Creating the smilers

 How I Created the Smilers

When I first came up with the Smilers, they weren't actually supposed to smile.

I knew I wanted to introduce a different kind of zombie into The Fall Series. The normal dead were dangerous because of their numbers, but I wanted something smarter. Something that could look at a situation, understand what was happening and make calculated moves rather than simply charging towards the living.

Visually, though, I still wanted them to look like zombies. I didn't want to create some completely different creature that felt out of place in the world I'd already built. They needed something that immediately set them apart.

That's where the smile came from.

I'd seen the film Smile, and I loved how unsettling something as simple as a smile could be when it was just slightly wrong. I started thinking about how disturbing it would be to see one of the dead standing among a horde, staring at you...

and smiling.

From there, the idea grew again.

What if they didn't just think differently from the other zombies?

What if they could control them?

That changed everything.

Suddenly the survivors weren't just dealing with hordes of mindless dead. There was something amongst them that could think. Something that could watch, wait and use the normal zombies against the living.

That was really the reason I introduced the Smilers. I wanted the threat in The Fall Series to evolve. I didn't want every encounter to simply be about how many zombies the survivors were facing.

I wanted there to be moments when the characters—and hopefully the readers—realised there was something much worse out there.

And sometimes, it smiles.