As I said a couple posts before, I was first ahead of the ball with a certain genre trend, and now that I've spent the better part of 10 years sitting on my duff coming up with reasons not to move forward with it, I've officially MISSED most of the lucrativeness of that genre trend. As you can probably figure out what trend that is (I'm not going to use the word, as that's part of my approach to the material, as I feel like throwing around the Z word at this point unfortunately garners some schlocky connotations and that's not what I want to associate myself with), you might say "hey, Clay, why even bother at this point? Why not pick a different genre?" Well the answer is, I thought about it, but in the end my story REQUIRED that genre. It wouldn't work without that certain ghastly element, and I feel that's something you should consider with any story you're trying to tell. If you're working in a genre, if you're trying to do more than just capitalize on certain trends, ask yourself what it is about that genre that you find appealing, and more importantly, why is it that your story requires that setting?
For example, there's a certain massively popular comic (and soon to be tv) series that has been praised as the "ultimate" example of its genre, and has become the standard by which all other products in said genre are judged against. However, I think all this praise is rather misplaced, as, quality of the actual storytelling aside, the genre which it has "mastered" and "revolutionized" is BARELY a backdrop and practically irrelevant to anything that's going on with the characters. You could take every event and character in that book, place it in any other "disaster" or genre situation, and have practically nothing change.
On the other hand, take Romero's original Dawn of the Dead. Back before he started getting literal with his themes and messages (has anyone seen the first remake of Night of the Living Dead? Is there anything worse than when the girl practically looks in the camera and says "they're us?"), he let the genre he chose (invented?) speak for him. Instead of just using them as a throwaway disaster scenario or an excuse for gore, he actually makes the walking undead work as satire. Look at the creatures independently of the humans moving the story along for a second. In his original Night of the Living Dead the creatures are intensely frightening, as they are this approaching, unknown force that assimilates everything in its path. In Dawn, however, he takes the same monster and skulks them mindlessly toward the consumer mecca of a shopping mall (which was a relatively new concept at the time). Though they're still there to eat people and cause chaos, their main purpose is to act as a commentary (ugh i hate that word, but anyway) on what Romero saw as a mindless generation of consumer-driven people who spend their all their time wandering aimlessly around shopping malls. That specific concept doesn't hold up if you switch in vampires, or werewolves, or Frankensteins, or Aliens, or pod-people, or anything other than what he chose.
In regards to Dead Meat I struggled for a while getting to a point where I felt that the genre in which I chose to work became crucial to my story. Initially it was just an excuse for massive, splatter-filled, escapist violence, but as my characters evolved into more than just gun wielding maniacs, the genre turned into something that was crucial to the story I wanted to tell. Its first incarnation saw my team of heroes wandering the landscape of the walking undead as a sort of Ghostbuster-esque team of hunters who were called in to take out any pesky ghouls who wouldn't stay dead. This concept, while fun, could exist in practically any genre situation--just the fact that I likened it to Ghostbusters in order to describe it shows that the genre isn't crucial to its existence. Its next incarnation was more of a Mad Max-y post apocalypse situation. Again, not essential. Then I added a girl and her younger brother as the central characters who encounter my group of guys in a Wizard of Oz-type manner. See the trend here?
Now I'm not saying any of these concepts are inherently bad, or even that I haven't held on to certain parts of them along the way, but it wasn't until I worked out the current incarnation of my story that I felt the genre finally became CRUCIAL to the story I wanted to tell.
What did I do to make it that way? That would be telling! You'll have to read Dead Meat to find out!
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