A novel based on my dreams

[BurnedOut]

Been entertaining this idea for quite some time. I don't know. Should I start writing one?

I am fascinated with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. In my head, I have nearly completed 70% of this book.

 

[Cognisant]

What was the dream? The concept of the Terminator came from a dream, not the plot of the movie, but that feeling of being chased by something that "will not stop, ever".

As I see it there's fundamentally two kinds of zombies, the infected and the undead.

The undead are scary in the same way that ghosts are scary, they're impossible and yet they're happening which brings everything into question, like a Furby making noises and moving after the batteries are pulled out, if it can do that despite the blatant impossibility then what else can it do... what can't it do?

The infected are a fate worse than death, the indignity of death personified, it's like one of your parents having dementia and slowly losing their mind the very essence of who they are. When someone just dies we can comfort ourselves with the thought that they're gone as if they're somewhere else, perhaps somewhere better, but dementia forces you to watch death in slow motion, to see someone you love fall apart piece by piece until what's left isn't recognizable as them anymore.

Spoiler

Actually I suppose there's a third type, the generic disposable bad guy, the guilt-free humanoid monster you can catch in a rope snare that's being wound in by a wood chipper and laugh as the zombie is slowly pulled to its grisly demise. Although it's hard to tell an effective story about them, they make a better backdrop to a story that's fundamentally about something else.

Alternatively you could try to combine the undead and infected archetypes, it could be a two stage thing where the infected slowly succumb to dementia and go rabid and then once killed they turn into something supernatural. Or maybe it's a supernatural malady from the start, a sickness of the soul that can be spread by sowing misery and hate, and those who succumb to it are able to unshackle themselves from death's inevitability by taking the lives (or taking the souls) of others.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Unless you can adapt the themes of the book I think it'll be a hard sell for a large population than a couple people. Plot only gets you so far. It's not what attracts audiences counter to what many believe. There are many variables that have to resonate with many people.

You can always self-publish for the passion of it, but that's a labor of love.

 

[BurnedOut]

I don't want to publish it. Just as a cathartic exercise.

I want to make it a psych thriller. Well, it will be about the fictitious time I spent in my college in 2021 when I was doing my major. Instead of COVID-19 being what it is, in my plot, I plan to make COVID-19 a rapidly spreading highly mutating virus whose ideal environment is tropical.

Since the virus is uncontrollably mutating, it has one problem - that somehow becomes localized and due to timely evacuation, its spreading is only confined to several square kilometers surrounding my college. I don't care about making this scientifically too accurate because the focus is the experiences of the survivors trapped in the college than on the origin of the virus and its subsequent culling.

The format will be epistolary and the genre is action & psychological thriller with the latter being the dominant theme. I plan to put some elements of Heart Of Darkness because it just seems fitting in this context.

I have also been inspired by Far Cry 2. Action will be quite mundane. The descriptions will be graphic but the real horror will lie in how twisted the survivors start turning. You can also see influences of Lord Of The Flies here.

I don't want to make the ending too similar to Lord Of The Flies where the last remaining sane boy is brutally hunted across the island because it will be too corny.

One more reason I want to write this book is to explore the anarchical & primal tendencies of humans with the apocalypse being the literary element in it. And no, I don't want to make it corny like Dying Light's plot.

And yeah, weapons are present throughout the plot. So it won't be a supply-management horror or a last stand horror plot.

Any ideas will be appreciated. Or maybe I'll just post the novella on intpforum

 

[Cognisant]

So the outbreak isn’t spreading across the world, yet, and your characters are trapped in the quarantine zone and they can’t get out, is it the zombies keeping them trapped, themselves or is quarantine enforcement keeping them trapped there?

For the zombies to be dangerous enough to keep the military from going in and rescuing the survivors via helicopter they must be extraordinarily dangerous, or there’s some other factor, like some terrorist/rebel group has taken the outbreak as an opportunity to seize control of the area. Perhaps they’ve found some way to immunize themselves against the zombie plague and make the zombies see them as other zombies, if it’s just makeup and acting that’s hilarious. Or perhaps it’s just the nature of the zombie plague itself that it makes the zombies violently insane but still aware enough to use weapons, like the Reavers from Firefly.

Alternatively the zombies aren’t so dangerous that the survivors are trapped but they have their own reasons for staying in the quarantine zone, this makes more sense if they intentionally enter the quarantine zone in pursuit of something. Say the outbreak just happened and someone had the bright idea to rob the zone’s largest bank before the military can get organized and roll in to wipe the zombies out, of course they don’t get out fast enough and then they discover the military is shooting survivors on sight.

