Using Current Events

The recent election was a lot of drama that I did my best to avoid; I voted my party, and I’m not dissatisfied with how things turned out, but that is immaterial to my point. We witnessed a piece of history, and a writer would be well advised to watch the events with an abstract eye. There was passion, drama, and personality aplenty in the events, and a good writer ought to have been taking notes, ready to change the names, file off the serial numbers, and draw upon the experience for their own writing.

From my point, I look at the campaign from a zombie writer point of view: what if the battle line between the parties was drawn on government-subsidy for an anti-cancer vaccine? You could tie immigration (more doses) and all the other issues of 2016 to the vaccine.

Naturally the vaccine creates zombies, but wouldn’t it make an interesting premise? Say the GOP represented the anti-vaccine-subsidy faction, so in the turbulent wake of the election Democrat protesters provide free vaccine at rallies. Or the Democrats won, and force the vaccine through testing too fast because they have to meet their core campaign promise.

The key to stealing from recent events, however, is to make sure that you really get the fingerprints off before you publish. I recently read part of an interesting zombie novel, but had to drop it because the author used it to attack Obama (not by name) throughout the book. While I am no supporter of Obama, the attacks were too transparent and distracted from the plot, so I abandoned the effort. Another zombie author used their novel as a medium to repeatedly broadcast their opinion on the importance of naturally-grown food over processed food. There is nothing wrong with a cheap shot or shout-out in your novel, but less is more in this case, in my opinion.

Unless you can turn it to your advantage: what if newly developed organic fertilizer creates the zombie virus? What if Whole Foods was really a long-term terror plot? Never waste an idea.

The world is full of news and history; use it to your advantage.