How Zombies Changed the World (or at Least, as I See It)

A Creation Story of Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator.

In the Beginning, there were…

ZOMBIES!

Well, no, that's not quite how it worked.  True, I knew I had to make a world with zombies for Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, but  before I could bring in zombies, I needed a world to bring them into.  When I worldbuild, I try to look at all angles, from the geography to the vegetation, the habits and cultures of its inhabitants, and how it all fits into the story.

Fortunately, Neeta Lyffe was unique to me in that it takes place in our world--Los Angeles--just a couple of decades in the future.  So Hollywood (or Hollyweird, as some of my friends called it) happenings, American culture and politics, and international events and history became my template.

Now, enter the zombies.

That, of course, was where the fun began:  how would the emergence of zombies affect the world?  Being optimistic about the future in general, I didn't want an apocalypse.  I think we're too smart a race for that kind of runaway contagion.  We'd get smart on zombie combat and prevention, fast. However, being somewhat cynical about human nature when taken en masse, there was a lot of fun to be had in twisting our practices and beliefs in reaction to the rising undead.  So I plucked some things from my own experience, and applied them to zombies.

Voter fraud:  Now they really can have the dead vote!

Government regulation:  The federal government does a great thing by mandating that all dead must have their spine severed before burial, which has cut down the emerging zombie population greatly.  However, LA refuses to put money into tearing down a known zombie hot-spot because it's too much trouble and the zombies aren't doing anything at the moment, anyway.

Conspiracy theorists:  One expert blames the H1N1 vaccine for causing the pandemic, and the government and pharmaceutical companies are covering it up.  (You can read about it in his book.)

Radical Environmentalism:  Global warming causes zombie-ism!

Blatant commercialism:  "Ms. Lyffe, we want you to be the spokeswoman for our newest line of health drinks--Longevitize."  (The photo the lawyer shows her is of her standing knee-deep in zombies and holding a can in her hand. Caption: After the re-kill, Longevitize.)

International wars:  Iran invades Afghanistan, and the dead Afghan freedom fighters come back to attack them.

And of course, the main idea of the story, Reality TV:  Neeta Lyffe trains up apprentice exterminators in Zombie Death Extreme.  The contestants have a shot at winning a million dollars--if they survive.

Worldbuilding is a lot of fun, and sometimes, it doesn't take a lot to create a new and believable world.  Sometimes, all you need to do is toss in a zombie.

Building the World of Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator

I'm taking June off to go to Virginia and Disneyworld with the family before Rob deploys, so I'm rerunning some of writing posts I wrote for other blogs.

 

In the Beginning, there were…

ZOMBIES!

Well, no, that's not quite how it worked.  True, I knew I had to make a world with zombies for Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, but  before I could bring in zombies, I needed a world to bring them into.  When I worldbuild, I try to look at all angles, from the geography to the vegetation, the habits and cultures of its inhabitants, and how it all fits into the story.

Fortunately, Neeta Lyffe was unique to me in that it takes place in our world--Los Angeles--just a couple of decades in the future.  So Hollywood (or Hollyweird, as some of my friends called it) happenings, American culture and politics, and international events and history became my template.

Now, enter the zombies.

That, of course, was where the fun began:  how would the emergence of zombies affect the world?  Being optimistic about the future in general, I didn't want an apocalypse.  I think we're too smart a race for that kind of runaway contagion.  We'd get smart on zombie combat and prevention, fast.  However, being somewhat cynical about human nature when taken en masse, there was a lot of fun to be had in twisting our practices and beliefs in reaction to the rising undead.  So I plucked some things from my own experience, and applied them to zombies.

Voter fraud:  Now they really can have the dead vote!

Government regulation:  The federal government does a great thing by mandating that all dead must have their spine severed before burial, which has cut down the emerging zombie population greatly.  However, LA refuses to put money into tearing down a known zombie hot-spot because it's too much trouble and the zombies aren't doing anything at the moment, anyway.

Conspiracy theorists:  One expert blames the H1N1 vaccine for causing the pandemic, and the government and pharmaceutical companies are covering it up.  (You can read about it in his book.)

Radical Environmentalism:  Global warming causes zombie-ism!

