Fiction in the Time of Plague
By Dave King | August 18, 2020 |
Six months into the worst pandemic in a century, we’ve passed five million cases with more than 170,000 dead, more than 30 million out of work, and the economy collapsing faster than it did during the great depression. Our politics have grown even more divisive, making it harder for us to act together. The world is changing around us in ways that we can’t possibly understand because we’re right in the middle of it.
So let’s talk about how this affects your current work in progress. That is, assuming you’re actually working on your novel instead of binge watching or binge baking or binge eating or binge drinking or crying quietly into your pillow every night. Or all of the above.
Of course, if you’re just starting out on a new manuscript, the virus offers all sorts of opportunities for drama. Covid is the ultimate A Stranger Comes to Town, upending peoples’ lives, putting them under strain, and revealing their true character – think Shane in virus form. But there’s something you’ve got to watch out for if you do decide to work Covid into your story — we still don’t know how the pandemic is going to end. Stuff could easily happen in coming months that will eclipse anything you might use as a background now, leaving your story feeling dated before it’s even finished.
Probably the best solution is to keep the disease as far in the background as possible and focus your story on how it affects your characters. I’ve written before about how to create tension when your story takes place against a background where readers know what’s coming – if your characters are passengers aboard the Titanic, for instance. You can use a lot of the same techniques when you don’t know what’s coming but your readers will by the time they see your story.
Mrs. Miniver started out as a newspaper column and then a book about everyday life in the country, which grew darker as the war approached. But most of us are more familiar with the movie. It was released in 1942 but was set earlier, at the height of the battle of Britain, when the outcome was anybody’s guess and the United States hadn’t yet joined the war effort. The story is still gripping today because the focus is entirely on how the war transformed Mrs. Miniver and her one small corner of Britain, where the big excitement used to be the annual flower show. Mr. Miniver takes the family pleasure boat to Dunkirk. Mrs. Miniver is threatened by a downed German pilot. Kay is killed in a raid. The suffering is set against a historic backdrop, but it is all very personal.
If you want to incorporate the pandemic into your storyline, don’t try to keep up with the changing news. Simply pick your moment in time, preferably a recognizable moment (the months when Britain was standing alone against the Nazis had a particular flavor that’s still recognizable even today). Then keep your story focused on how events affect your characters rather than the events themselves. This will let you tell a timeless story even if it’s set in a very specific time.
But what do you do if you’re attracted to or have already started a story that you can’t shoehorn into the pandemic, or vice versa? The best solution may simply be to just write your story as if the pandemic never happened. Yes, the world around us is changing, but people are still enjoying books that were written before the change started, and if your story is published during or just after it, I think readers are willing to cut you some slack.
In fact, I’d argue that, right now, people need to hear stories about everyday life before the virus hit. If you’ve been indoors for the last six months, hearing about people gathering in large groups without masks, sending children off to school without worry, or going to a restaurant or theater can provide a needed escape. If you can pull people out of the moment, even for a little while, you will find a large, ready-made audience.
During an earlier plague, one writer imagined ten friends escaping to the country and telling one another stories to pass the time until the plague blew over – we’ve known about self-quarantining and sheltering in place for a while. The stories they told were cheerful, mostly comic, and often NSFW. Even the tragic stories involved ordinary disasters like lost love rather than the devastation of lost lives. They were the perfect escape stories for hard times. Boccaccio’s Decameron was one of the most popular books written in a day when all books were still handwritten. Martin Luther retold some of the stories, as did Shakespeare and Tennyson. And, at the moment, Boccaccio’s popularity is growing as more people look to escape a plague by reading how others escaped the plague seven centuries ago.
If you’re tired of bingeing The Gilmore Girls or Breaking Bad and you want to escape not only the plague but the century, pick up a copy of Boccaccio. The stories are ribald good fun. And don’t be afraid to pick up your own pen and create the stories that will give other pandemic-oppressed readers the escape they need.
So how are you surviving the pandemic as a writer? Are you still working on a project? How are you handling the pandemic as a background?
[coffee]
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
It’s taken five years to reach the point where I’m writing book 3 of a time-slip adventure trilogy for middle-grade that continues through the time portals of Bede Hall – a sentient stately home built atop the successive ruins of prehistoric Britain.
