Writing Believable Catastrophic Stories: Tips & Troubles

As I watch the behavior of people over the past few months, the problem of writing believable catastrophic stories keeps circling in my head. Like a pack of shoppers circling the empty toilet paper aisle.

So far, I’ve thought of options that might help, but I keep coming back to one conclusion: it won’t be easy.

Will Today’s Reactions Be Believable in the Future?

Suppose you write a pandemic story and include behaviors just like the ones we’re seeing in our world right now. People living now will believe it. They’ll think of their own experiences and relate to it.

But what about people in 20 years? Or 40 years? What about people who grow up after this pandemic is over? People who don’t grow up with the stories, who don’t study the history – how would they respond?

Considering the surprise of people living through it, I sincerely doubt readers in the future would find those actions believable. I have a hard enough time believing some of them now when I see them with my own eyes.

What Makes Actions Unbelievable?

I don’t know about you, but I learned a long time ago that group thinking doesn’t result in brilliant deductions. As Kay from Men in Black said,

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.

But even expecting groups to be unpredictable, people’s actions have still been surprising me and others I know. Why?

My best guesses are that…

1. We prefer to think of people as mostly rational. That human behavior is mostly logical. Even good. It’s probably a survival instinct – a comforting lie that we tell ourselves to get through the day.
2. There are unspoken levels of irrational behavior that are expected or acceptable in daily life. So long as behavior stays in those limits, we can maintain belief #1. When people go beyond those limits, it strains or breaks that belief.

How Do You Make Irrational Actions Believable?

This takes us to the crux of the problem: how do you make a story realistic or believable when real behaviors under those circumstances aren’t believable?

The best answer I’ve come up with goes back to character building, pacing, and the reasons people act out of character.

Build Up to It

You have to build up to the irrational actions. If you jump straight from normal person to very un-normal behavior, you lose the believability.

That might work for comedy or shock value if you then go back and show the progression (like an old detective-story hook where you say what happened and then immediately go back to the start and experience the plot in order), but otherwise, we need to feel the increasing pressure to accept the reactions it causes.

Basically, establish the person as real or normal. Then, slowly show the evolution of pressures and mis-information that lead to the irrational behavior.

Show – Don’t Tell

This is one situation where it’s really important to use implicit characterization. Actions and experiences give a deeper understanding, and that deeper understanding is what will help us empathize with the character’s reason(s) for acting unusually.

The Voice of Reason

Someone has to recognize the action as irrational or strange. It can be a main character, a minor character, or an anonymous voice in a crowd. It can be before, during, or after the event in question.

Who and when will depend on the story, but someone has to call it out.

That recognition reassures the readers that they’re not expected to accept the action as normal. Just that it happened. That makes it easier to believe.

In Conclusion

Those tactics will help make the unbelievable believable, but it’s not going to be easy. It’s definitely not a great choice for a first novel or even a second novel – the skills needed are the kind that come with practice (and more practice). Although the project itself would certainly be a growth experience.

It’s not one I’m ready to tackle. But if any of you souls are brave enough to try it, and you come up with an answer, please, share with the class!