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Posted

Hello all! How goes it? Anyways I'll cut right to it. I'm writing a series of books set in the beginning stages of a zombie apocalypse and I was thinking of trying to work some more of my political ideas into the story (volunteerism, universally acceptable behavior, etc) though I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. I mean I'd like to try to go about it with a little bit of subtlety unlike say...every zombie movie that George Romero did after the original Night of the Living Dead (he practically beats you over the head with whatever clever bit of social commentary he's trying to make).      For the record the part where I'm stuck right now has my characters (US Air Force and Marine Corps reservists, National Guardsmen and a couple civilians) living at a fortified airport that has been turned into a 'Refugee Resettlement Center' by some FEMA bureaucrats and private military contractors. The PMCs are...not exactly the nicest guys on the planet and the bureaucrats are generally somewhat less than competent (for instance the chief FEMA guys confiscated all the weapons from the people living at the airport when they got there and so on).So...I'm open to suggestions here. Thanks for any advice!  :thanks:

Posted

I was thinking of trying to work some more of my political ideas into the story (volunteerism, universally acceptable behavior, etc) though I wasn't quite sure how to go about it.

So I am going to be somewhat annoying, but I hope that you understand what I am trying to do.

 

To start with, if you want to add a component into your story, you should do a ton of research on the topic and what it means. I know that this hasn't been done because you called it volunteerism (the use or involvement of volunteer labor in community services) and not voluntarism (or some call voluntaryism which is the philosophy based on non-violence that is extended especially into the political realm). In a similar note, you called it Universally Acceptable Behavior when it is actually Universally Preferable Behavior.

 

Thus, the first step toward adding these components into your stories is to understand the concepts thoroughly enough to talk about them in a fiction environment and would allow you to get the terms and ideas correct. UPB is a free book that is available here. You can read the .pdf or listen to the audio for free. If you want to take notes and really get into the book, you can obviously order a print book if you want which is very close to the price of printing. Finally, if you get stuck somewhere, there are many people on these boards who can help explain ideas.

 

I think once you understand the concepts then putting your characters in blatant situations where they are faced with breaks in universality that are made obvious to them will become apparent to you and then there can be a lot of character development involved in how they resolve that contradiction.

 

Let me know what you think and if I was helpful at all.

Posted

Yes, I understand what you're trying to do, Wesley. I put up the post at like 2:30 in the morning and made a slight error in what I was trying to say so thanks for the correction. I have a pretty good handle on the concepts but I'm always up for learning more because learning is freakin' awesome so thanks for the link.

My characters have run into some pretty blatant violations of Universality already (even before the outbreak as two of them are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts). They've generally tried to do the right things however they've basically been put in a situation where there really aren't any good options only less bad I guess you could say.And as far as the spot where I'm stuck right now: there's really two ways I could go with it. Either the characters rally their fellow...residents? Prisoners?...against the FEMA guys and throw them out of the camp. Or my characters just basically go 'Nuts to this! I'm out! I know we've got food, shelter and medical care but screw this! I'm done!'

I'm not quite sure where I'd like to go with it.

Posted

I don't completely understand your story, however what I would do is point out a contradiction. Children are a great way to do this as they have no regard for culture and can point out things like this. So at some point when they were on tour, they did a similar thing to the native peoples or something. Now it is directly happening to him. Or he sees someone get killed and gets pissed as to how bad that is, but then someone points out that he did the exact same thing.

 

Things like that where people realize that things they worship as moral goods and things they despise as abhorrent evils are the same thing. It can throw someone's world upside down. A character being presented with situations like this that he knows are bad, and having done them when he thought they were good but now he is made aware of the contradiction in some way.

Posted

Basically in my books so far there's these rumors and odd stories kicking around the news about this new strain of Meningitis or something making the rounds. The story follows this Air Force Reservist who just returned from a deployment to Iraq. She's as she puts it 'trying to act like a normal person' when she gets a call from her chain of command to get to get to the airfield right away. The first book mainly deals with her first trying to contain this virus then just trying to get these people she kinda takes responsibility for out of the city of Boston alive. The second one is...mainly the characters that survived the first book catching their breath and hiding out with the Air Force Reservist's family.The third one (that I'm currently working on now) is where I was planning on having society kind of starting to rebuild itself somewhat. I was hoping to find some suggestions as to work a more stateless society eventually winning out over an increasingly heavy handed stateist model into the story hopefully without bludgeoning the reader between the eyes with how much better I'd think it would be...you know...too much...

Posted

I should mention that today is the last day of the offer thing that Amazon will let me run. You can get my first book, Outbreak: Boston, either by searching for it on Amazon or following the link in my signature. Enjoy and all I ask if you have a free moment then take a minute and write a review on the book's Amazon page.  :thanks: 

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