Breaking the Rules of the Apocalypse
Writing against the odds of the genre
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an essay in my ongoing “Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time” series where I deep-dive into my writing fiction to heal method as field work and a case study. To begin, I will be working through my story, The Archive, which you can find more information on here.
[NOTE: Your email provider may truncate this essay, be sure to click on “keep reading” to read the entire piece.]
Every post-apocalyptic story has rules—unspoken guidelines that shape what we “know” about survival in a collapsed world.
I’ve absorbed these rules through years of reading books, watching movies, and analyzing the patterns of fictional collapses. These stories operate on collective survival logic, one that suggests that if you don’t start with an advantage—or adapt fast—you probably won’t make it.
These rules exist for a reason: they create tension, conflict, and a sense of danger. They also make storytelling easier—because if a character follows the rules, we already know what’s supposed to happen next.
But that’s exactly why I don’t want to follow them.
Writing The Archive isn’t about using a pre-made blueprint. It’s about making choices that feel real—for Ari, and for myself. It’s about resisting the easy answers, even when that makes the story harder to write.
Some of these rules, Ari follows. Some of them, she bends. And some of them, she flat-out breaks—because her survival isn’t just about making it through the collapse. It’s about questioning the very idea of who gets to survive.
But breaking the rules? That’s the hard part.
Because the easiest thing in the world would be to let the story follow the patterns I’ve seen before.
Avoid People, Understand Trust is a Currency
Survival fiction tells us people are dangerous. If the world ends, you’re supposed to assume that everyone left is a potential threat.
This is a foundational rule of the genre: Trust is a liability.
The Walking Dead → Every time Rick Grimes lets his guard down, someone betrays or threatens his group. The Governor. Negan. The Commonwealth.
Mad Max: Fury Road → Furiosa and Max don’t trust each other at first, but their survival depends on choosing the right allies.
The Road → The father teaches his son to assume that every person is a danger.
Ari understands that trust is expensive—that letting someone in could be her undoing. She has every reason to believe that avoiding people is the safest option. Plus, she was an introvert who didn’t love all people before the collapse.
The easiest thing would be to make Ari hyper-cautious, mistrusting, and unwilling to let anyone in. That’s what the genre expects.
But that’s not what I would do.
Ari doesn’t want to survive alone. Unlike Rick Grimes or Eli in The Book of Eli, she isn’t a lone wolf. She doesn’t want to assume the worst of everyone she meets.
This is hard to write because there’s no clear right answer. Too much trust is reckless, too little is isolating. The balance isn’t just about survival—it’s about what kind of person Ari wants to be.
And what kind of person I hope to be if I were in this situation.
The Strongest Don’t Always Survive…The Most Adaptable and Skilled Do
One of the most urgent reasons I’m writing The Archive is because I need to believe that someone like me can survive it if it comes. The truth is that the vast majority of post-apocalyptic protagonists have some survival advantage like:
Lauren Olamina (Parable of the Sower) → Already trained in firearms, gardening, and survival.
Alex & Darla (Ashfall) → Black belt in karate, farm girl with mechanical skills.
Rick/Daryl (The Walking Dead) → Cops, military, hunters.
Red (The Girl in Red) → Prepares for disaster before it happens.
Robert Neville (I Am Legend) → Virologist, understands the scientific breakdowns of things, military background.
Furiosa (Mad Max: Fury Road + Furiosa) → training in firearms, driving, mechanical repairs and violence.
The point is… Ari has no survivalist skills. She has no advantage—except that she refuses to give up. (Okay, the animals are both an advantage and a liability).
As a writer, this is a hard rule to break. Because even I find myself wondering: How does she keep surviving?
That’s the trick, isn’t it? The “easy” answer would be to give Ari an edge—something to explain why she’s still alive when others aren’t. But I resist that urge because I need to believe that people like Ari (and like me) can make it—so I have to write it into existence.
Resources Will Always Be Scarce
In nearly every apocalypse story, money becomes useless—water, food, medicine, and ammo are the new currency, and it’s often one of the biggest sources of conflict and tension for the characters because… desperation.
The difficulty in writing this? It’s easier to write high-stakes scarcity—Ari starving, running out of water, desperate. We all understand the difficulty in those situations.
But fighting for resources that others think are useless? That’s much harder to convince people of.
Ari’s survival is also built on a different kind of hunger, and making that just as compelling is a challenge I have to rise to.
Because knowledge is its own form of survival.
It’s knowing which plants won’t poison you. It’s knowing how to find clean water when there’s no tap. It’s knowing the signs of an infection before it kills you. But it’s also knowing who we used to be. What we valued. What stories we told ourselves.
Ari isn’t just hoarding books and records because she wants comfort—she’s holding onto something more essential: proof that we existed. Proof that she existed.
Because what good is survival if nothing of us is left?
Maybe that’s the real rebellion—refusing to let the world swallow every piece of what came before.