Blatant commercialism:  "Ms. Lyffe, we want you to be the spokeswoman for our newest line of health drinks--Longevitize."  (The photo the lawyer shows her is of her standing knee-deep in zombies and holding a can in her hand. Caption: After the re-kill, Longevitize.)

International wars:  Iran invades Afghanistan, and the dead afghan freedom fighters come back to attack them.

And of course, the main idea of the story, Reality TV:  Neeta Lyffe trains up apprentice exterminators in Zombie Death Extreme.  The contestants have a shot at winning a million dollars--if they survive.

The process itself is pretty intuitive to me.  It's just a matter of asking "What if?" and coming to what I think might be a logical (or sometimes, just comical) conclusion.  When intuition fails, you can look at similar examples in our history, or draw parallels from mythology or even other stories (but don't just copy--make it your world's.)  These ideas work the same whether dealing with a nearly real world, like in Neeta Lyffe, or a completely imaginary one.

Worldbuilding is a lot of fun, and sometimes, it doesn't take a lot to create a new and believable world.  Sometimes, all you need to do is toss in a zombie.

Want to learn worldbuilding?

People who read my blog know how bizarre my imagination gets, and how detailed and wild I can get in my worldbuilding. Even though I'm more of an intuitive, seat-of-the-pants kind of writer, I have broken down worldbuilding into several steps and I'm teaching them at savvyauthors.com September 5-October 3. I really stretched this class out so that folks had a lot of time to think, research, etc. However, you can go at your own pace, do don't let the length intimdate you. I have taught this in week-long conferences. However, you are going to get up to four weeks of my attention for only $25 ($25 for Savvy Author members.)

Get more information here: http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/showevent.php?eventid=1001

Worldbuilding and the Post-Apocolyptic story

I'm on vacation this week, so here are some thoughts on worldbuilding. BTW, there's still time to sign up for my worldbuilding class: http://www.karinafabian.com/index.php?name=Content&pid=24

Every now and then in a worldbuilding class, or when people talk about their sci-fi, you'll hear a story that postulates a "mad Max" world. There's been a nuclear war (or some environmental catastrophe) and the entire world has degenerated to a pre-industrial state with horribly mutated humans and people again having to relearn technology...

I tend to cringe at these stories from a worldbuilding point of view, because I don't think the logic fits. Yesterday, Rob (my sweet husband) sent me some photos that show exactly why:

Hiroshima 64 years ago, when we dropped the bomb:




Hiroshima today:




Genetic mutations from radiation? Here are two articles from a 3-minute Google search:

More apparent in Chernobyl than Hiroshima (see last couple of paragraphs at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/461921.stm)

Here's a nice in-depth look at the effects of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What I got from it was that the effect was devastating for those exposed to the radiation of the blast and fallout--including the unborn. However, later generations were not affected.

The human race bounces back--technologically and biologically. "Blast them into the Stone Age" really is just a saying, IMHO.

My point here isn't to dis someone's story--Mad Max can be fun--but if you're writing a post-apocolyptic world that you want people to believe in, you're going to need to do some serious research and some real thinking about what it would take to knock us so low.

Character- and world- building interdependent

When it comes down to it, I'm more of a character writer than an idea, plot, or world writer; however, in a world like my DragonEye, PI, world, the two are very interdependent. The characters build the world, yet the world defines the characters, and the plot and ideas tell me what characters need to make an appearance.

For example, in Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, I needed someone to do some discreet searching--and if they could botch the job in a funny way, all the better. We all know the legend of the brownies--the Shoemaker and the Elves, the brownies who are supposed to clean your house for milk, there are plenty of legends, stories, even filk songs. I decided it'd be fun to have the brownies search and, as long as they were in the area, do what comes natural and clean, fix and finish things. Sometimes, that's a big help; sometimes, it's an annoyance, like when they re-arrange things to their logic, not yours. (Kind of like when your mother offers to do your dishes and puts things away according to where she'd put them.) Sometimes, it's a pain, like when they finish your crossword puzzle book. Sometimes, as artiste Melchoir Rawlings discovered, they decide for you your work isn't finished. ("My art! My beautiful art. Oh, it's too much to process! Deep breaths, deep breaths!")

So now I have good-intentioned, havoc-wrecking, independent-minded brownies loose with people who'd love to capture, hire or exterminate them. I have to keep them safe!

