forum suggestions for writing a post apocalypse story that is scary and full of danger, but that doesn't feel hopeless

Started June 30, 2020 by walter

tune

suggestions for writing a post-apocalypse story that is scary and full of danger, but that doesn't feel hopeless

What kind of apocalypse is it? For that the answer will vary. What you need broadly is either the hopes to repair some of the damage done (ex: hopes for a virus cure, way to defeat the aliens, etc), hopes for a truly safe refuge (a "safe" underground colony, a group that is free of the virus and has good testing, etc), or perhaps you could still have a very bleak backdrop, but have the power of camaraderie and friendship be something of a light even though everything sucks.

All good suggestions, and I'd like to add that sometimes a powerful and hopeful message can be "Maybe it was time for a change anyway." My dystopian story is set after a war and the collapse of the country's entire infrastructure, but people carry on living, just in simpler and more peaceful ways. Nature starts to heal, now that the airports and factories and cities are gone. People learn to hunt and fish and garden again. Small, tight-knit communities form, and families tend to stick together instead of splitting up as soon as the kids grow up. Everyone starts to slowly connect with the earth and each other again. Things can never go back to the way they were, but maybe this is better, in a way. Yes, there is more death and hardship, but those are parts of life, and we were only twisting the natural order of things by pushing them away.

On an entirely different tack, you could write the story from the perspective of a kid who never knew anything else. Kids are great at rolling with the punches and seeing the bright side of things.

The circumstances of the apocalypse are 1. most animal life has mutated into more monstrous versions of themselves. 2. complex society has fallen apart so people are mostly just sticking with who they can find or people they knew pre-apocalypse. 3. most tech is run down, but wouldn't be easy to repair, it just hasn't been kept. I don't know if this helps with critique but I thought it couldn't hurt.

So the generation alive still remembers life before the apocalypse? One way to have it feel less hopeless might be to have small goals that the characters are aiming for that make them happy. A character who planted a peach tree and is trying to make sure it survives because they really want to each peaches again. A character who misses playing guitar, so everywhere they go they try replacing their broken guitar strings with different materials. Stuff like that.

So the generation alive still remembers life before the apocalypse? One way to have it feel less hopeless might be to have small goals that the characters are aiming for that make them happy. A character who planted a peach tree and is trying to make sure it survives because they really want to each peaches again. A character who misses playing guitar, so everywhere they go they try replacing their broken guitar strings with different materials. Stuff like that.

I like this kind of stuff in dystopian stories ^^^^

Revolution was/is my favorite post-apocalyptic TV show.

honestly, the best way to show hope for the future (in my opinion) is to show groups of people (especially those who would never be around each other in the first place) banding together to keep everyone safe and healthy, which it seems like you already have. Maybe have rumors of a safe, unaffected area that people make a kind of pilgrimage to (kind of like the oasis from fallout 3 if anyone knows about that).

Maybe have rumors of a safe, unaffected area that people make a kind of pilgrimage to (kind of like the oasis from fallout 3 if anyone knows about that).

I'm not saying not to do it, but there is a cliché (especially in post-apocalyptic television shows) that make the aforementioned "safe place" unsafe. You could have some of them safe, and others not.