Zombies
Zombies have overrun the world. The remaining survivors are desperate to evade the undead. No one is safe, and they better keep checking each other for bites. Does this sound familiar? You might have read this premise in a zombie novel, or seen it in a zombie movie or TV series. Perhaps you’ve even played it in a zombie game. The zombie genre is as relevant today as it was when George A. Romero first gave us Night of the Living Dead.
Creating a great zombie story needs three key ingredients. The first one is probably the one most people are familiar with;
Unique zombies
When you plan your story, consider how to make your zombies unique. You don’t need to tie yourself in knots trying to create a wild origin story unless it’s integral to your plot. Your zombies should have strengths and weaknesses that make them stand out from the crowd. Creating distinct zombies means thinking about how your zombies are not just mindless hordes of slow-moving corpses. In Plague of the Dead by Z. A. Recht, some zombies mutate into sprinters that are intelligent hunters. Just when the survivors think they have got the zombies figured out, they surprise them with their evolution.
Your zombies need to be a genuine threat to your characters’ chance of survival, so their strengths should outweigh their weaknesses. Just being hard to kill isn’t enough, and their lack of intelligence shouldn’t give your characters too much of an advantage. In 28 Days later the zombies are fast, aggressive, strong, and can infect another person within seconds, plus, they move in packs. However, they need to sleep and gradually grow weaker from lack of food and water. The survivors have to struggle and fight to stay alive.
Setting
Like most apocalypse stories, the world changes fast and dramatically. Societies crumble and rules and regulations get thrown out the window. Usually, there is very little infrastructure remaining and survivors can’t rely on governments or armed forces to protect them. Cities become deathtraps, that force people to seek refuge in more rural areas. Consider the following for your setting:
- Where do your survivors live?
- How do they keep safe?
- What kind of infrastructure remains?
- How do they travel?
- Is there a rule of law?
You may decide to create surviving pockets of society such as the one in The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, where small communities survive the zombie threat by living in walled areas. You can use any communities to create conflict either from within or by having them compete with other communities for a dwindling supply of resources.
And you don’t need to keep everything focused on one place. Unfortunately, there isn’t always safety in numbers. In a zombie apocalypse, it usually means once the walls are breached, things go downhill pretty quickly. This gives you an opportunity to get your characters moving again.
Conflict
Just like any other story, your characters need a goal and conflict that stops them from attaining it. In many zombie stories, the search for a cure is the goal because this is the way to return things to normal. Other goals might be to find family members or to reach an area of safety.
Use conflict throughout your story to stop your characters’ progress. You can have a human antagonist like Negan in The Walking Dead, or just the zombie apocalypse itself. If you decide to let your survivors reach safety, you can add another type of conflict by having them fight to defend it.
Although some zombie novel writers prefer to focus on human relationships, this shouldn’t be the only focus. Your zombies should be the biggest threat to your characters’ survival, not just in-house squabbling. Make sure your characters frequently encounter the zombies as obstacles to their goals. Don’t have them as just a distant threat that your characters talk about rather than face. Remember, your zombies are the reason the world fell apart.
Final thoughts
People love zombie apocalypse stories because they offer hope when things look hopeless. A cast of characters face off against an inhuman and unstoppable enemy. But, somehow, they find a way to survive. Whether you choose to have fast zombies with super strength, or slow shuffling zombies that overwhelm you by sheer numbers, you can use them to create a backdrop for your characters to shine.
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