Tag: The Walking Dead

Writing Tips from #TheWalkingDead

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1. Everyone’s gotta suffer.

Suffering distills a character traits into their purest form. And nothing shows suffering better than The Walking Dead. We don’t get people, we get people in their rawest form. We get people whose leg is eaten by other people in front of his eyes.

TaintedMeat_500

If life didn’t suck and the world wasn’t glutted with all those eager, innard-munching zombies, Gareth might not ever eat Bob. Rick might not ever show his greatest kindness. Or greatest weakness. Or greatest courage. Or all three. (And sometimes all three at the same time.)

This suffering notion is probably something I should have picked up long ago when I read all that Greek drama in college. I remember my beloved professor repeating pretty much daily “we must suffer, suffer into truth.” Yet, somehow it never occurred to me that the reason freshmen were still reading about Agamemnon and Clytemnestra all those thousands of years later was because of the suffering as inextricably as the truth.

So give your character boils. And a limp. And let someone kick them or eat their limbs or whatever.

2. The more resonant the character, the more dramatic the swan song.

Hershel’s beheading. Andrea and Milton’s barber chair pas de duex. Lizzie and Mika’s twisted and senseless deaths. Beth’s blow-out. Think of anyone you’ve cared about on the show. Now think of the way that character ended their time on screen. There are almost always more bangs than whimpers. By his final curtain call, I was even bawling my eyes out over Merle (or to be more accurate, Daryl’s loss of Merle).

Big characters deserve a big death. It’s a mark of respect. Of course, since we’re not all writing about a zombie apocalypse, this big-for-big equation can translate into all kinds of big equivalents: big love, big failure, big discovery, big regret, big ball of string, big dream of becoming the best tutu seamstress on the east coast. Whatever.

3. Let the enemy surprise you.

Yeah, zombies are tricky b@*$tards who sometimes pop out of dark corners or rise from the mud in flash-flood areas. The point that has been made continually about this show, however, is that other humans, not zombies, are the real threat. So in some respects, the enemy itself is more nuanced than at first glance.

People aren’t just fighting zombies; they’re fighting humans. Beyond that, those human enemies can be downright surprising.

After seeing the Governor massacre his own townsfolk following his unsuccessful attack on the prison, for example, we find him wandering around like the grand poohbah of hopelessness. He has, to quote the poet Fred Chappell, let his life “grow bearded and strange.” When he then takes up with Lilly and Tara and little Meghan, it seems possible that the newly shaved “Brian” will go forth in the world as a transformed man, sharing SpaghettiOs and letting kids beat him at chess.

But lo and behold, no matter how he tries to avoid his worst self, a few episodes later, he–surprise!–amasses troops and goes all psycho Governor on the prison yard.

What can this teach us about writing?  First, our villains are much richer and more interesting when other, different lives seem entirely possible for them. Simultaneously (and contradictorily), there is a satisfaction of sorts in the reader’s understanding that a character inevitably fulfills his or her ultimate path.

Plucking the cord between those two opposites (the many paths/the single path) is one of the difficulties and joys of writing.

So let your protagonist’s enemy do something surprising. And then let them do what they were born to do.

4. Let the hero surprise you.

When Rick chomped into Joe’s jugular vein, I was, among other things, surprised! Like this guy:

(Perhaps this belongs under the “let your heroes learn from their enemies” column, because the neck-biting thing was a technique Rick must have picked up from some zombie along the way.)

How does that relate to writing? Again, it’s the cord thing. Some tension about where exactly your hero belongs on the moral spectrum isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There can be questionable acts which are justified, just as there can be the veneer of civility (aka Woodbury) over the most savage of hearts.

What situation that will allow your character to do something unforgivable–and still be understood and forgiven?

Go there.

5. When in doubt, “kill” someone.

In an “Ask Me Anything” interview on Reddit, Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman was questioned about his process for approaching a character’s death.

His response: “Sometimes it’s something I’ve planned and built to for many issues. Other times it’s just me thinking ‘it’s been a while since something really interesting happened’ and killing a character on the fly.”

Cold? You bet. Effective? That too.

Along the same lines, Kirkman had this to say in the same interview:

“In my opinion, I feel like characters ripen like fruit. So while I wouldn’t say the more popular a character is the more likely they are to die, they do have to reach a certain level of popularity before they’ve ‘earned’ the death.

No character is too popular to die. (Suck it, Reedus!)”

First, a message to Kirkman: No killing Daryl!

And while we’re at it, no killing Carl and no (though this may be the futile wailing of the Greek chorus here) killing Rick!

Now, on to the actual objective of this post: how does all this relate to writing?

Killing off characters has long been considered one of the cheapest tricks in a fiction writer’s bag. And of course, it doesn’t–and shouldn’t–make sense for every story we write to end littered with a Hamlet-esque pile of bodies. (Of course, the bodies in The Walking Dead tend to take care of themselves–either being reanimated or devoured–so no littering there.)