Or what if the “survivors” are actually infected, they’re undead but still conscious somehow and they can regenerate if they eat human flesh, or bathe in pureed humans, or hold someone else’s severed arm to their stump and after a few hours it’ll be attached and be useable. But they can infect people with a touch and 99% of the time those infected are normal brain-dead zombies.

 

[BurnedOut]

is it the zombies keeping them trapped, themselves or is quarantine enforcement keeping them trapped there?

All of the survivors have been bitten. They are immune but they are carriers too (as assumed by the military) so they cannot be evaced. The virus is not airborne but certainly spreads through exchange of bodily fluids and water.

For the zombies to be dangerous enough to keep the military from going in and rescuing the survivors via helicopter they must be extraordinarily dangerous,

The zombies have extremely slow metabolisms and their digestive system is very crude insofar allowing cannabilism. Some mutations in their brains enhance their olfactory system do they are able to detect non-zombies (standard stuff) and they have a grouping tendency (as they evolve further). They are also able to communicate with each other.

 

[BurnedOut]

Of course the military can drop in hazmats and exterminate the zombies but the sheer number of zombies in the area is a big deterrent. Not only that, they quickly learn that the military is dangerous so they camp out in enclosed structures making it difficult to eliminate them.

 

[Cognisant]

Zombies in a building? Blow it up. Seriously why not?

Town overrun with zombies, maybe there's survivors hiding in basements and attics, maybe not, flatten the place with bombs and congratulate yourself on reducing projected casualties to zero.

Can you imagine if we sent troops in there, people could have died!

Nothing but the poorest most underdeveloped nation is going to tolerate having a quarantine zone full of zombies within their borders, and even then a neighboring power will just send in gunships to do the job for them because good neighbors don't let neighbors harbor potentially apocalyptic pandemics.

I'm not arguing whether or not you can do something with your worldbuilding, of course you can it's your story and there's no shortage of zombie movies where they inexplicably overwhelm the military as if they're all standing around indoors near corners and doorways waiting to be ambushed. It's just for me personally it beggars belief and if I have to convince myself that everyone in charge in this world is an idiot it makes it harder for me to take the horror seriously.

Now if they're all idiots because it's a two party system of corrupt bastards more interested in trying to fuck each other over than actually run the country properly that's actually pretty terrifying.

 

[BurnedOut]

Zombies in a building? Blow it up. Seriously why not?

It's India man. Blowing stuff up in Mumbai (the most highly developed city in India) and leveling zombie-infested regions is not going to be done by the Indian government given that Mumbai is the financial capital of the country. And suppose if the vaccine is made successfuly, who's going to rebuild the city when the central government is fighting with extreme poverty at around 23% in the whole country?

The apocalypse in South Mumbai (where the richest reside) will cause enough financial loss to the government as-is and in a realistic scenario, the government would rather enlist the survivors to do the dirty job of exterminating the zombies with minimal amounts of collateral damage.

Theory number 2:
It is simply politics and leveling the city where zombies are there would also lead to destruction of potentially ample evidence that may be useful in turning the whole world against a particular country (you know which country I am referring to. I don't want Winnie the Pooh breathing down my neck with a machete)

Theory number 3:
Leveling entire buildings and other such enclosures is a political no-no because there may be potential survivors lurking there. There will obviously be a public outcry against the government simply destroying everything that stinks 'zombie'. Also, bombing the city will hurt the reputation of the state. The state would rather scream patriotism and aid and abet the survivors with supplies and dramatize the whole incident as far as possible and win the successive elections in the name of 'saving the survivors and the city both'.

military as if they're all standing around indoors near corners and doorways waiting to be ambushed. It's just for me personally it beggars belief and if I have to convince myself that everyone in charge in this world is an idiot it makes it harder for me to take the horror seriously.

When you are fighting against an enemy who feels much less pain than a normal human being, shooting them with hollow-pointed 9mm from a close range is not going to deter them from attacking the soldiers. But this is not a good enough reason to counter your point. I can fill this plot hole with assuming that the virus was airborne and as it evolved, it could not find enough vectors after infecting multitudes and lost the trait of being airborne. Since the original troops sent to secure the area all got infected during the first evacuation (which never happened because everybody exposed to the virus became undead), the government is clearly reluctant to send any more troops. But there is another problem with this narrative and that is, the government can enlist the survivors to collect blood samples and they will eventually figure out that the virus is not airborne anymore. So I suppose I will go along with the idea that the virus is airborne .

