It’s one of my favorite plot devices*: A group of people, whether friends or strangers, get thrown together in a defined space. Drama ensues. It’s been spun countless ways, but it gets me every time.

So, when I was planning the plot of Viral, I almost immediately decided I wanted to get my protagonists to a remote location for the majority of the story.

Everyone probably has a beloved movie or book that confines its characters within an enclosed location — whether very small, as in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, or the much larger but just as claustrophobic town in Stephen King’s Under the Dome. One of my favorites is the John Huston movie Stagecoach, maybe because it manages to have that trapped feel while also utilizing the wide open spaces and pioneering spirit of many classic Westerns.

Perhaps I love the device because it’s so versatile yet forces a certain adherence to a formula. It leaves room for lots of surprises, while still triggering a pleasant familiarity. No matter what their prison is, or their reasons for being there, the characters in this type of plot collide against one another almost immediately, their personalities and differences loudly, painfully clear. It’s extremely cinematic — the most memorable examples that come to mind for me are movies — but also very effective in books, e.g., just about every Agatha Christie novel ever.

I also like how horror novels and movies often isolate the characters about to be terrorized by sending them on an innocuous trip — a summer camp, or a vacation home. I wanted that juxtaposition in my novel too.