I mean globally has anyone wrote about this stuff, like say a fictional account of 9/11. I know I never would out of fear of getting it wrong, but I still wonder how to do it right.
Try Shakespeare. That man was pure genius. Other than that, I'd say make sure there's an emotional attachment to the characters who get killed; don't overdo the adverbs; write it in third person, because a first person narrator is going to miss things; and don't let the narrator's emotions get in the way of telling what really happened. Good luck!
Meaning the tragedy and its causes and effects are the plot? I've read something like that: 'Left Behind' by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The 'tragedy' was the Rapture, and the book is the first in a series showing how the effects of it lead up to the end of the world. Not my favorite read, but it can tell you more about a tragic plot line than I can.
It will come, given time. Someone will sort out the way to get it done and they will do it. With any luck, when they complete the task, it is done with the sensitivity such an event deserves, rather than with a jingoistic knee jerk that makes a mockery of the tragedy. It would be a hard task to undertake, but rewarding.
I'm puzzled. There have been many books and plays with tragic plots; it's a major plot category. Can you clarify your question? ChickenFreak
it's done all the time... for instance many novels revolve around world wars one and two, the holocaust and the atom bombings of hiroshima/nagasaki... 'empire of the sun' by j.g. ballard is a novel everyone in the world should read, imo... poe used a fictional variation on 'the black plague' as his plot in 'masque of the red death'... major earthquakes and hurricanes have also spawned novels and movies... as have the tragedies that befell tribal peoples in america thanks to the white-eyes' lust for more land... and don't forget the biggest money-making novelization of all, 'titanic'... and that tragedy's musical comedy takeoff, 'the unsinkable molly brown'...
Yea, basically mammamaia has it covered in her answer. Maybe there is a certain time period before the tragedy, and the polite time to write about it. If everyone started writing books based around 9/11 a year after it had happened, people would think it was an insensitive money-making scheme. There may actually even be 9/11 books - have you looked on Amazon or somewhere to see if any already exist?
I can only imagine that you don't read much contemporary literary fiction, because 9/11 has had a massive influence on a huge group of writers who deal with it in their fiction, including big name authors like Jay McInnerny, Don Delillo, Jonathan Saffran Foer, etc. There are plenty of books that take the aftermath of 9/11 as a backdrop for a pretty wide variety of stories, and there will be more for decades to come; it's the most significant moment in American History since 1945...
