Guys, Dystopian is Hard to Write

Hello! 

One of my favorite series is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I first read this series a few summers ago, and during the course of that summer I reread the books three times. I’ve since read them many more times, and each time I’ve gotten way more out of the story 

But then I found out that The Hunger Games was part of a genre called dystopian. My eleven year old self freaked out. There were other books like this! So, I tried to get my hands on as many dystopian books as I could. 

Thus began my month long obsession with Divergent, which… I don’t know. I reread it a few months ago and was sorely disappointed to find out that it didn’t hold up to my preteen ravings. I read other YA dystopian books, and then I thought, “You know, I love reading dystopian, how about I write it?” 

And thus began the beginning of my dystopian writing adventure.

We Interrupt Your Reading Experience With Some Word Geeking 

In case you don’t know what the dystopian genre is, (and also because WORDS ARE COOL) I’m going to dive into the word “dystopian.”

Think about the word “utopia” AKA the perfect world, where there is no pain, fear, and things are perfect. (This is kind of going off of the subject, but can such a thing exist? Without fear and pain and uncomfyness, how do we know how precious love and happiness and comfortable pajamas are?)

Okay, so we know what utopian is, but what about dystopian? “Dys” usually means “not, or the opposite of” like in disappear, dysfunctional, distraction, (because yes, this whole paragraph is one) So what would the opposite of utopian be? The opposite of a perfect world? 

(No, I’m not a grammar nerd, I actually kind of hate grammar. But I am totally a word geek and love breaking down words like this) 

Now I need to figure out where I was going with this

The Challenge

So I proceeded to try to write some dystopian stories of my own. First up was a super cliched-Divergent-inspired Rumpelstiltskin retelling short story, which I regrettably thought was good. I don’t think now that it was of esteemable quality. The world was a classic run down city in the aftermath of a war where everyone was poor and suffering. The main character was classically orphaned, with one living family member she loved with all her heart.

Then at the beginning of the pandemic (funny how that name suddenly is so normal) I decided to write about what was going on around me… in an unfortunately boring way. 

I poured too much into the world building, not enough into the characters and plot, and tried to make my plans of the world turn into a novel. It didn’t work, the story was so boring. Boring to read, and boring to write. 

I still want to write about my experience with the pandemic, all of the things I’ve learned, my frustrations, observations, but I want to do it in a way that can shed actual light on it. In a way where the story flows well enough for the thematic ideas to shine through. 

I Want What I Can’t Yet Do 

Scythe by Neal Shusterman is another dystopian book I had been wanting to read for a long time. I finally read it on my family’s Crazy Road Trip of the Summer.™ I liked it, but it was slow. Not much happened. The world was super interesting to read and think about, but hardly anything actually happened in that world. 

And that seems to happen a lot, or at least to me when I try to write dystopian stories. Dystopian is hard to write. It is one of my favorite genres to read because of the prevalence it has in our society right now, but there are just a few ways a dystopian story can go. 

1) the world is in ruins (probably thanks to a war or disease) (See Hunger Games or Divergent) 2) The world is seemingly perfect, except it’s not (See The Giver or Scythe) 3) There’s a revolution 4) There’s not a revolution, but a tragic ending. 

Dystopian is a great genre, and I think it’s super prevalent to today’s world and situations. But it’s also packed to the brim with cliches and tropes that make dystopian stories really predictable. So, to those of you who write dystopian how do you do it?! I applaud you. 

Does anyone else feel this way? What are some of your favorite dystopian books? What are some things about the dystopian genre you’ve noticed? 

That’s all for now, see you next time! 

-Hannah

2 comments