It didn’t mess with me at all... I mentioned such a pandemic in the first book of my Extinction series, published back in 2017.
How is Covid-19 Messing With Your Plot?
- Thread starter delb0y
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Great question. My novel is magical realist...there's very little in it that doesn't just seem like realism at this point!
It didn't mess with mine *too* much. My novel takes place in high school, and I needed to show my MC sits by himself at lunch and NOT because he's social distancing, among other things. So I set it another two years in the future.
It's played on my mind a little. While my novel doesn't involve a virus or anything on a wide-scale, it does involve a lot of people getting sick throughout, and I'm aware that many readers perhaps won't have the appetite to read about that kind of stuff for a while!
quen_beantrix
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I don't *think* it's messed with my plot (maybe yet?) BUT I was rereading a series that has this bit in it that I think was the author's attempt at poking fun at antivaxers and got real on edge about it. The last time I read the series was in 2019 and I don't remember it as a standout bit, but in 2021 I'm like NO I DON'T WANT THIS, THIS IS A FANTASY SETTING PLEASE NO
My work in progress is set a century or so in our future. I am aware of how waves of pandemics affected things on a global scale in the world I have created, but very little of that needs to be told for this particular protagonist's adventures.
I started writing my novel ~10 years ago, give or take. It takes place on another planet and there're plenty of elements without adding in a pandemic. I thought about adding in vaccinations but in the end it also just cluttered up the plot.
It's going to be many years before the only WIP that it could have affected will be published, if ever. I was going to throw in a part where a historic movie theater a character is trying to save was water damaged a few years earlier and has been shut since when a pipe broke during the covid shutdown and nobody knew for days, but by the time the book gets published it will be too long in the past to be a convincing plot point. So I'll just let it be a broken pipe and leave it there.
Maybe you could just skip using dates. Ignore COVID. I know I would like to.
My books are sets in 5th century. No COVID yet.
My books are sets in 5th century. No COVID yet.
I have a work that specifically references dates, so I just set it a few years earlier. It's not a terribly hard workaround. And, as mentioned, if you just avoid references to the year, you're fine regardless. Otherwise unless the novel is somehow intrinsic to COVID, you date the work and potentially make it less relatable to readers down the road.
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Mine are set in the present, though with timeline references that span a few years.
I totally and completely ignored COVID-19, and I began writing these after it hit.
People get bombarded with info about COVID every day, but they read fiction to escape. So in my fictional world, life went on as usual.
I totally and completely ignored COVID-19, and I began writing these after it hit.
People get bombarded with info about COVID every day, but they read fiction to escape. So in my fictional world, life went on as usual.
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What a great question. This site is too wonderful. I made a few changes to my YA story based on Covid. In some scenes, I mention people wear masks. One teen says it's difficult to find a job since places had to shut down. My MC's mother tests positive and recuperates just fine. I am personally SO sick of this pandemic, I refuse to let it overtake my story. Therefore I've only included Covid as part of the backdrop but it doesn't get near the attention as other aspects in my setting which I find to be infinitely more beautiful and relevant.
I recently read Neal Stephenson's new novel Termination Shock, which was released in November 2021 and must have been well underway by the spring of 2020. Even so, Stephenson smoothly incorporated COVID and the generally increasing threat of pandemics -- it fits in neatly with the story and themes of the book, which is about national and global responses to crises associated with climate change.
The book is set in a not-particularly-specified near future, but there is a casual mention of "COVID-19, COVID-23, and COVID-27" which suggests the early 2030s (as well as giving me a small horror when I contemplate life in the coming decade). In addition to mentioning the oxygen needs of countries like India due to large numbers of people sick with these respiratory diseases, he also posits a global system for tracking people's vaccination and vulnerability status (presumably opt-in) -- the idea is that before you enter a particular site, the app provides recommendations about masking and distancing depending upon who is there and what their status is.
The book is set in a not-particularly-specified near future, but there is a casual mention of "COVID-19, COVID-23, and COVID-27" which suggests the early 2030s (as well as giving me a small horror when I contemplate life in the coming decade). In addition to mentioning the oxygen needs of countries like India due to large numbers of people sick with these respiratory diseases, he also posits a global system for tracking people's vaccination and vulnerability status (presumably opt-in) -- the idea is that before you enter a particular site, the app provides recommendations about masking and distancing depending upon who is there and what their status is.
Not related to novels, but I recall playing through a videogame years ago that followed the events of a zombie virus outbreak that was spread in similar ways to COVID. Looking back on it now, the cynic in me just says, "Man that was so unrealistic; everyone in the world was wearing face masks, and not one person was complaining about it."
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It has become the plot, I am working on a post apocalyptic story and was trying to find a way to kill off a 3rd of the world's population, so Covid it is. Rather a much more virulent Covid.
The problem for me is that if put present day Covid into the book and if covid disappears in a couple of years then it dates the book, like having characters suffering consumption. At the moment I’m making covid a past event in the manuscript. Wishful thinking.
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I'm so sick of all things Covid that I can't bring myself to include it in my books. So far, none of my editors has complained. One suggested that I mention the character thinking how much she's missed being part of a big crowd, so I included that, but aside from that, I'd rather not think about Covid when I'm writing.
Good question! I think there will be a lot of contemporary books set in 2019 in the next little while. 
I set one of my novels just before the first lock down and then used the lock down as a plot device to thwart the goal of my MC (which was to become a rock star). The other one, I set in 2019 to avoid having to change too much.
I set one of my novels just before the first lock down and then used the lock down as a plot device to thwart the goal of my MC (which was to become a rock star). The other one, I set in 2019 to avoid having to change too much.