Life for the Living – original idea

I love zombie stuff! Every year or two, two of my sisters and I will marathon the Resident Evil films – they’re absurd, have no continuity, and don’t even make sense independently. It’s a glorious time. So I had a zombie idea gnawing at my brain for a while. However, it was originally much more traditional. Check out the post for my original ideas, original scenes, and the evolution of the zombies!

Zombies

Of course, the first thing that came to mind were the shambling zombies you see in old horror movies. Then came the other options: the modern zombie who can run and sprint or even the post-modern zombie who shows limited ability to think and plan.

In my head, the first planned scenes were just with the slow variety. As I started writing, they began to evolve. More on that later!

Planned scenes

So first, there were two scenes that I could ‘see’. The scuba scene and the elevator scene at the end. If you’ve read my blog, then you’ll know this is often how I’ll write. Vivid scenes pop into my head and I try to write towards them.

Really the only part that needed figuring out was how to organically fold these scenes into the book. The scuba scene was already the second major encounter and the elevator scene was the very end. So I couldn’t just throw them in – they needed setup for things to make sense.

Setting up the scuba scene was pretty easy. It’s the oldest trope in the apocalypse genre to have crazy survivors who throw the main characters into some sort of horrific game.

But setting up the elevator scene needed much more seeding. Why were they going to the elevator? How did all those zombies get there? That last part was tricky because my zombies didn’t just live forever. So they couldn’t chill out at the facility conveniently for my characters to face them. Fortunately, a little bit of brainstorming helped grease the wheels and I think I came up with something that actually makes sense!

Additional scenes

And there were other scenes in my head that didn’t make it into the book. One was Andre being trapped at the top of the radio tower while zombies swarmed them. He uses the noise to attract the zombies to him while the others get away. He’s able to escape, barely, but badly hurts his leg in the process.

You may notice that, while this scene was not written in, several of the key ideas were integrated into the book. The radio tower, Andre hurting his leg, and the theme of his self-sacrifice.

The change

So where did the change in zombies come from? It actually happened very organically. I always come up with some sort of rationale for the fictional elements of my book (rules for magic systems, physiology for superstrength, explanation of zombie virus). I wrote the virus as a form of active virus that worked away at living humans, but this meant that they would all be infected at all times. I realized that would add a lot of tension if there was an ever-present threat looming that they might turn at any moment. I also loved what it said about humanity. If someone just isolated from all other humans, they would never run the risk of dying by zombie. But both in my book and, I believe in reality, humans won’t do that. We’re too social.

Don’t even ask me how I knew humans die from drinking too much blood… No, but really, I think it came from reading about a Diablo II character. There’s an enemy called The Countess who was reputed to bathe in the blood of her enemies. I think she was inspired by someone who actually did do that, as well as drink their blood. If memory serves, the historical figure who inspired the character did die from drinking blood – because humans can’t handle the iron concentration.

This was very important because it meant that zombies didn’t persist indefinitely like in classic zombie books. In my book, they turned, killed someone, then died themselves. Or if they didn’t kill someone, they might die of other causes within a few days/weeks. This spawned the idea of frenzies for bursts of action.

More posts!

I’m looking forward to doing a series of posts on more of my original ideas for the book. There were several other scenes, a completely different plot line, and different character quirks for Andre and Kala. I also plan on detailing parts of my writing process with this book since it was written in a new style.