Thanks Cog. Your critiquing is helping me develop a solid plot.

 

[Cognisant]

Alright let's talk plot and themes.

Just as coming up with a joke starts with the punchline if you want a story's plot to have a cathartic payoff you start at the outcome then work your way backwards, detailing the events that lead up to that outcome with the goal of contextualizing it in a way that makes it more meaningful/impactful.

From the prologue of the Harry Potter series it's already abundantly clear that the conclusion of Harry's story will be his confrontation with Voldemort and the outcome of that confrontation is pretty obvious. So the entire story from beginning to end is a buildup to that payoff, sure we know Harry will defeat Voldemort but what's at stake, why do we care about about this and what is it going to cost him? Throughout the series he makes friends and enemies, has adventures, romantic interests, the Weasleys practically become his new family.

He goes from being an unloved overworked orphan living in a cupboard under the stairs with little to no prospects to having a lot to live for, and as the series is coming to a finale we find out he's the final horcrux and it's implied that defeating Voldemort may necessarily come at the cost of his own life.

Now that's just the overall plot, within that plot there's a lot of subplots which contribute to the main plot but are not individually essential but they all contribute to the main plot and without that context the main plot wouldn't be as meaningful.

A better example for the relationship between the main plot and subplots is "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End", the main plot is that the growing power of the East India Trading Company is bringing the age of piracy as a lifestyle to an end. This affects all the characters but for the most part they're not concerned about it directly, it's not until the very end that the pirates are all united in a common cause. What unites them is the subplot around the heart of Davy Jones and how the conflict over his heart is the crux of the overall conflict, whoever commands the unstoppable Flying Dutchman effectively rules the seas.

Within the Davy Jones subplot practically every major character has their own personal subplot, Will Turner wants to save his father, Elizabeth Swann wants to be reunited with Will, Jack just wants to be a free man but Davy Jones has killed him once already and he knows that with the EITC ruling the seas he either gives up his life of piracy or it will inevitably happen again.

Then there's Davy Jones and Calypso, their personal relationship issues are the focal point upon which the entire plot revolves and there's a synergy of themes between the large scale main plot of Cutler Beckett trying to bring the world's oceans under his control, and Davy Jones the man who fell in love with the embodiment of the sea and imprisoned her when her fickle nature broke his heart.

They're both men trying to control the uncontrollable.

In the final battle Barbossa frees Calypso (who resurrected him) and while captaining the Black Pearl and in the midst of a battle he marries Will and Elizabeth, meanwhile Jack is battling Jones for control of his heart, and they're all being drawn down into the maelstrom's whirlpool. It's absolutely bonkers and all these subplots are reaching their payoff at more-or-less the same time and because everything over the last three movies has built up to this point it feels amazingly epic.

So give it a thought, what's the overall plot of this story, what is it about thematically and what subplots will you have and how do they contextualize the main plot and/or bring the focus of the main plot down to a more personal scale?

For example you mentioned political tensions with China, if this outbreak is taking place in a border region between the two countries or during an event that's politically sensitive, and neither country is either willing or able to adequately respond to the outbreak due to their inability to coordinate with the other, then the outbreak itself becomes the focal point of a breakdown of international diplomacy.

This in turn could be brought into sharper focus with there being a mix of Chinese and Indian people in the quarantine area who are distrustful of each other and in turn further sub-sub-plots with each of these people having their own personal reasons to be distrustful and/or different perspectives on the situation.

The movie "12 Angry Men" is about a jury trying to decide whether some guy is guilty of murder or not with only circumstantial evidence and the whole movie takes place in a single room with just those twelve characters. Nothing really happens the entire time they're just talk but what makes the movie interesting (definitely worth watching) is that each has his own personal perspective and motivations, e.g. one guy has tickets to a baseball game and wants to leave ASAP regardless of the decision. Each also has their own definition of justice and opinion on whether the law should err on the side of punishing the guilty at the risk of punishing people who are not, or on the side of ensuring the innocent are not punished even if sometimes the guilty go free.

 

[BurnedOut]

The problem with overarching plots is that they shadow the experiences that people face. If I bring IR to the forefront of this novella, it turns into a TV show or a video game effectively. However what you are saying is quite logical because these subplots should be solid nevertheless but I don't mean to make them the showstealer here.

The theme is like I said futility (Heart of Darkness) and irrationality. With no confirmation of whether the vaccine is in progress or not and the government's refusal to send anymore supplies after a certain point creates tension (okay, improvised this one to fit the theme) and starts really affecting the characters whilst the prot and the side-prot somehow manage to keep their sanity.

