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I know everything is influenced by something else. I'm aware of this... however...
For the past two years, I've worked on a post-apocalypse storyline in a world ravaged by the undead (I don't use the z-word). This collection is a series of first-person narratives that I used to practice telling stories from that perspective. The stories are very militaristic and go into great detail about the logistical response to such a world-wide event, but at their heart, I believe them to be action-based stories about the undead.
Anyway, I just discovered "World War Z", and picked it up this past weekend. I had never heard about it before.
posted
Max Brooks does good zombie work. The zombie survival guide is quite good as well. And that feeling does blow. I go think of something great and someone else steals it retroactively.
Posts: 69 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
One thing is to tell the stories differently. If one is from a military point of view, like actual soldiers, One could be from the point of view of a civilian "drafted" into the military. If one is the over encompassing world at war, one can do a story from small sections. As I was typing that, I thought of where one must wave a weapon a certain way to prove you are alive. the undead cannot do that. The idea is to tell a story, even if it were a different emphasis, different than what is out there.
Of course, the only real problem is that with every successful book, is dozens of copy-cats sent to the publishers.
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Picking up on rstegman's line of thought, if the story has strong and motivated characters for the reader to follow, the millieu becomes a backdrop for the story and similarities to the backdrop of other stories diminishes in importance. The concept of people fighting zombie-like foes after the collapse of civilization is not all that fascinating anymore. But who they are, why they fight, how they fight, and what happens to them; can be. If those elements are all working, very few people will care that your "world situation" resembles another. Just think of how many stories have WWII as a backdrop, for example. If the emphasis is: "look at this cool world situation", then there might be a difficulty.
Posts: 612 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Finish your book, and get it out there. It'll be perfect timing to say "in the vein of World War Z...my novel tells the tale of a military genius tackling the problems presented when the undead begin to awaken and take over the world."
You're golden! It's a perfect time to tell zombie stories, IMHO. They're not yet overdone (like the vampire sub-genre which is a little heavy right now.)
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I gather Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Since few things cheese me off like finding out somebody who got a book published is the "son of" somebody famous, this is likely why I didn't buy it or read it.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Added thought: I think World War Z has been out for a couple of years...let me check...well, the paperback came out in 2007, so the hardcover was probably 2006...also his The Zombie Survival Guide came out in 2003...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I had heard of the survival guide, but not 'Z' up until recently. I did not know he was the son of so-and-so. Still, despite that, he's not a bad author, he's just very slow at times... at least in 'Z'.
Posts: 487 | Registered: Mar 2008
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