Serious consideration:
What do zombies represent in the American consciousness, the zeitgeist, the deeper meaning?
I've done a little reading considering zombies. I'm talking the George Romero-Night of the Living Dead zombies, not those wimps from the Caribbean and Central and South America in The Serpent and the Rainbow. Werewolves represent the onset of adolescence, vampires represent awakening sexuality, so what about zombies? To me, they represent the transition from adolescence into adulthood. We go from being lively, curious, and emotional to a dead, grasping, emotionless, decaying state. I addressed this matter to a PhD friend of mine, and she pointed out that zombies want to eat living brains in much the same way the current educational system wants to transform children into "productive members of society."
Not so serious consideration:
If zombies eat, do they also poop?
Okay, so I've been thinking way too much about how zombies could really function. So much so that I have to occasionally step back and remind myself that animated corpses are impossible. I've read quite a bit about possible causes of a zombie apocalypse, and I've formulated several ways I could justify their existence in a work of fiction. But the simple fact of the matter is that it just doesn't matter. Too many people overexplain causes. I've determined that the majority of people don't care about the how or the why, they just want the what next? That's not to say I don't address it in my novel. But it really isn't important. I guess I'm a story teller, more interested in thrusting people into difficult circumstances and seeing how they deal with it rather than dwelling on the scenery and vehicle for the action. See also this: Do zombies poop?
Serious consideration:
By the time I finish this novel, will zombies be passe?
There is a chance that could happen. Recently, we've gone into and out of the vampire craze, and are well into the zombie craze. I looked at direct-to-Kindle published books on zombies. There's only, like, 700 of them. Of those I sampled, some were awful, and some were quite good. There was everything from historical zombies to romantic zombie stories to adventure and horror. But I'm not writing just to be riding the wave. I think I have something to say. I think I'm writing a good book that happens to take place in a zombie apocalypse.
Not so serious consideration:
Why don't characters in zombie novels and movies know that they are facing zombies?
My wife asked me this question the other night. We've watched The Walking Dead, Zombieland, and she is currently reading David Moody's Autumn series. I like Robert Kirkman's (creator of the graphic novel upon which the television series The Walking Dead is based) response to this question: The novel/series takes place in an alternate world where George Romero never made Night of the Living Dead . From a writer's point of view, this almost has to be the case. Post apocalyptic novels have been written, certainly many inspired by the Cold War. But a scenario in which the dead rise and walk? We all think about how we would deal with it. Many of us know the "rules" and survival techniques. But what fun would it be to write that? Actually, it might be fun to write that, and have the biggest zombie survival experts fail miserably, while the bumblers survive and thrive. Oh, wait. That's been done in Shaun of the Dead.
Serious consideration:
How much can I change the "rules" and still appeal to zombie apocalypse fans?
Things we know about zombies:
They eat people (sometimes specifically brains).
They can only be stopped by destroying their brains.
In large groups they are unstoppable.
They move slow.
And of course, all these rules have been broken at one time or another by one author or another. So I think I can change the rules quite a bit and still have a zombie novel. My apocalypse, my rules. The only thing I have to have is dead people who refuse to go gentle into that good night.
Not so serious consideration:
Why I must never use the word "zombie" in my zombie apocalypse novel.
'Cause it's low rent. That word is not used in any zombie novel of substance I've come across. "Zombie" is a term applied by fans to all the creature-driven works of fiction inspired by Romero who was in turn inspired by Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, written in 1954, well before the more recent Will Smith debacle which butchered the key idea behind the novel, which was that we never really know who the monsters are, especially when they are us. Zombie is a cheap term for a complex representation of human hopes, fears, and nightmares. But everybody knows what you are talking about when you use it, so go on ahead.
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