The Re-Emergence of the Post-Apocalyptic

A few weekends ago, my in-laws were in town. They brought us some lovely furniture that my father-in-law had made, and we visited a little. We talked about TV that we liked, and The Walking Dead came up. We talked about scary stories and how they have changed between their generation and ours.

While standard horror, action, and thriller stories are still wildly popular, both in literature and visual media, there has been a rising trend of post-apocalyptic stories. This article from io9 in 2009 catalogues the rise in the number of post-apocalyptic stories by the causes of the apocalypse. This article from SF Signal last year poses the question of the rising popularity of post-apocalyptic stories to a number of popular authors in the genre.

Why are these stories so popular? I'll offer my own reason. We know that our world is fragile. We anticipate a possible end with every news story that we see in our feed. A landslide. A hurricane. A shooter. A terrorist attack. A virus frozen in Antarctic ice. And we are afraid. We have mini brown-pants moments when we think about these things happening to us or those we love. And we want to know how to handle it. We want to know what to do. So we look to these stories for guidance or inspiration or bad examples to learn from. And we're lucky to have them.

Why do you think post-apocalyptic stories are popular? What are some of your favorites?

Comments

Non-Traditional Plot Structure

Happy Friday friends! This post is about plot: what we traditionally think of as plot, and what other options exist in the world. For starters, let's define the difference between plot and narrative structure. Plot is (loosely) the events that happen in the story. Narrative structure is the order readers experience the story events. Ingrid Sundberg does a good job of differentiating the two here . (May as well open that up in a new tab and leave it open, I'm going to be referencing her blog a lot today. She's pretty much already done what I wanted to do with this post. ) If your public education was like mine, you were probably introduced to a figure similar to this somewhere in your English classes: Fritz Freiheit This is the standard plot that we can fit most stories into. This describes a plot centered around conflict that follows a traditional three-act structure. It's very popular. In the Middle reviews a book ...

February Post

Give me a break, I hate coming up with titles. And the FCC spoke and said, 'Verily, I say unto thee, Verizon and their ilk shall not throttle the bandwidth of those they despise, nor shall they profit from the favoring of entities with greater bandwidth therein.' And there was great rejoicing. And by great rejoicing, I mean that the internet blew up arguing about what color a dress was. You go, America, exercise that freedom. Girls and boys, it's the last Friday in February and I haven't posted anything this month, so here goes. I'm so glad I didn't try to keep posting weekly, because school owns my life nowadays. I approve of the once-a-month plan so far. We'll see if I can do more posts during my summer break (i.e. the month of May). As you might have guessed, I have not done any editing on Om Nom Nombies. I haven't written anything more on the first drafts of The Neif or Spitfire. I haven't even made any progress beta-ing a manusc...

Before We Begin

Hello friends! This post is an argument for the prologue. I've read comments on writing forums from fellow writers that say they hate prologues. Orson Scott Card says he never reads prologues. If so many people take issue with prologues, why do they even exist? What purpose do they serve? Let's first look at why prologues are hated. 1) Prologues are info-dumps - Readers are picking up a book to read A STORY, not hear about all the worldbuilding the author has done. Any worldbuilding or history that is important to the story can be interspersed within the story. 2) Prologues are flashbacks - Ditto the worldbuilding comment above. 3) Prologues should just be re-named Chapter 1 - I can see this argument, but I think this should only be the case if main characters and storyline are introduced in the prologue. 4) Prologues are too long - Anything more than a couple pages feels like t...

Madeline Turnipseed - Author

Search This Blog