a new slant becomes 'the new black.' Zombie stories are on the crest. However, books take years to write, a few more years to sell to publishers, and then millions of people have to read the book first to create the buzz for the movie. In other words, the guy who is not writing zombie stories is the new cool kid. The guy writing one now will soon be sweeping out publishers' offices. We should be studying the literary versions of Faith Popcorn.
No offense but I think you're just thinking way too deep into this. I've seen two zombie films that revisited Night of the Living Dead's formula (Flight of the Living Dead, Dance of the Dead, both indies) and they were fantastic zombie films, better than George A. Romero's two latest outings, and they fell off because he tried taking another step forward in the genre he fathered. In the end everyone wants to see the same story told, but differently.
Nope, at the end of the day, we are involved in the business of writing. Now, I'm sure that many of us live for our music or our cars or our writing. Each one of these "callings" is run by a company that is only there because it's a living. Right now, you can make money on zombies. Every kid with a zombie T-shirt and pocketful of his mom's money means another payment on a corporate yacht. No money, no zombies. When zombie money dries up, the same guy will start selling washing machines. I know, I was a credit manager for over 30 years.
I just don't get what you're rattling off on. I don't know how having a very authentic take on a zombie apocalypse can be so played out when one of the very best zombie movies ever came out in 2009. Is it different from Dawn of the Dead? Yes, although in principle they're still similar; they're all fighting for their lives. If the zombie genre dies out, that's because no one was creative enough to spark life into it. Now I don't know how this is all relative to my original post where I merely suggested that the op should check out one of the very best zombie stories to ever be released. If he's having trouble coming up with his own ideas then it means he's lacking inspiration, and no better way to do that then to check out the very best the genre has to offer.
That's true for any genre. The problem with zombie movies/books is that any variation is just a nuance. Take away the stumbling, flesh sloughing plot and you have very little. But I do like creativity. Zombieland was a fresh approach. And I admire that.
Your book will amount to nothing unless there is at least one entire chapter dedicated to the arte and crafte of double tappe.