Here's where the worldbuilding comes in. I started with an idea I got from someone's terrific effort of explaining Santa Claus's Christmas deliveries: Santa operates in a state of quantum flux that allows him to be in constant motion. The reason you can't see him on Christmas Eve, is the idea that you can either know his position or his motion; so, if you see him, you know where he is; he can no longer be in motion and the whole quantum flux things ends with you getting coal in your stocking.
That's a pretty bad explanation of something I read several years ago, but it was enough to apply to the brownies: They operate in our dimension in a state of flux, so you can only know the things they've done. You can't observe what they are doing directly. Further, if you know you are seeing a brownie in action, that belief plays into it, too. Based on that, I set up the rules of the brownie world.

And then the story demanded that I find a way around them. So I decided to play heavily on the uncertainty principle and the idea that you can observe the effects as long as you don't observe them. And I came up with Schrödinger the Cat purse. Shro' is a play off a Japanese legend that the souls of cats can come back as other things--in this case, a purse that a Mundane Japanese woman purchased of the Interdimensional Internet. Which meant hammering out the idea of Interdimensional trade (the details of which are still fuzzy, mind you), plus the whole InterDimNet, which brings up some fun in the next novel...

So, plot breeds character, character breeds world, world influences plot, while at the same time develops the characters.

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind!

BTW, I've posted the chat transcripts for last night's worldbuilding seminar and the launch party at www.fabianspace.com. Check out the news section on the homepage for the links.

Designing the Imprefect Dragon's Lair

One thing I'm not, is a good visualizer. I can envision limited glimpses of a place in my mind, but things like an overall floor plan tend to baffle me. For this reason, I've thus far cheated on my descriptions of the home of my dragon detective, Vern.

I have a vision of a run-down, built-for-function-not-beauty warehouse with a six-foot chain-link fence around it. There's a fenced dog run near the double-gate, lousy grass (dragons aren't gardeners), and cracked pavement leading to the warehouse.

From there, I draw a blank as far as the overall scheme. I've had a vision of a large long echoing walk to where Vern resides, an incredible crowding of boxes and junk, a second floor with a small room for Grace, an isolated workshop, and a small office in the front area with a closet and a window facing the yard. And a kitchen needed to be there somewhere.

Some days, it embarrasses me that I teach worldbuilding at conventions. Those who can't, teach, right?

Well, moving to Minot has been wonderful for building Vern's world. Small town, railroad, not particularly glamorous and not interested in being so, It's just like pre-gap Los Lagos. And there are warehouses everywhere! Big, little, steel, brick, curved roofed like an aircraft hangar--you name it, you'll find it in Minot.
Could I find Vern's home?

For months, I've been daydreaming as I drive. That one's too new; that one's too big; that one's too filmsy. Where was my dream lair?

Last Monday, I found it in the Minot Restaurant Supply Store on Burbank. When I walked in and told the owner I was an author, he immediately asked if I needed a portly, almost 60 man with a balding head. I promised to write him in, but either way, he was only too glad to take me around his warehouse, answer my questions, tell me its history and let me make sketches.

Built in the 1950s as a toilet manufacturing warehouse, the front half is whitewashed stucco; the back half, old brick. Inside, the store proper is about a 20 x 40 (guessing here) area with two small offices made with 70s paneling and 2 x 4s behind a long counter. The merchandise--and they had some cooooool stuff--was all on metal shelves or on the wall. A large set of wooden double-doors led to the warehouse in the back.

There are actually two warehouses: heated and cold. The heated one was full of metal shelves holding a variety of stuff, but what drew my attention was the second level--again done with paneling and 2 x 4s; sturdy but cheap and just what I wanted. The bathrooms were just inside the doors, Men and Women, and looked like they'd been tossed up sometime after the original construction. The cold room was similar, just...well, colder.

The ceiling was corrugated steel braces with railings that hung down about 2 feet. The ceiling itself is only 14 feet, and he said many a young worker has smacked his head while working on the upper level.

I loved it. It's not quite perfect for Vern's house, because my piecemeal vision has led to several stories mentioning things that Minot Restaurant Supply's building doesn’t have, but the overall feel was just what I wanted.

Want to know what I ended up with? Read it from Vern's side, or check out this blog Thursday.