It was surprising to discover the story premise that began with an ongoing curse with the ‘Furies’ in Pangea, naturally evolved to a colony of royal cats in ancient Egypt, the origin of the face on Mars, and eventually paralleled the present pandemic.
The series itself is based on the elemental god, PAN (the Green Man), and a blight on the present landscape in a mystical corner of Northumbria near Hadrian’s Wall, that threatens human existence. Who knew.
Your series sounds like my cup of tea!!
It sounds like you have inadvertently positioned yourself in the perfect place to take advantage of the pandemic. And if you can incorporate the real disaster into your fiction, you can help readers suspend disbelief about the rest of the story.
Go for it.
Hi Dave! As a reader, I would not want to read about the pandemic now, and probably also not in the very near future. It is all around us every day, I don’t need it in a book too. It might be more interesting in say, a year or so, or maybe longer, looking back on how it all started, how people hoped for a quick end (and, depending on how it will go, either a happy ending or a darker outcome).
As a writer, my story takes place in an alternate world, on another planet even, so no pandemic there. They did have a catastrophe in their society in the past, but that one was triggered by a war, not a virus. So I am just going on like before, apart from the fact that my writing routine was disturbed like almost everyone else’s. And of course weaving my little story sometimes feels insignificant, looking at the “big things” happening out there. But on the other hand, stopping is not an option. Can’t let my protagonist stand there in a half-revised story, can I? The poor guy has been through enough turmoil already, he deserves to be written as well as I possibly can. :-)
You’re probably right about people not wanting to read about the pandemic at the moment. So, yes, keep after your work in progress — it could be a needed distraction.
Parenthetically, one advantage of alternate world stories is that you can comment on events without being tied to the actual history. It can be freeing.
Excellent points, Dave. I’m off the hook: my WIP is set more than 100 years ago (it touches on a few epidemics, common at the time, but nothing resembling the current pandemic). Biggest problem is fighting lassitude and maintaining momentum.
That, too, is a problem. The current situation, and the constant worry about it, can be exhausting.
“…keep your story focused on how events affect your characters rather than the events themselves.” This made me think of Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance. It also explains (for me) the appeal of The Crown and series such as Foyle’s War. My current WIP (second in a series) takes place in 1979 Edinburgh, with the ghost of plague vicious buried in a Close. But there are other kinds of plagues, and it seems every age has one. My NJ born protagonist is after shapeshifting dragons. I had the pleasure of hearing Philip Pullman interviewed a few weeks ago. He stated that as a storyteller, entertaining is his game. But as a reader, I’ve discovered layers in his stories that I found instructive. So my goal is to tell the best tale I can and let readers do their part. Meanwhile, both reading and writing are keeping me sane. I just put the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales on my TBR list!
Foyle’s War also came to mind for me as an example. And it sounds like your current work also dodges the question of what to do with the plague.
And you are going to enjoy the Decameron. The stories are fourteenth-century, with a lot of the fourteenth-century flaws. But they are ripping good fun.
Dave, I really enjoyed your thoughts on reading and writing during a pandemic. I’ve been enjoying reading apocalyptic fiction because it feels so prophetic at this time. My writing has been focused on shorts–chapter books and picture books–with my daughter making some art and now that they’re going off to school, I’m diving back into my historical. Nobody’s heard of covid :) I love how this writing life saves us in so many ways. Deo gratias!
Amen. Escape from hard times has been one of the things writing has been used for since time immemorial.
And it’s not that unusual to escape from apocalyptic times by reading apocalyptic fiction. Reading about other people’s troubles can make you feel less alone with your own.
Dave. Mrs. Miniver. A book I’ve read over and over. The film was powerful too. I do think Jan Sterling’s work inspired me as a girl and here I am still inspired. Thanks for this post.
You’re quite welcome.
I’ve read that, when the movie came out, Roosevelt rushed it into theaters. We were in the war by then, but there was apparently still some resistance to helping Europe first rather than turning our sights on Japan, who attacked us. Mrs. Miniver helped push public opinion toward saving Britain.
I’d just want to write a story that pretends the virus never existed.
I have a tv hospital drama I’ve watched for years, not that it’s always as good as it was any longer but I’m so invested that I keep watching. Someone told me they are going to come back with new episodes, incorporating the virus in their series. I get it: hospital drama. But, I cringed. I don’t want to watch that. I want some “non reality” when it comes to Covid. Yeah.
