Audi Walbridge
asked
M.R. Carey:
When you looked at all the zombie stuff that can be thrown into the mega text, what were some of the things you wanted to avoid in your book? Were there certain things you wanted to hit on by adding your own twist? Why do you think that it's been necessary to divide zombies into two stages? Just some questions my professor and two of my classmates talked about today and thought we'd throw your way! Audi Bowman
M.R. Carey
I think the challenge when you're writing in a well established sub-genre like this is that there are about a million things that have become part of the furniture. Every genre generates its own cliches, in other words. And if you use too many of the cliches then you're sort of imaginatively impoverishing your world. Encouraging the reader to go into default mode by going into it yourself! I did a few things to try to stop this from happening.
One relatively trivial thing was to avoid the actual word "zombie". Some readers have complained that if we ever did get a zombie plague in real life, there would be no way around it. It's just implausible to imagine that any other word would be used. But by saying "hungries" or "walkers" or "infected" or "meatbags" or whatever (all terms actually used in zombie novels), you put up a very slight conceptual barricade. You pull the reader away - well, maybe you do - from just letting their mind fill up with familiar iconography.
Much more importantly, I tried to make my zombies look and behave differently from zombies in other stories. Rather than either shambling or running, the hungries in GIRL have a stop mode and a go mode, which makes them less human and perhaps more insectile or reptilian in their mannerisms. It's only when we look at them through Melanie's eyes that we get the "there but for the grace of God go I" insight. She sees them as haunted houses.
Can you explain what you mean by the two stages?
One relatively trivial thing was to avoid the actual word "zombie". Some readers have complained that if we ever did get a zombie plague in real life, there would be no way around it. It's just implausible to imagine that any other word would be used. But by saying "hungries" or "walkers" or "infected" or "meatbags" or whatever (all terms actually used in zombie novels), you put up a very slight conceptual barricade. You pull the reader away - well, maybe you do - from just letting their mind fill up with familiar iconography.
Much more importantly, I tried to make my zombies look and behave differently from zombies in other stories. Rather than either shambling or running, the hungries in GIRL have a stop mode and a go mode, which makes them less human and perhaps more insectile or reptilian in their mannerisms. It's only when we look at them through Melanie's eyes that we get the "there but for the grace of God go I" insight. She sees them as haunted houses.
Can you explain what you mean by the two stages?
More Answered Questions
Susie
asked
M.R. Carey:
Hi, probably someone asked you this already, but I was just curious: why do you write your initials instead of Mike? I understand why a woman would need to do this, but why would a man? Is it because this book is different from your previous works and the publishers thought that would work against you?
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Dec 07, 2014 12:24PM · flag
Dec 07, 2014 03:00PM · flag
As mentioned I th ...more
Dec 11, 2014 12:58PM · flag