Last week I discussed:

 What is the most important element in an apocalyptic story?
             
Here are the responses from the rest of the panel. 
 
             
Tim Malone offered an excerpt from his  upcoming book, Red Sky, that  involves meteors striking the Earth. I felt that the following section summed up an important element of an apocalyptic story.

“There won’t be any help,” David said when Stan came  back.

 “What do you mean,” Cynthia  said.

 “There are way too many scenes like this all over the city. Think of the movie theaters, the restaurants and pizza parlors. What about the malls, the people at the baseball game, in the hotels, the homeless on the streets, the tourists and the private
homes?

             
Any decent apocalypse is going to leave people in a position where they have to save themselves. And maybe that is really the heart of this genre—self-reliance. That’s scary if it were to actually happen to us, but it makes for great reading. 
             
I recommend that you follow the link over to Tim’s blog and read the rest of the excerpt for yourself. 

             
Wayne Roux suggests that it is the “reminder of the insignificance of man.” Wow. That’s some pretty heavy thinking right there. Are apocalyptic stories just updated fairy tales that teach the proper place of man in the universe? Man may think that everything revolves around us, but the truth is that we are just one small speck in the cosmos. 
              
I think Wayne did a great job of answering the question on his blog. Check it out. 

            
Angie Lofthouse summed it up in one word – Hope. And that is certainly the reason I wrote The Gathering: End’s Beginning. During the troubled times we are currently facing
and will be facing, I want people to have hope. 
             
Check out what Angie had to say on her blog. I think you’ll enjoy it. 

             
What do all of you think? Feel free to leave a comment that answers this month’s question. I’d love to hear a few extra thoughts on the subject. 
 


             

Have I mentioned that I love apocalyptic stories? Fractured worlds of high imagination. Unique societies built on the bones of fallen civilizations. And the well applauded end of reality television. It almost makes you root for horrible disaster on a scale never before seen. 
             
Maybe not. But it is time for the Apocalypse Panel’s next question. 
   


What is the most important element in an apocalyptic story?
             
The obvious answer to this is—character. At the heart of any great story is a protagonist with passions, principles, and a problem. We experience the story through the characters. But since this applies to stories of any type I will pick something else. 
             
Another important element in any story is—setting. It provides the peculiar flavor for the tale being told. Some days I might be in the mood for a good zombie apocalypse, full of dark city streets clogged with the animated husks of humanity.  Or I might crave a journey among the mutated remnants of mankind a thousand years after the world is ravaged by atomic war. Setting is the main selling point for a novel since it will determine what differentiates this story from all the others in the genre.
             
I think that the key element of an apocalyptic tale is how the disastrous event has molded the society in which the story takes place. A good author will reflect on the nature of the apocalypse and infuse its very essence into the plot, into the characters, and even into the voice of the story itself. As weird as this might sound, each disaster has a unique personality of its own and affect all the other elements of the story. 
        
              
Next week we will see what the other authors on the panel have to say.