But the idea of focusing on a small aspect and using that to write with the virus involved is the best way I think too. I think of the movie Melancholia – the world was coming to an end but the movie didn’t focus on the entire world, or even show news footage, or terrified people, or people running in the streets. It focused on a horse farm and only a few people. It was fascinating. They did show the ending as this was all fiction, but, they didn’t include the rest of the world and it was a study in character more than about The Event. It’s incredibly depressing but a fascinating movie,
I’m not familiar with Melancholia, but it sounds a lot like “On the Beach.” Another good example of capturing a historic disaster by focusing on how it affects a handful of characters readers care about.
Thanks for your thoughts, Dave. I’m writing a story set in contemporary time and if acknowledged in any way, the pandemic would entirely upend my characters’ travel plans. I decided this was one place to exert denial. This writer needs a visit to the recent past as much as I imagine many readers do. It’s reassuring to know you concur with the approach.
That’s it, go for denial. As I say, I think readers will forgive you. As J’s comment above shows, a lot of readers will even welcome the distraction.
Dave, I always look forward to your Writer Unboxed posts. I learn important writing points from each one. I’m rewriting the current story you know well. It has been a mind saving distraction through the pandemic. The story is void of the current virus. But it’s packed full of character’s in turmoil, struggling to get out. I’m hoping as you said that I can pull people out of their pandemic moments and give them a needed escape.
The new inclusions in the story focus on the characters dealing with the 1961-1962 historical events in Germany. Taking the readers away into an even more mind boggling time and place. 📚 Christine
Go for it, Christine.
I started the year with a blog sabbatical after seven years of blogging, It was time to ask myself what I was trying to achieve, and why.
After about three increasingly cheerless months (around the globe) it came to me: I was blogging to bring people good cheer, a laugh, something interesting, something encouraging to keep their spirits up and help them keep going.
My current WIP is a compilation (plus bonus bits) of the best things I wrote in those first seven years of blogging, the cream of the crop. It should be out at the end of October, at which point I suspect people will need cheering up as much as ever.
Side note: I read the beginning “Six months into the worst pandemic in a century, we’ve passed five million cases with more than 170,000 dead,” and was confused – until I realized “we” here means the USA, not the world.
Dear Deborah,
I suspect that bringing people good cheer and welcome distraction has always been the purpose of fiction from the time we were telling stories around the fire. Now it may be needed more than usual.
And I hadn’t thought about WU readers around the globe. I should have specified these were US figures.
Thank you, Dave!
What an excellent overview of unsettling times and their effect on us writers. The examples and exhortations are gold.
After stumbling across Jilia Duffy’s May StoryADayChallenge, I ended up with a collection of 25 pieces of lockdown flash fiction! I’m pondering where to submit it as I revise my YA near-future cli-fi novel, mostly cutting the unnecessary but also adding references to the past-history Covid pandemic. Yay for rewrites of novels and worlds! :)
Okay, the near-future history one is tricky. By then, the pandemic will be resolved, but we still don’t know how.
I think you have to take your best guess, stay as vague as possible, and hope for the best.
Good luck.
Yes, I also stumbled over those Covid figures. Many readers of Writer Unboxed are not resident in the US. I am not. However, I thought this post was helpful to many writers and have passed it on to friends.
My WIP concerns teens facing the aftermath of a natural disaster which has devastated their city and their futures. They feel disempowered and without hope. Covid is an event of the fairly recent past (how recent is not said) and is cited as the reason the government is too broke to restore the damaged city. Other than that it the virus is not mentioned.
But the point of the story is that the teens do find hope for the future, by their own creative efforts, a message I think young people need right now. (Though of course this is not spelled out.)
That sounds like a good approach. As I said in reply to Anneliese’s comment, sometimes you have to take your best guess and stay as vague as possible.
I’ve been thinking a bit about the US-centric approach I took. And I realized that, if you live in most of the rest of the world, you do know how the pandemic ends, more or less. It’s possible there will still be outbreaks in Germany or South Korea, but for the most part, governments elsewhere have gotten things under control. It’s primarily in the US, where we’re facing a number of unique problems, that the future is so uncertain.
Such an excellent post, Dave. Thank you. This is so much of what I have been thinking, feeling, and needing to hear.
I’m glad I could help.