That said, there is freedom in the notion of “killing a character on the fly”–whether we’re talking literal or (better in most cases) some metaphorical type of death.

The take-away? Interesting things can happen when we let go of the idea that the characters we love in a story must prevail.

And those metaphorical deaths can take many interesting forms: the loss of their humanity; the separation from whatever matters to them; the death of their dreams.

So, now it’s your turn to tell me: What have YOU learned from The Walking Dead? About writing? About life? About the zombie apocalypse? Post it in the comments below!

~

ZombieMaryMary Crockett is coauthor with Madelyn Rosenberg of the zombie-less novel DREAM BOY. Sadly, she suspects she would be among the first to turn in a zombie apocalypse.

You can make her book happy by ordering at IndieBound, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. You can make her happy by saying “hi” on Twitter or Facebook.

(A version previously posted on The BookYArd.)

A Final Step Down the Cemetery Trail

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An enthusiastic EEEK! goes out to all you Halloweeny readers out there! There are many prizes to be had on this cemetery trail.

I’m so excited about being part of this tour. While my coauthored novel DREAM BOY has lots of humor, romance and suspense, there’s a good dash of horror in there too! (Yep, a comic horror story. Go figure.)

How does it work? Simple! Check out the ten Halloween-themed posts along the Cemetery Trail, take the quiz, and you could win TEN awesome prizes! Signed copies, a manuscript critique, a Skype author chat and more! All this could be yours, my lovely ghosties!

So, get reading! Here’s my interview with the fine folks at the Halloween Book Trail.

HBT: Do you believe in ghosts?

MC: Both my mother and brother saw a ghost—the same ghost in the same house, about 10 years apart. So I guess I have to believe in ghosts. Either that or call my dead mother a liar.

Maybe it’s a southern thing, but our ghost wasn’t particularly creepy. She’d play tricks sometimes (like turning all the paintings crooked when we went out on Halloween), but mostly she was just there—an invisible someone in the rocking chair, an altered air in the hallway, a kindly presence by my bed at night.

I think she loved children and worried about my sisters and brothers when we were little. Both of the times that she let herself be seen, it was to care for a lonely child.

After my parents brought their first baby home, my mother and father would take turns getting up in the night to bring the crying infant to bed. It was my father’s turn to get the baby, so when my mother, half-asleep, heard little Laura wailing across the room, she didn’t rouse herself. My father didn’t either, and the wails keep coming.

After a few minutes, my mother felt hands on her shoulders, shaking her awake. “Robin?” she mumbled, but when she opened her eyes, she saw not my father, but instead an old, gray-ish lady. Bolting upright, my mother said she went through the lady, who instantly disappeared.

“What did you do?” I remember asking her.

Her answer pretty much sums up my family’s laissez-faire attitude toward the supernatural: “I got up and took care of the baby, of course.”

The second sighting came about nine years later, when I was the baby. In my mother’s tellings, there are many complicated explanations for why she, my father, and five of their six children were in a van barrelling toward the nearby city while my three-year-old brother Edgar ended up left at the house alone. I will save you those details and cut right to the moment when, after realizing Edgar was absent and demanding my father turn the van around, she finally arrived home. I’ll finish the story in my mother’s own words:

I imagined every conceivable horror, but when we finally got back and I raced inside, I found Edgar quietly coloring a picture.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, yes,’ he told me, calm as you please.

‘But weren’t you scared?’

‘I was, but the Gray Lady came. She told me you’d come back.’

”What gray lady?’ I asked, looking around the room. ‘There’s no gray lady here.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she went away. She went away when you came back.’

HBT: If you were in a horror film, what number are you to die and how?

MC: I’d love to say I’d be the last one standing, but the truth is that I’d probably die somewhere around the middle.

I’m pretty sure I’d be preceded by the gorgeous young couple indulging in rambunctious sex, the non-believer, and the stoner.

That said, I’d almost certainly be followed by the woman who twists her ankle, the snappy one-liner, and the survivor’s best friend.

How? Nothing so exciting as an ax to the forehead. I’m thinking I’d trip and fall in a well.

HBT: If the zombie apocalypse happened (and it will), what would be your weapon of choice?

MC: As a mega-fan of The Walking Dead, I’ve considered this question a good bit. I think I’d go with a sword. It’s quiet, doesn’t require ammo, and you don’t necessarily have to have good aim to use it.

HBT: If Annabelle from DREAM BOY went trick or treating, what would she dress up as and why?

MC: Annabelle loves music, so she might go for something old-school like David Bowie or Gwen Stefani. Or she might do something with a twist—a zombie Taylor Swift. Maybe a cross between Lorde and Wonder Woman.

Now, one last stop before you take the quiz! Go check out what spooky tales Heather Marie, author of THE GATEWAY THROUGH WHICH THEY CAME, has to share!