Now I was thinking about Chinese people being in the quarantined region A LOT. Before you mentioned it, I was already considering it but I was confused whether it should be put or not. And I just had a simple idea - it should be implied so subtly that it is difficult to pinpoint if the Chinese were there or not (not to the reader of course but causing dissonance is fun) - Just showcase them as zombies in civilian clothes. Then it would be up to the protagonists to figure out whether they are the culprits or whether they are just tourists.

Now the cause of all the psychic odyssey is framed this way -
- government just keeps pressing the prot and other survivors to hunt for the chinese while only 2 of the characters actually undertake the expeditions while the others choose not to making the task almost impossible

- the government refuses to send any more supplies because 'their research' suggests that we are carriers and hence exposure to us = another pandemic. And they cannot make a vaccine because of lack of test subjects (because the virus massacred the attempted evac) and also because they have no proof to indict the chinese government and obtain the full information of the virus.

- It is implied that the government is planning a chemical attack (let's say, Sarin) to level the entire quarantine zone without damaging any structure because they are unsure if attempting to help a bunch of survivors is worth the time and money. For example, when the prot group somehow manage to travel around the city for supplies, there is a wide region where many zombies are already dead without any wounds.

- The government effectively shuts down telecommunications in the qzone right at the onset so nobody knows what the fuck is actually happening. The families of the survivors are threatened with espionage charges should they choose to open their mouth against the government's inaction.

- The survivors have several radio and just one satellite phone as sent in the original supply drop. That satellite phone is also deemed useless after a certain point when the government goes hard on the telecom blackout.


How's this?

 

[BurnedOut]

An interesting thing I can add about the chemical attack is that not only the zombies are dead but also crows and dogs and other animals who feast on these zombies

 

[Cognisant]

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[Cognisant]

Keep in mind cliches exist because they work and just because something's been done a million times doesn't mean it can't be done differently or even better.

I see young adult romantic apocalyptic/dystopia stories as something akin to isakai manga/games/anime/etc, in the latter there's typically a guy transported to another world and for whatever reason he is incredibly overpowered. In his travels he goes around being incredibly useful to everyone he meets and gathers a bevy of beautiful women, because of course he does. It is the most incredibly blatant pandering and it sells really well because it directly targets those things men like to fantasize about, being powerful, being in charge, being respected and appreciated, being surrounded by young attractive women who are practically begging for a man in their life.

Young adult romantic apocalyptic/dystopia stories are basically isakai for women, with society out of the equation the rebels/survivors/whatever band together to form a basic tribe and some hunky young men fight over the right course of action (immediate and/or long term) and the female protagonist plays mediator, which of course means these hunky and highly competent young men are now vying for her approval.

Naturally it's never quite as cut and dry as all that, every author puts their own spin on it and tries to disguises the pandering in various ways but it's still there, it's like the grease and salt in fast food you know it's bad for you but that's why it tastes good.

 

[BurnedOut]

@Cognisant Your point being?

 

[Cognisant]

I don't really understand what this story is about and if you say it's about zombies that's the problem, the very fact that such a concept can be communicated with a single word proves that's it's a cliche.

You can't tell a story about zombies because you're telling people about something they already know. Perhaps you could if your zombies were sufficiently different but so many people have tried that even the varients are cliche.

You can tell a story with zombies but then it has to be about something else and as Red says in her video a group of stressed survivors bickering isn't conducive to audience investment, there's got to be some light at the end of the tunnel, something to hope for.

Typically this would be the now infamous yet unfailingly popular YA novel romantic sub-plot.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

The zombies for some reason go out and look for a specific item to posses before turning around and eating brains as they normally do.

Everyone is aware of the concept of zombies ofc, but they aren't sure why they are for some reason attached to the item they seek until they aggressively turn on any human nearby.

Like, someone gets infected, they lose consciousness and die yes, but then they for example will look for a mug that looks similar to the one their grandmother had growing up or something. After that they go ballistic.

We can be 'deep' and make it so most people are looking for their phones or some shit, which is why most of them just pick up any smart phone and go ballistic trying to kill everyone around. There a plot component that is about the zombies, even if it had to do with their identity before they were zombies.

Like the last shred of their humanity that remains is some arbitrary object, and that object seldom is one that we would relate to humanity.

 

[Cognisant]

While that is certainly unique I think you'll struggle to get anything more than a short story out of it, I mean it's hard to imagine such zombies getting far in terms of world conquest, just push them into a room and barricade the door.