How to Write for Mercury

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Mercury's narrative style and themes are substantially different than most zombie stories. In addition to the other resources (characters, setting, etc), we are providing this guide to new writers to help you with your first episodes. Of all the various writers we've worked with, almost none have really captured the feel of the series on the first try so be prepared for notes and revisions.

What's It All About?

Mercury is at its best when it is about personal stories and emotions. The zombies are a device to allow the writer to explore reactions to hardships and a changing society. Coping with loss is a common and versitile theme and can include personal loss of friends and/or family, loss of a lifestyle the character had gotten accustomed to, or really loss of anything at all. The apocalyptic setting allows the characters to re-examine their lives and experiences and choices through the lens of a "near death experience," which often causes those who have experienced such a thing to make changes after being forced to face their own mortality.

One very common question we get from prospective new writers is "How do I keep from covering something you already talked about? You have over 1300 episodes, I don't want to/don't have time to read/listen to them all." The best advice we can give is not to worry about it. First, your experience and perspective on any given topic will be different from ours and that difference will be enough to make the episode unique. Second, we do this ourselves all the time. There are many recurring themes in Mercury that we come back to over and over again because they're so relevant and we may have had a new experience or thought ourselves that makes us want to talk about them again. As long as you don't do anything that directly contradicts a character's history or sends them in a direction that they can't come back from, you should be good. Feel free to send along episode pitches if you're especially concerned, but in almost every case an episode that covers something we already did can be made to fit in with the series with only minor adjustments.

Episode Types

Episodes often (but not always!) fall into one of several basic structures. Here are a few, along with basic examples of how they might be written:

Changes in circumstance

Things are different now. How do we feel about that?

• Take a normal, everyday event: You find money on the ground
• Imagine what changes about that event because of the zombie apocalypse: You decide not to pick it up because money is worthless now
• Describe how you feel about that change.
• Whatever you felt is ok and you should feel good about it, unless what you felt makes you decide to hurt others. If that's the case, explore why you would feel that way and how you might overcome that feeling.

Max Conspiracy

Max is prone to conspiracy theories and loves to talk about outlandish things that might have caused people to turn into zombies. They should be semi-plausible in that there is a logical line between his assumption and why people are zombies now, but should also have at least one fatal flaw that he has managed to overlook. The other characters will help him find that fatal flaw. Examples include:

• The Large Hadron Collider put everyone in a quantum state, similar to Schrodinger's Cat, where they are both dead and alive.
• The zombies are the leftover bodies of raptured souls.
• The zombies are dementia patients who are still walking around because they forgot they were dead.
• Voodoo.
• Aliens engineered the zombies to soften up Earth's defenses.

And so on. Let your imagination run wild here. Unusual diseases, spiritual phenomena, whatever. It's all fair game, but none of it is true. The series creators know the real answer and if you stumble upon it we'll let you know. EDIT: The true answer was revealed to the public as of Day 1000. The zombies are caused by a protozoan parasite, the precise nature of which is unknown. This does not negate the ability to write Max Conspiracy episodes, but they will be different now. He can speculate on where the parasite came from.

Dr. Clark Research

Dr. Clark is doing behavioral research on the zombies and will report back periodically, although these reports often just reiterate what we already know or go into some detail about how she's conducting this research.

Agnes Literary Analysis

Agnes will read a poem on the air and talk about what it means to her. Poems must be the original work of the person writing the epsiode or in the public domain. We can't afford to pay royalties.

Jennifer's Faith

Jennifer has a number of topics she can be brought in on. Cat stories from Mercutio, who is living with her at the lighthouse. Family issues, since her mother and children are with her there. But also how her faith is affected by the zombies. If you intend to write on this topic, please be aware that the series creators are not interested in painting any faith in a bad light. Judgment and blaming others isn't a valid theme for this show unless you're going to talk about not doing those things.

Anna's Survival

Anna is a good source of news from areas farther from the station since she is on horseback. This opens up plenty of avenues to discuss practical survival skills in the field, as well as Anna's other facets. Similar to Jennifer, she can talk about family issues. She can also talk about mental health. EDIT: As of Day 872 the character of Anna Thomas is no longer appearing on the show. Her family was killed by the zombie horde Medusa and Anna herself retreated to somewhere out west where she has found a former horse farm. She lives there now and tends the horses. Anna can still communicate with the team through letters, but those letters should be infrequent because of the unreliable mail service.

Infrastructure

We're rebuilding the world, new (or re-introduced) infrastructure will be a part of it. Use this very, very sparingly. If you're going to introduce new infrastructure, the characters have to talk about how they feel about it in addition to how they managed to bring it back.

Other Characters

Sometimes you need to tell a story that is unsuitable for any of the characters. There are many ways to handle this.

• Stories-for-Stories: Rather than introduce a guest character (who we must then find an actor for), have the story told by way of letter or by having them drop by the station and tell their story to the team off the air and then they can relay it. If using a letter, one of the existing main characters will read it. In exchange for their story, the characters in the station will trade them a book. This can be literally any book, so pick one of your favorites, pick one that has themes that are similar to the story being told in the letter, or use this opportunity to plug a book by yourself or your friends.
• Ham radio: The team will catch the transmission and record it with a portable recorder that Max has rigged up to be able to use batteries charged at the NORMAL Power Station windmill. If you would like to read and record it yourself, please do so. If you'd rather submit it and have someone else read it, we can do that, too. We have access to a wide variety of voice actors. Please bear in mind that the ham radio's microphone doesn't work, so Max cannot yet transmit (that feature may come soon), so these are one-way monologue style transmissions.

Techniques for Prompts

• The series is highly autobiographical. If you have a personal story that highlights themes of hope and overcoming adversity, tell it here. Change relevant details to fit our setting and disguise the identities of individuals if necessary.
• Recycle titles from other media. Song titles, movie titles, book titles, TV show episode titles, whatever. Just take the title and reimagine what else it could be about besides what it was originally about. This works particularly well since the show often re-examines our own assumptions about various topics.
• Holidays and other special annual events or cultural happenings. (Let us know well in advance if you plan to do one of these...we operate at least 2 months ahead)
• Historical events that benefit from a re-examination after the zombies rose up. Dr. Clark is the resident history buff, so use her for these.
• Max brings random stuff back to the station, especially stuff that makes noise.