How do I plan a post-apocalyptic novel?
- Time since collapse determines everything: scavenging, skills, institutions, and language.
- Post-apocalyptic differs from dystopian: one has lost order, the other has too much.
- Resource logic must hold; fuel, ammunition, and medicine do not last decades.
- The most memorable entries focus on rebuilding rather than destruction.
- Survival detail should be researched enough to withstand practical readers.
Start with three decisions: what caused the collapse, how long ago it happened, and what people have rebuilt since. Time elapsed governs everything from whether gasoline still works to whether anyone remembers how to set a bone. Get the resource logic right, because readers check.
Chapter i·Why it matters
Most post-apocalyptic manuscripts stall because the author never fixed the timeline. Two years after collapse and thirty years after are entirely different novels, with different technologies, different social structures, and different central questions. Deciding early prevents a world where canned goods and functioning aircraft coexist implausibly.
Chapter ii·What to include
- The cause of collapse, and how much of it is known to characters.
- Years elapsed, with consequences worked through for each system.
- Resource logic: fuel degradation, medicine expiry, ammunition supply.
- What has been rebuilt, and who holds power in it.
- Skills lost and retained across the gap.
- A human question the setting exists to ask.
Chapter iii·Example
A writer set her novel 34 years out, so nobody under thirty remembered electricity and the plot turned on a working generator as a political object rather than a convenience.
Chapter iv·Related questions
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