Avoid Government-Run Facilities + Self Appointed “Good Guys”
Truthbomb: I have not read, watched, or listened to a post-apocalyptic story where survivors thrived under the government. It’s the opposite, actually. If there’s one “rule” that seems to be consistent (and that Ari will definitely be following), it’s: don’t trust the government to save you.
But it’s not just about government. It’s about control.
The collapse of civilization doesn’t erase power structures—it just makes them more extreme. And history tells us that when people are afraid, they will cling to the illusion of order, no matter the cost.
The Hunger Games → The Capitol keeps its grip through fear and spectacle.
The Walking Dead → Almost every “safe” community hides a darker reality (Woodbury, The Sanctuary, The Commonwealth).
A Quiet Place Part II → The idea of rebuilding is always paired with who gets to be in charge—and at what cost.
Ari understands this. Maybe it’s a natural skepticism, maybe it’s a personal refusal to be controlled, but she will never willingly give up her autonomy.
This is a rule neither she nor I will break.
There’s Always a Moral Choice To Make
Apocalypse stories force impossible choices. This is one of the reasons I love them so much. They force us, as readers, to consider what we would do in that situation. So many of us want to see ourselves represented in stories, and we want to feel like someone else might make the same choices we would.
That’s what makes writing The Archive a brutal mix of easy and hard. Easy—because I pull from my own moral compass. Hard—because I won’t always know what the right moral choice is. Neither will Ari.
The real question isn’t “What’s right?” It’s “What’s right enough to live with?”
All of us can say that we’d do X, Y, or Z in the case of an apocalypse… but none of us really knows for sure. The reality is messy.
Would I steal to survive? Probably.
Would I kill to protect myself or someone I love? I think so.
Would I betray someone to keep myself safe? I don’t want to believe that… but what if I had no other choice?
There is no neatly packaged morality in survival. Every choice costs something. And that’s why I can’t write Ari as someone who always knows exactly what to do.
Maybe she will make the “wrong” choices. Maybe she’ll regret them. But she’ll also have to live with them—and that’s where the real story is.
Hope is Dangerous But Crucial
Hope is the very last thing you have when everything else is gone.
That’s a dangerous thing.
In many apocalypse stories, hope is a liability. It gets people killed. It blinds them to reality. It makes them hold on to impossible dreams when they should be focusing on what is.
Characters who hope too much tend to meet a tragic end. They trust the wrong person. They hold onto the belief that someone will come to save them. They refuse to let go of the past and can’t survive the present.
The Road → The father teaches his son to “carry the fire,” but it’s not hope that keeps them moving, it’s duty. The father knows the world won’t get better. He just wants to keep his son alive long enough to give him a chance.
Snowpiercer → The people in the tail section hold onto hope that they’ll be treated fairly someday, but the truth is, the system was never designed for fairness. Hope alone doesn’t save them—revolution does.
The Walking Dead → How many times have characters died because they believed in the wrong safe zone, the wrong leader, the wrong promise?
Hope, in these stories, is often a trap.
And yet… without it, what’s left?
Ari doesn’t have the luxury of unshakable optimism. She isn’t walking through this world thinking that one day, everything will go back to how it was. But she also can’t afford to lose all hope, because once you lose that, you stop moving. You stop trying. You stop living.
She’s learning that hope doesn’t have to mean denial. It doesn’t have to be naïve. Sometimes, hope is as simple as believing that there’s a reason to wake up tomorrow. That a full belly and a safe place to sleep for one more night is enough to keep going.
And that’s why it’s so hard to write.
Because what does that look like, realistically?
What is the right balance of pragmatism and faith? What’s the line between choosing to hope and choosing to be blind?
It would be easy to take hope away from Ari. To turn her into someone who stops believing in people, in good things, in herself. That would fit the genre’s expectations. That would make survival “simpler.”
But that’s not her. And it’s not me.
So, I have to walk that tightrope. I have to make her doubt, but not break. I have to let her wonder if it’s worth it—but keep going anyway. I have to give her moments where hope is dangerous, but also make sure that somewhere inside her, hope never fully dies.
Because if it did? That’s when the story would truly end.
Why Breaking These Rules Matters
Writing The Archive isn’t just about crafting a compelling apocalypse story. It’s about rewriting survival narratives and expanding the definition of who gets to “make” it.
Ari shouldn’t survive, according to the rules. But she does.
And that’s what matters.
Because I need to believe that people who weren’t born prepared can still adapt, endure, and find a way forward.
And that belief? That’s what keeps me writing this story.
Next time…
Next week, I’ll be talking about the “Emotional and Vulnerability Hangover” that is showing up around this experiment and how I’m dealing with it (and how to use it as fuel for the writing).
Don’t want to get these email notifications? Or maybe you want to make sure you get these notifications? Manage your notification settings here:
To read the backstory to why I’m writing this series:
To read the backstory on why I’m serializing “The Archive,”:
