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56 Dystopian Writing Prompts

Escape to a dark, disheartened world with these 56 dystopian writing prompts .

Mass poverty, cruelty and fear cover a dystopian world. From the shelter-like homes to the dark, broken streets. Life is hard. When writing a story set in a dystopian world you need to describe the harsh reality of this world in great detail. Make the reader fear this world. Think about the leaders who have control. This control might be significant, where harsh rules are made to keep the peace. Alternatively, there could be a rebellion, where leaders have no control and civilians are running havoc. See our master list of world-building questions to help develop a believable dystopian world.

A dystopian world is a world in shatters and ruins. How did it become this way? What rules and regimes do civilians follow, if any? What type of crime is most prominent in this world? These questions will help you create a realistic and powerful dystopian world for your readers.

Looking for some name ideas for your new world? Check out this world name generator . You might also find this list of Earth day writing prompts and this list of over 110 sci-fi writing prompts .

Dystopian writing prompts

To help you create a powerful story about a society in crisis, here are our 56 dystopian writing prompts:

• In the year 2,121, sea levels have risen at an extreme rate. 98% of the Earth is now underwater. The remaining 2% is made of small islands scattered across the Earth. With resources at a scarcity, the islands must work together if they are to survive.
• A virus has wiped out 95% of humanity in the future. The only survivors are machines and a group of secret underground warriors who rebelled against technology for centuries.
• In the future, a virus has caused some humans to mutate into ravenous troll-like beasts. While the remaining humans have to learn to survive in the world with these beasts.
• The life expectancy of people has dropped drastically in the future. At the age of 18, humans start to deteriorate and slowly pass away. The ruler is an arrogant 14-year-old kid.
• Scientists have combined robotics with human tissue to increase the life expectancy of humans. Apart from the vital organs, such as lungs and heart, as well as parts of the brain, humans are mostly robotic. Eventually, humans start losing control of their bodies to machines. 
• From the moment a human is born to the day they die, humans are connected to the internet. Everything they need to know about life is on a screen to which they are connected. One day, a technology outbreak completely wipes the internet. Humans are switched off. What happens next?
• Scientists have found the secret to endless happiness. They create a new pill that needs to be taken once a day to remain happy. But is this new pill all as it seems?
• To promote equality in the future, humans have to dress the same and talk the same. Any inappropriate English and slang words are banned. All around the world, everyone must speak English. If these rules are broken, the rule breaker will be sentenced to prison or even death.
• With the brand new Cloner 3000, cloning is just a button press away. Clone your cat, your dog and even yourself if you dare. What are the potential dangers of cloning yourself too many times? 
• Law and order is destroyed in the future. People are free to do whatever they want without any consequences. Until a group of vigilante heroes decide to recreate the law.
• There are two types of people, the rich and the poor. The rich have an extreme amount of money and power. And the poor are living on the streets and undergrounds, struggling to get by. A poor orphan girl is adopted by a rich family and discovers a deadly secret about how the rich become rich. 
• The excessive use of technology and social media has meant that 95% of the world suffers from extreme social phobia. The slightest human interaction results in mass panic attacks. One brave human decides to create a group where people can meet face to face regularly to help them overcome this fear.
• Crime has become such a huge issue in the future, that every home in the world has become a prison cell. Prison guards patrol the streets and provide prisoners with the essentials. One guard feeling guilty that his family is locked behind bars, tries freeing them, and soon things get out of control. 
• Oxygen is the new currency in the future. Instead of money people buy, earn and sell little canisters of oxygen. Continue this dystopian story…
• Desperate to create the perfect world, the government provides every person with a free virtual reality headset. Once worn, the person is transported to a tranquil utopia. Meanwhile, the government secretly has other plans in the real world. 
• A virus has turned every tree, plant and flower on earth into flesh-eating monsters. The only way to survive is to kill all plant life on Earth, but how will the planet survive?
• A new mobile app in the future tells people when to eat, sleep, drink and essentially live. Without the app, humans would be lost, confused and clueless. A group of cyber hackers, hack this app to gain control of all humans. 
• Being the main cause of social disorders and suicides, the internet is banned in the year 2,098. With the ban of the internet, people slowly resort to the old ways of living before the internet ever existed. Until a group of individuals find a way to bring back the net. 
• Bored of old-style video gaming, humans resort to sticking chips inside prisoners. Once a prisoner is chipped, they can be controlled like a video game character. 
• Desperate to be beautiful and young, rich people resort to stealing the actual skin and facial features of ordinary people. These extreme surgeries soon start to have a weird effect on humans.
• The Earth has been destroyed by a huge asteroid. A few humans that survived by living underground finally emerge to start a new life on Earth. 
• With the Earth’s population at an all-time high, it’s time for every human to prove their worth. After the age of 16, humans must take a test every year. If they fail the test, they are killed immediately. One young adult scores incredibly high on the test making them the ‘chosen one’. 
• Due to the lack of resources on Earth, all luxury items have been banned. People survive on basic rations of bread, rice and beans each month. No vanity items, such as jewellery or make-up are allowed. One day a group of civilians discover that luxury items do exist, but only the leaders can use them. 
• For the sake of human evolution, scientists have turned the small town of Whitefish into a huge science experiment. No one is allowed to enter or leave the city unless they are told so. Every now and then, a new stimulus is introduced, so that scientists can record the human reactions for a research paper. 
• Write a story about the aftermath of World War 5. Who was at war and who lost it? What devastation did the war create on Earth?
• In the far future, robots are responsible for creating human life. They carefully program each human when they are born to do certain tasks in life. One human realizes that they don’t need to follow the orders programmed in them and fights for freedom.
• After a huge asteroid hits Earth, the last two survivors have to find a way to recreate life. It’s a modern, dystopian Adam and Eve story.
• World leaders ban religion and talk of God in the future. A man discovers a secret church up in the mountains where people secretly believe in God. 
• Due to animal cruelty, people are no longer allowed to have animals as pets in the future. All pets live out in the wild without any human masters. One homeless teenager finds a hurt dog in the wild and takes care of it. Eventually, authorities find out about this forbidden friendship.
• A bored scientist dedicates his whole life to recreating popular monsters like vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein’s monster in real life. He finally masters the procedure and offers it to rich people at a price.
• Tired of the rat race and busy city-living, people move to the country to live a peaceful and calm life. Eventually, cities like New York City become a playground for criminals and runaways.
• When the human population on land reaches an all-time high. One man goes on a quest to create the ultimate underwater city for humans. Continue this story.
• In the year 2,121, 100% of the population becomes vegan. Eating any sort of animal product is considered cannibalism. Farm animals realize that humans will no longer eat them, so decide to plan their revenge.
• Cyber-pets become a huge thing in the future. Technology advances so much that people would rather buy robotic pets inside of real ones. This results in more stray animals on the streets. With no human love, the pets turn into savages attacking both humans and the cyber-pets.
• Humans have left Earth for a better life on Mars. One day, thousands of years later, a space astronaut from Mars lands on Earth to find…
• In the future, the majority of jobs have been taken over by robots. The only way to earn money is to take part in a series of games and challenges created by the rich for their entertainment.
• Everyone on Earth has experienced some sort of mutation in the future. This mutation has made humans powerful and troll-like. As the only pure human (with no mutations), your character’s daughter is kidnapped by a group of mutants who want to use her blood to make humans human-like again. 
• Imagine you are the last human survivor on Earth. What would you do alone on Earth?
• Describe a future where all humans are either deaf or blind.
• You and your family live underground away from all the technology. Write a series of diary entries about life underground.
• Sugar is banned completely in the future. Even fruits that taste sugary are no longer available. You are the leader of a secret underground group that creates your own homemade sugar. However since humans haven’t tasted sugar in a long time, the results become very dangerous.
• Since Earth has been destroyed, every family lives in their own spaceship homes floating around the galaxy. Every now and then you need to protect your home from space invaders, pirates and of course black holes.
• Write a story about one boy, his dog and a group of robots living on Earth as the only survivors. 
• Lying dormant deep at the core of the Earth, dragons finally awake. After a series of powerful earthquakes, they burst through the ground one by one. 
• With surveillance cameras watching everyone. A new TV show called, ‘Did They Really Do That’ airs across the nation showing the most embarrassing moments of civilians living in your area. You then go on a mission to destroy all surveillance and destroy the TV show.
• One man’s dream to swim with the dolphins is taken to extremes, as he genetically modifies a group of humans, so that they can swim underwater. Unknowingly these humans turn into monstrous mermaid-like creatures.
• Huge floating islands are created all over Earth to cope with the increase in the human population. These floating islands become new countries on the map with their own rules and way of life. 
• In the year 3,021 world peace is finally achieved. Everyone lives in perfect harmony. But how was this world peace achieved? One curious civilian makes a shocking discovery.
• Write a news article about the latest riot happening in your town in the year 2,899. Why did this riot happen? Who was involved? Where did it happen? What exactly happened before and during the riot?
• You are a lab assistant for a company that creates genetic make-up for humans. The make-up keeps humans looking young for their entire lifespan of 180 years. One day you discover something shocking…
• Cats and dogs have evolved into human-shaped beings. They now rule Earth and treat humans like pets. 
• Due to natural extinction and the threat of disease, all animals are gone in the future. You and your family have created a secret underground zoo, which holds the last remaining animals on Earth.
• Write a story from the perspective of a servant robot who wants to be the mayor of the city. 
• Scientists have learned to extract emotions from humans and contain them in jars. At a price, you can remove negative emotions like anger, sadness and fear. You can also sell and buy positive emotions like happiness. To obtain a new emotion, you simply inhale the emotion directly from the jar. In a special clinic, over 10,000 jars of emotions are contained, until one day…
• The Earth is a massive video game for advanced aliens living on a distant planet. They randomly spawn monsters whenever they feel like, and can control any human they like. One day the aliens are so bored that they create a big scary boss monster for a town of people to fight.
• In an effort to create a better world, all humans must take a personality test. If your personality does not meet the criteria set by the government, then you are sent to work camps. People at the work camps live a horrible life of abuse, torture and endless hard work for 18 hours a day. Imagine that your main character fails the personality test, and is sent to one of these camps.

For more gritty ideas, check out our guide on what is dieselpunk plus story ideas .

What do you think of these dystopian writing prompts? Which one is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

How to Write Dystopian Fiction: The Ultimate Guide

By Georgina Roy

Welcome to Writing Tips Oasis and the newest installment in our series of writing guides . In this guide, we will be tackling the task of writing Dystopian Fiction.

Before we proceed, let’s take a look at the definition: what is dystopian fiction, precisely? Dystopian fiction is a catch-all term for all short stories, novellas, novels, and films that take place in a futuristic world that is the opposite of ideal. An ideal world, where there is no hunger, no poverty, no crime, and every person living in it is equal and happy, is called a utopia. Therefore, when the world is oppressive, riddled with hunger, crime, totalitarian governments, and where no character lives a happy life, you have a dystopia.

In essence, due to the futuristic setting (unless you’re going for an alternate Earth type of story where the year is the same as the present, but the world is vastly different), dystopian fiction is considered a sub-genre of science fiction. This means that writing dystopian fiction by the book – by the rules of the genre – means creating a blend of futuristic science and a dystopian society.

In the first part of the guide, we will be taking a look at the different ways of creating a dystopian world. In the second part, we will be looking at the futuristic side of things. Nothing will take your readers out of the story faster than the lack of futuristic technology in your story, especially if the story takes place in the near or far future. Finally, to wrap things up, we will be taking a look at the plot, the story, and the characters, as well as the lure and dangers of social commentary: how to avoid sounding preachy, but still say everything that’s on your mind.

Every advice you will read in this guide – or any other online guides or books – should be taken with a grain of salt and modified until it works for you. Every writer is unique, and each writer writes differently and writes different stories. If a tip worked for us in creating a dystopian fiction story, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work for you. Hence why modifying everything is important. With enough modifications, you can mold any tip into a tool that works for you.

So, without further ado, let us proceed to the guide. Good luck!

Table of Contents

Part 1: Creation of a Dystopian World

Types of dystopian societies, part 2: creation of a futuristic world, 1. technology, 3. everyday life, 4. geography, 5. language/languages, 6. medicine and other miscellaneous, part 3: the dystopian fiction, 1. developing the story, 2. developing characters in a dystopian world, 3. dystopian story clichés to avoid, 4. addressing contemporary issues, 5. potential problems and social commentary.

In order to create a dystopian world, you need to create a dystopian society. Even in the worst post-apocalyptic world that you can imagine, if there is no dystopian society, you don’t have a dystopian world.

However, before you get to the dystopian society, you need a reason for its existence. For example, you cannot have a world where everyone lives with a master (slave society) unless you can show that, for whatever reason, this social arrangement works for at least one group of people (who, in this particular example, would be at the top). The reason can stem from two things:

• A natural disaster (or a man-made disaster) plunged the world into chaos and destruction – an Apocalypse – and from that, rose the dystopian society (as seen in The Hunger Games );
• A natural progression of our world.

Let’s talk a bit more about the second example. Our world has a lot of problems. Take any of them, exaggerate it to (seemingly) abnormal proportions, and you can create a dystopian society that can hit home for many readers. In a way, even if you use the natural disaster example, the dystopian society will still stem from the world’s current issues.

One of the best pieces of advice we can give you here is to read a lot of dystopian books. The classics, like Fahrenheit 451 , 1984 , A Brave New World , to modern examples like The Hunger Games , Divergent , The Maze Runner , and so on. The biggest reason why you should read every possible book in the dystopian genre is to get a feel of all the types of dystopian worlds that have already been created. We will take a deeper look at some of these types, and explain how these types of societies came to be. What you can glean from them is not only how to make them – some of them have actually already become clichés, as far as creativity goes – but how to make them original as well. As the saying goes, nothing in this world is new, and when it comes to fiction, the only thing that’s new is your interpretation.

1) The disease world

The easiest way to create a disease dystopian world is to have a major natural (or manmade) disaster that releases a virus into the air/water/etc. After the initial apocalyptic disaster and the chaos, the world will create a new pecking order. People may be forbidden to visit special areas; they might live underground or under domes made specifically to protect them from this disease. The people who built these will be the ones who are in charge. The ordinary people need to live under a strict code of conduct. They will have many things chosen for them, from who they live with to who they will date, marry, and procreate with.

They will also be the ones who try to help the people who do fall ill. You cannot have a dystopian world riddled with disease and not have at least one character get infected – and either succumb to the disease and die or survive.

Where does the dystopia come in? It comes through control. In every type of dystopian world, the dystopia comes from control. There are always things beneath the surface:

– In a disease world, the government might not be trying to help those who are sick;

– There must be regular checks to see if anyone has gotten sick;

– The sick people usually disappear from the face of the earth, and their families never see them again.

And then, you have things that happen in the world as a result of someone in the family being sick (and maybe even having died from it). For example:

• A girl might not be allowed to date or marry the one she loves because her dad had succumbed to the disease. She is labelled as unfit to procreate because her genes are susceptible to the disease;
• A person might be alienated from society due to the sickness;

2) The military world

The military world is easy enough to create: all you need is a military in charge of everything. Again, this world can be the result of a catastrophic disaster, or it can come by as a natural progression of our world.

What you need is a reason for the military to be in charge. This means that war is unavoidable – either civil war or a world war – and the military has taken charge of governing the people. As a result, the military will be:

– Controlling the channels of communication;

– Controlling the flow of information;

– Keeping the people in line by forbidding individual progress.

As a result, the people will be living in a constant state of military raids. When the military controls information, there will be a lot of contraband running around: music, books, illustrations, paintings, philosophy. Uttering the wrong word in the wrong crowd can be deadly. Not obeying the military means never seeing your family again. Again, it all comes back to control – in a military dystopian world, the military controls everything, and your life and well-being depend on how obedient you are.

3) Police states

A police state is very similar to a military state. However, instead of the military, you have a government that controls the population through the police. In this world, you don’t need a war for the police to be in control. The police state means strict curfew, strict manners of behavior, and again, uttering the wrong word in the earshot of the wrong people can get you imprisoned – and it can even get your family imprisoned as well.

One of the best examples in fiction of a police state is, of course, George Orwell’s 1984 . When you read it, you can feel the oppression as if you’re really there. For that reason, when you’re creating a police state, you need to put your character in situation where he will get into trouble, due to recklessness or rebellious behavior.

In the police state world, and in almost every dystopian world, you have two types of ordinary people. The first type is the openly oppressed: they live in poverty, survive by any means possible, and are forced to obey because they have no other choice. The other type is the type of people who work with the police and government, or work for them. They are just as equally oppressed – even though they probably are not in immediate danger of going hungry or broke – because they are asked to do atrocious things in the name of the country. This world offers you the opportunity to explore both sides of the coin. On one side, you have characters who live the oppression, and on the other side, you have characters who need to help the oppression against their will.

The previous examples were, essentially, dictatorships in different forms. Anarchy is the opposite. No one is being oppressed by the government, however, there is still oppression. The oppression comes from the people themselves.

The thing is, in any type of society, someone has to be in charge of things. It’s in our nature to look for leadership, for someone to guide us. In a society without a government, where anyone can seemingly do anything, you will have the creations of groups: factions, tribes, covens, communities. Again, even their rule will be hard won and easily lost – hence the constant state of struggles for power.

Also, imagine being an ordinary man or a woman in a world where you cannot really call 911 (or another emergency number) when you’re in trouble. Someone is cornering you on the street with a knife, asking you for everything you have and own at the moment. No one will stop to help you in a world of anarchy. Good Samaritans in such a world are rare. Even today, if you’re in trouble, there is a 50% chance that you will not get any help from passersby, especially if you’re in a big and busy city. But, imagine a world where you know, with absolute certainty, that no help is coming.

In a way, the anarchy world is even more difficult and stressful than the police state or military world. The other two strive on order and keeping the status quo, there is no status quo in an anarchy world and there is no order.

What does the ordinary man do in such a world? How do women survive in it? Can you buy off an attacker who is unafraid of any sort of retaliation? How do you protect yourself on a daily basis?

This means that the characters in such a world will need to be physically powerful. They will keep any sort of weapon on themselves to be prepared for any attack. Romance (romance can be present in almost every genre) will be rare and dangerous. And the best paid job will probably be that of a bodyguard. Because everyone will need one.

How does anarchy come to be?

The easiest answer is financial crisis. When money becomes worthless and what you can take with your hands is what you will eat and have, when governments are unable to control the population – nor the police – you have a state of anarchy. However, you can use any kind of cause for an anarchy state. A wave of disease can kill millions of people, and you can have anarchy in the aftermath.

As we previously said, people flock to leadership. We want someone to be in charge so that we don’t have to worry about streetlights and clearing the snow in winter. We like having electricity, TV, and internet. As a result, your story needs to have the seeds of a new civilization.

5) Alien invasion

This is the easiest dystopian world. The alien invasion gave us our alien overlords. Now we live under their rule. They are in charge of how we speak, the jobs we have (all paying minimum wage that barely allow us to survive). The aliens can take children to raise them and brainwash them with their propaganda.

But, like we previously mentioned, it’s all about the interpretation. Remember, your story is not about the invasion itself – in your story, humanity got invaded some years ago (give or take a century, in order to establish the new society). For example, if the aliens invaded 50 years ago, you will still have remnants of the previous world. People will still have memories of how it used to be before the new regime. The story of the alien invasion itself will belong in a different genre – science fiction, or apocalyptic fiction, maybe even post-apocalyptic fiction, which would encompass the time period after the invasion, but before the new civilization has been set.

The aliens themselves can be benevolent or malevolent. A very common example are the benevolent aliens who took over our planet because we were ruining it. They would still be oppressing us, but their cause would be “for the greater good.”

Malevolent aliens, on the other hand, will be oppressing humanity for their own gain. They can have advanced technology we can only dream of developing, and use that to control all of humanity. In a way, this world is very similar to military world and police state, with the difference that the dictators in this case do not come from our world.

6) Inhospitable environment

Similar to the disease ridden dystopian world, the dystopian world with an inhospitable environment can be a dictatorship – where the government controls the population because the outside world is unsafe (as seen in Inside Out – the novel, not the film, as well as Divergent – where the fence keeps the monsters at bay). This world can also be an anarchy world, where every person has to fend for themselves.

What you need here is the reason for the inhospitable environment. The easiest example is radiation. If there are places you cannot go without getting severe radiation burns, then you have places with an inhospitable environment. Another example is the earth itself. Let’s say that global warming gets exponentially progressive, then what will be the result? Will the people be able to live in areas where it’s too hot? And the other extreme, will the people be able to live north of the equator? What would be the result of a nuclear war? How would humans survive in a nuclear winter?

Again, here you need to think not only about how the people would survive and what their daily lives would look like – but also about their society, how and why is it oppressive, because that is what will change the genre from post-apocalyptic science fiction to a dystopia.

7) Constant war

Constant war can be one of the subtlest types of a dystopian world. In Orwell’s 1984 , they even have the slogan “war is peace.” In a world like that, war becomes the driver of the economy, and the people succumbed to it face the police or the military as its face. For that reason, the world with constant war is often a military or a police state.

As previously mentioned, you can have a constant world war, or a constant civil war. In constant world war, the actual war can be fought in a different place in your world, far away from your protagonist, serving only as a social background to the story. In this case, the ordinary people will be away from it, but feel the effects. An oppressive dictatorship can easily take control over the population if said dictatorship’s military is the only thing standing between the population and the foreign invaders. In a way, you would be creating a military world and a police state where war is the reason behind everything. As such, war will also dictate the everyday life of the population.

On the other hand, a constant civil war world is completely different. Here, your characters will be placed in the middle of the conflict between the two factions. Who is your true friend and who is working for the other side? Friends turn against friends, while enemies might need to band together to survive. Moreover, this world offers you the opportunity to have the world itself as a vital plot element, rather than only having it as a background to a different story.

Whichever way you choose to go, keep in mind that you need to show the war in your world. In a constant world war, your characters will have to be aware of it. Whether they actively try to get involved, or get more information about it is not relevant, as long as they are aware of it. When it comes to constant civil war, your characters will not be able to escape from it – unless they go to a different country.

8) Controlled breeding in population

There is something uniquely oppressive about living in a world where someone else gets to decide who you will have children with, when you will do it, how, and so on. In order to create a society where this is the norm, you need to give a good reason for it. There must be a reason why breeding has to be rigidly controlled by the government.

A very easy example is damaged genes – where the government has the right to deem your genes unfit for procreation and forbid you from creating a family. In fact, the world itself can be perfect, the people might never go hungry and they may live in a utopia – however, when you don’t have control over your own family, what is the point of it all?

Another example is sterility. The government may be controlling the population through forced sterilization. It’s not too difficult to find a reason for it: even today, the world is facing overpopulation problems. What happens when there are over 20, 30, 40 billion people in the world? That’s right, the government needs to find a way to curb and corral breeding, as crude as it may sound. And as a result, you can have a world where you don’t choose if you’re going to have children or not, but the government will do it for you.

As with the constant civil war example, in this world, your characters will be in the nick of things. Using controlled breeding simply as a background to your story set in a dystopian society poses the question as to why your story is happening in such a world. Many readers will probably ask themselves if the story is related to the world in any way. If the answer they come up with is no, they will lose the will to suspend their disbelief (the process where the reader accepts everything you present in a book as real) and you will not get loyal fans and readers.

9) Combinations

Of course you can combine different elements to create a unique dystopian world that has not been seen before. However, as with any other genre that allows for experimenting in worldbuilding (epic fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction and all their subgenres), you cannot simply throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

In other words, your combinations should make sense.

For example: in an inhospitable world, it’s easy to imagine that the people will flock to form groups rather than succumb to a centralized government. However, if you add problems with procreation to that world, a centralized government will provide the people the resources they need in order to survive and bring forth a next generation.

As previously mentioned, in police and military states, constant war can come as both the cause for their formation – or as a result of it.

Another thing that you must decide is what happens with the dystopian society by the end of the book. In The Hunger Games , the government, such as it was, got toppled. That, however, is not the case in Orwell’s 1984 . In other words, your story can either be the story of how a dystopian society comes to an end – or it can be an individual story within a dystopian society where the society itself remains relatively unchanged. Most often, the society gets trampled and a new hope is on the horizon for all of its citizens. If you choose to go the other way, make sure that the story itself doesn’t require that. Or, do not have your characters start a revolution just to go out in a blaze of glory without changing anything.

The futuristic world needs to be a part of your dystopian world, unless you’re writing about an alternate earth. And even then, the alternate earth needs to be different than our earth, and that is done through several elements:

Technology: you need ultra-modern technology to make your world believable.

People: cultures, groups, tribes, families. How will the people behave in your world, and how the world affects their behavior is an important worldbuilding element in a dystopian society.

Everyday life : what does your character do for a living? How and why? What kind of jobs have opened up as a result of your world? What do people do for fun? And are they allowed to do anything for fun? and more.

Geography: has the face and appearance of the world changed in any way? Are the continents still the same, or have they moved? Is there any new flora and fauna hiding in the ocean’s depths and the safari’s wilderness?

Language/languages: this is an interesting one – how many languages do you have in the world?

Medicine: do people have access to modern medicine?

These are the basic elements. Let’s take a deeper look at each of them.

We talked a bit about suspension of disbelief – and when it comes to a dystopian society that takes place in the future, nothing kills suspension of disbelief faster than a lack of modern – ultra modern, in fact – technology.

We’re not saying that you need to create a teleportation device for your dystopian society to be believable. However, you must change the everyday life of the characters – make it vastly different from what we have today in order to make the society believable. In fact, you can even create a whole dystopian society around access to modern technology.

To keep in line with our combinations and examples, this is easily seen in The Hunger Games , where the people from the Capitol have access to modern medicine and technology, while the people in the districts struggle and starve. Another example of this can be seen in Uglies by Scott Westerfield. In the world of the Uglies , you undergo a plastic surgery at the age of 16. This surgery makes you beautiful and enables you to access all the benefits from society. There is only one catch: the plastic surgery also erases your previous memories and enables the government to control you. There is no family, no unity, only pleasures and benefits. On the other side of the coin lay the Uglies – the people who have not gone under the knife. They live on technological remains, and their life is difficult, but they have managed to keep their own personality, identity, and individualism.

Modern technology can change everything. From transport to medicine, to jobs and education, and for that reason, technology needs to be a vital part of the world.

We will talk more about creating characters in the third part of the guide. Here, we will be taking a look at the people in your dystopian fiction story. In your novel, you will have characters who will need to be fleshed out well and appear real. However, you will also need characters who will easily fade into the background. These people are a part of your world.

What groups have these people formed? What is the norm? Do they band together in families or live as loners?

The nature of your world will have a big say in this. For example, you cannot live in an inhospitable environment completely alone. On the other hand, a world where the state police rules, will banding together in groups or families be encouraged or discouraged?

Moreover, how do these people act? What is the norm, and what is considered bad in your dystopian society? The easiest course of action is to keep the social norms close to what we are familiar with in our everyday lives. However, keep in mind that your story happens years, maybe even centuries into the future. How have the social norms changed, and what kinds of social norms have been built in the meantime?

Answering these questions will help you flesh out your world. For example, you need to know your characters’ backgrounds, even if those backgrounds never actually come up in the story. You are the one who needs to know them in order to flesh out your characters. When it comes to the people, and all the other worldbuilding elements, you need to know these things for the same reason. They might not come up directly into the story, but it will help you show, rather than just tell about, your world better.

Before your story begins, your protagonist and all the other characters that will be involved in the story have everyday lives. In order to flesh out your world, imagine one day in your protagonist’s life, a day that happened before the story started, a day that can be considered normal, where nothing out of the ordinary happened. Imagine your protagonist waking up, having breakfast, going to work, what happens there, where he or she has lunch, what he or she eats, what he or she does for fun after work (if possible). Which friends does he or she see, and where? Is going to a bar for a drink a normal thing, or is it just not done?

What does your character use for transport? Do cars work in your world? Is there a tube, an underground railway, or do people go to work in flying zeppelins? What are the jobs of the future? What games have been invented? In an oppressive society, how do people have fun, why, and when?

Again, the chances that you will be able to show the ordinary world directly into the story are slim. However, you need to know what the ordinary world and everyday life of your characters and other people are like, so that you can build your story on top of that foundation.

We mentioned previously that due to the fact that the story happens in a world of the future, you need to know what that world looks like. Again, the easiest course of action is to just keep the landscape and overall geography the same. However, depending on how many years into the future you go, you might need to make some drastic changes.

For example, one thousand years from now, the face of the earth will be changed. Look back into history, and note how fast these changes have happened, and you can be creative and come up with a new landscape that will make sense and make your world more realistic.

If your story happens three hundred years from now, instead of one thousand and more, you don’t need to change the face of the earth. However, you do need to think about how the landscape will change. New towns and cities might have sprung up in the meantime, especially if these cities and towns are necessary for your story. In fact, the more you change the everyday world of today, the better, because you want to convince your readers that this is what the earth will be like in three hundred years.

Transport also depends on geography. In an inhospitable environment, how are roads built and why? Do roads get domes overhead for protection, or are they just built underground? What kind of technology is being used to cover long distances? Again, it doesn’t have to be a teleportation device, but, what do planes and ships look like, and are they able to work and function the same as today?

Also, do you need to use any of those in your story? If you do, make sure that these things are presented in your story in a way that ensures that they are a part of the world, not just things you invented to move your story forward. In other words, if people use oversized zeppelins to get from one place to another, make sure that the readers understand that this is normal. In that case, if your characters have another form of transport, make sure to explain that this is outside of the norm and why.

Languages can really make a difference in a world. Considering that the story happens in the future, you can go two different ways:

– Have a universal language that everyone understands;

– Have a multitude of languages appear in your story.

This doesn’t mean that you need to invent a new language.  A lot of novels feature people speaking in different languages without having said language make an appearance in actual words. Sometimes you can just describe it: staccato words, guttural tones, etc. Other times you can have a character understand it and translate for the protagonist. Other times the protagonist can be in a situation where he or she doesn’t understand the speakers – it makes for a good dramatic situation and calls for solutions that solely depend on body language and mimics. And yes, of course, if inventing languages is something that you enjoy, showing it in your novel will flesh your world out even more.

Access to medicine is a big part of any world, especially a dystopian one. If one or more of your characters get injured, where and how do they get help?

Moreover, what new diseases ail humanity in the future, and how curable are they? If you have a disease ridden dystopian world, medicine becomes even more important, especially if it’s the oppressive government that controls the cure.

If ordinary people cannot get easy access to medicine, do they turn to herbs? Is there a black market where the medicine you get is half a cure and half a curse? Who would manage it and why, and how did that come to be? What is the connection that your characters have with it?

When it comes to other miscellaneous, that depends solely on you and your imagination. The world is not just made of jobs, transport, family, fun, medicine, and landscape. There will be trinkets, gadgets, futuristic looking houses and buildings. Locks, keys, advertisements, means of communication and communication devices. And more. The way that you imagine these things and their role in the everyday life of your characters must be present in the story, again, as the foundation upon which you can weave your plot and story.

Once you combine the dystopian society with a futuristic setting, you will have a dystopian fiction world that presents a good foundation upon which your story can be built, brick by brick. What you’re still missing, in this case, is the story itself.

A good story has a well-developed world, characters and plot, the unity of time and space – as in, the readers will get to learn what happened, when, and where – told through the eyes of a narrator. The narrator can tell the story through first person point of view, third person limited point of view, third person omnipresent point of view, or second person point of view (which is probably the rarest type of point of view in fiction).

So, let’s take a look at how to better develop your story and characters and keep it free of clichés.

As we previously mentioned, in a dystopian world, your story is either connected to the dystopian society, and at the end of it, either the society is beginning to change, or it has been toppled like a house of cards. If your story is not connected to the dystopian society, then the dystopian society becomes just a background for it.

Of the two options, the first one offers a better opportunity for a cohesive story. Utopian societies are a myth because the task of making everyone in the world happy and content is too difficult for a society to manage – and even when it does, there is always something lurking under the surface, like in Brave New World , and the utopian society easily turns into a dystopia. On the other hand, dystopian societies beg to be toppled down. For that reason, most dystopian stories either have the main character escape said dystopia, or the society itself is toppled.

However, that doesn’t mean that you cannot develop a story in a dystopian world where the society itself is left completely unchanged and unscathed at the end of the story. What you should not do is touch upon the topic of rebellion and changing the world without delivering at the end. So, how can you develop the story?

A good story has a tightly woven plot and fleshed out characters. The tightly woven plot depends solely on your protagonist: unless you have an ensemble of protagonists with their own point of view chapters, you are telling the story of one person among many. That means the following:

– Your protagonist needs to get a goal very early in the story;

– Your protagonist needs to decide to pursue that goal, and have his or her backstory, together with his or her personality, support that decision;

– Your protagonist needs to embark upon a journey that will change him by the end of the story.

The easiest way to imagine each step is the following:

– The ordinary world, where your protagonist resides;

– Receiving the call to adventure: the setup of the protagonist’s goal;

– Refusing the call, then accepting the call to adventure, the call to the journey;

– Embarking on the journey, and starting to work on achieving the goal;

– Encountering different things along the journey that incited the change within him or her;

– Making mistakes and learning from them;

– After going through both the physical and emotional grinder, the protagonist comes out stronger and better, defeats the enemy, achieves his or her goal, and takes the cake. Cue going back to the ordinary world – or staying in the new world.

Previously, we talked about the people in general in a dystopian world, the creation of groups, tribes, families, their values and cultures and languages. When it comes to creating characters, you can play with some of the following tools:

– Combine the backstory of a character with his or her personality to give him or her a unique, personal goal within the story;

– This will enable you to give the characters a character’s arc, i.e. have the characters learn something by the end of the book and change in a significant way;

– With the combination of background (group in the society, language, culture, family) and personality, you can develop a unique voice for each character.

What’s more important is that each character needs to be important to the story and the protagonist. If the character is not important, then there is no reason for his or her appearance in the story, other than the fact that you want him or her to be there.

On the other hand, avoid using clichéd characters to fulfill a role. For example, if you need someone to be knowledgeable of all things technology, do not have him be a tall, skinny male, with messy hair and glasses, who speaks only in long, explanatory paragraphs and lives and breathes the knowledge. He or she would also have a background. Maybe it’s a girl who dances in her free time. Maybe she delivers the best results when she listens to hard core heavy metal music.

The list goes on. It’s very good to take a look at archetypes, however, it’s the combination of multiple archetypes, often in a contradictory way, that creates the layers of a character.

We all know what clichés are, so let’s jump right into the most common clichés in dystopian fiction:

– Oppressive government that gets toppled;

– Beasts on the outside of a community fence;

– Limitation of knowledge and information;

– Controlling communications;

– The hero who is genetically engineered to be so;

– An extreme divide between the rich and the poor;

– The hero who topples the government was pursued by that very same government.

There are more clichés, of course. From government issued jobs, where you don’t have a say in your profession, to tattoos that denote your status, and many other examples.

Does this mean that you’re not supposed to use any of the clichés?

Of course not. In fiction, things and scenarios and settings become a cliché because they are overused. However, as long as you’re able to add an original spin to a cliché, your story will remain interesting and cohesive. If tattoos denote the status of the citizens, make sure that there is an original idea behind it, and that you will do something original with them. Again, avoid throwing everything at the blank page to see what sticks. Think things through carefully before adding anything that might be considered a cliché in your story. Moreover, make sure to have another pair of eyes on it – often, we writers use clichés in our stories without being aware of it.

A lot of dystopian novels tackle contemporary issues. The level of success in this depends both on the specific issue and the story that the writer has told. The problem here is that often; writers attempt to tackle contemporary issues unsuccessfully.

If you decide to do this, make sure that you know what you want to want to say. For example, if you decide to take on world hunger, increase it to unimaginable levels, and use it as a setting in your story. Also, make sure that there is a point to it.

The reason why writers address issues in their novels, regardless of genre, is because they have something to say about it, and because they want to make their readers think about it. However, most often, writers do it for the first reason and often, without a clear message. It’s what happens when readers say in their reviews that they liked the theme, they liked the idea, but the execution of said idea fell short for them.

In other words, when tackling contemporary issues, know what you’re trying to say. Do not be too convincing in it either – because it’s better to entice the readers to think about it, rather than pound down your opinion with a club.

As we said in the previous section, tackling issues is difficult. However, social commentary presents an even bigger challenge. Not only do you have to do it in a sensitive manner, you have to be careful – sounding too preachy can alienate most of your readers.

The potential problems here are many. It’s enough to offend one reader who has a lot of online followers. Said reader makes a statement about your novel and then you will have a lot of eyes on your story – and not in a good way.

This doesn’t mean that you need to keep a lid on social commentary, though. As we previously said, the best thing that you can do with a dystopian novel is to make your readers think. There is a lot of philosophy in A Brave New World . There are many things to think about in The Hunger Games .

So, how can you do it while avoiding any negative backslash?

First, you must choose your words carefully. Second, the social commentary needs to be relevant to the story or the history of the world. Often, you can use it as a contrast – what used to be compared to what it is now. However, it would sound odd if a 15-year-old started spouting off about everything that’s wrong with society. Even your readers will probably not take those words seriously. In other words, do not put in social commentary just for the sake of it. Make sure that it happens naturally within your novel, at the right place, the right time, and that the characters who are actually involved in the scene have a reason to do so.

Out of all genres, the dystopian fiction offers a lot of leeway for creativity and imagination. You can imagine white towers of glass and steel supported by the sweat and work of the impoverished and imprisoned. You can imagine that and give a solid reason for its existence. In addition, you’re not limited to science – years and years into the future, who’s to say that humanity wouldn’t develop magical powers? Who’s to say that there will not be technology that is nothing more than magic?

The traps here are holes: holes in the background, holes in your plot, continuity errors with your character’s background and errors in your worldbuilding (a city used to be in the West, then, a few pages later, it’s in the East). But, the biggest trap is the society itself. You need a solid reason for its existence.

For example, let’s say that in the future, every person lives with a master. The masters are the rich people, the slaves are the poor people, and neither one of them gets a choice in the matter. They need to live as master and slave. However, at the end of a four-year tenure, the slave gets to choose a new master.

The above described is a premise. Without a solid background reason for the existence of such a society, any story built in that world will topple like a house of cards. Why? Because the prisoner/slave can just escape and live out his life in the wild. There is nothing to gain from choosing a new master. And there is nothing that supports this society, because it doesn’t even seem like the master has any choice or benefit from the arrangement.

In conclusion, make sure that your premise makes logical sense and that you can support it through the history of the world. Then, make sure that, at all times, you know where your story is going, and do not begin story threads and side plots that you cannot finish. Let your imagination soar, but keep it in check, and keep away from preaching your opinions of the world.

We hope you found our guide on how to write a dystopian novel useful.

How to Write Dystopian Fiction: The Ultimate Guide is an article from Writing Tips Oasis . Copyright © 2014-2017 Writing Tips Oasis All Rights Reserved

Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As an art student, she’s moonlighting as a writer and is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her laptop, trying to create her own.

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Home / Book Writing / How to Write a Dystopian Story: Definition, Tips, and How to Publish

How to Write a Dystopian Story: Definition, Tips, and How to Publish

Dystopian fiction has been and continues to be popular in all forms (novels, short stories, movies, shows, and comics ). While delving into the reasons for this would probably require the help of a trained psychologist, you don't have to know why these stories are popular in order to write a good dystopian novel.

And that's just what this article on how to write a dystopian novel will help you do. 

• Defining characteristics of dystopian stories.
• What to do before you start writing.
• Tips for writing a great dystopian story.

Table of contents

• What is Dystopian Literature?
• Get to Know the Genre
• Research the Market
• Consider Oppression in Any Form
• Determine the Time and Place
• Character Development (Nature vs Nurture)
• Nail Down the Specifics of Your World
• Craft the Main Conflict
• Put Increasingly Difficult Barriers in the Way
• Create, Customize, and Publish
• How to Write a Dystopian Story: Conclusion

All storytelling relies on one very basic fundamental: conflict. This is one reason why you don't often see utopian stories. After all, in a world where nothing is wrong and everyone has everything they need to live healthy, fulfilled lives, there's really no cause for conflict. 

While we would be lucky to live in a utopia, there's a big difference between striving for a better society in real life and picking up a book for entertainment. Utopian stories are, in a word, boring.

On the flip side of this speculative fiction coin, you have dystopian stories, which are rife with conflict. A dystopia is a society in which there is widespread suffering, injustice, and oppression. If that's not a backdrop for great conflict, I don't know what is. 

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But not all dystopian novels feature brutal neo-fascist regimes that squash all dissent with an iron fist. Some dystopian stories are a little more subtle, presenting a society that is, at a glance, pretty good. It's only when you dig a little deeper that you see the dirty secrets that are swept under the rug by those in power. These are called false utopia stories, and they're a fairly common form of fictional dystopian work. 

Whatever kind of dystopian story you're aiming to write, you'll need to make sure that you hit the primary tropes of the genre . I’ll discuss some of those tropes below. But first, let’s talk about things it’s good to do before you start writing your dystopian story. 

Do These Things Before You Write Your Dystopian Novel

The following tips can help you make the best of your writing time. Whether you've already started your story or you're just now formulating your idea, these tips can help. 

The best thing you can do before you start the creative writing process is read! Not only can reading dystopian novels provide you with plenty of inspiration, but it can help you get to know this science fiction subgenre . To that end, here are several popular dystopian novels to check out:

• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Divergent by Veronica Roth
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Giver by Lois Lowry

Since the dystopian subgenre is a popular one, it can be difficult for new writers to gain traction on Amazon. Simply publishing your novel is not enough. If you want to be the proud writer of a popular dystopian novel, then you'll have to do some planning. Ideally, that planning should begin before you start writing. 

There are other categories on Amazon that could be a great fit for your book but may be less competitive than the dystopian category. This is why I suggest doing your research before you write. You could find a category that's adjacent to dystopian literature that might work better for the story you have in mind. And if that's the case, you could then make sure to include the things that readers are looking for in that story. 

A couple of examples of “dystopian-adjacent” categories include Alternative History, Post-Apocalyptic, and Cyber Punk. 

While it's possible to do decent market research by scrolling through Amazon with purpose, this isn't the most time-efficient way to do it. 

This is why I recommend using the tool I created to make market research and advertising easier. It's called Publisher Rocket , and it can help you analyze categories, find books like yours, and select customer search terms that readers actually use.  

It can also help you gather a list of keywords for use in Amazon Advertising, which is a powerful tool many successful writers use in their marketing efforts. 

Check out Publisher Rocket here to learn more. 

Tips on Writing a Great Dystopian Story

Good dystopian tales explore what it means to be a human while also providing readers with an intriguing and often disturbing glimpse at an extreme form of society. The tips below can help you balance these factors to keep readers turning the pages. 

While you want your story to be about the humans living in your dystopian society, you do need to put some serious thought into the backdrop of the story. Dystopian societies are characterized by widespread oppression of some kind, even if it’s oppression by social norms. 

This could mean strict censorship of speech, expression, or thought. It could mean that every child born is taken away to be a ward of the state until they're eighteen. Or it could be a society in which people are subtly enslaved by oppressive economic policies and the strict control of resources. 

Here are a few broad dystopian scenarios you can use to influence your story:

• The loss of individual freedom and expression.
• The restructuring of society after nuclear war decimates the planet. 
• The commoditization of human life.
• The crushing grasp of a totalitarian government. 
• Technological advancements fueling oppressive systems (armies of robotic police patrolling the streets, artificial intelligence pulling strings for seemingly unfathomable reasons, etc.)
• Environmental degradation resulting in societal collapse.
• Alternative history stories in which some event in our past changed the direction of human society for the worst.

These are just a few examples. The best oppressive dystopian regimes are based on topics important to our world. By taking a real-life example and turning it up to eleven, you can create a great dystopian setting for your story.  

While many dystopian stories happen on Earth in the not-too-distant future, there are numerous other settings for these stories. They don't even have to take place on Earth if you don't want. You can make up an entire planet if it serves your story well. 

You'll also want to think about time. If they happen on Earth, is the story taking place in the past (alternative history) or the future? Is it taking place in an alternative present? Even if you don't spell it out for the reader, it's a good idea to know for yourself so you're consistent in your storytelling. 

It's important to remember that there's a fine line between the dystopian genre and other science fiction subgenres. If your world is overly fantastic, featuring aliens and space travel, it could easily be seen by readers as less of a dystopian book and more of a space opera or some other SF subgenre. 

In order to keep it in the realm of dystopian work, you'll want to keep the society fairly recognizable for modern readers. 

While some writers may start with the overall concept of their dystopian world, this isn't the only way to do things. You may want to start with your main character and let them influence the setting as you write. 

Either way, you'll want to give serious thought to how people living in your imagined world would behave under the conditions you've created . In many dystopian stories, the protagonist is a normal person just trying to survive with no real thoughts of revolution—until something happens ( the inciting incident ) that drives them from their ordinary world, putting them on a crash course with the powers that be. 

In other stories, the protagonist is a government lackey who works as a cog in the oppressive machine until they decide they've had enough. 

These are far from the only options you have. In fact, you'll want to stay away from cookie-cutter protagonists. Let your knowledge of the genre influence you, helping you to write a unique character who has believable wants and needs (not just an implacable hate for the rulers or a blind drive to take the system down).

Likewise, decide on your antagonist. If it's going to be a person, then spend as much time on their development as you do on the protagonist. If it's going to be the faceless foot soldiers of the totalitarian government, think about the ways you'll present the evils they embody. 

Once you have the broad ideas down, use them to inform the more minute details of your world. By this I mean things like cultural norms and traditions. If your main character were to rebel at first on a small scale, what would that look like? Skipping the evening prayer? Not averting their eyes when passing a member of the ruling class on the street? 

The little details really help to set your world apart in the reader's mind . They provide the texture of your society and serve to show the differences and similarities between it and the one we live in now. For more information on nailing down the details of your world, check out our article on worldbuilding . 

Crafting the main conflict of your story may seem like a no-brainer. Your protagonist has to incite revolution and take down the oppressive society, right? 

Not so fast. Just because you're writing a dystopian story doesn't mean it has to end with the defeat of “Big Brother.” While this is certainly an option, don't feel like you must work toward this outcome. 

Some dystopian novels end with the characters succumbing to the societal pressure to conform. Others end with a failed revolution. And some of them don't even attempt to tackle this grand objective. 

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In fact, your central conflict doesn't even have to touch on this directly. It could be a heist story set in a dystopian future. It could be a coming-of-age story in which the character realizes that there are certain trade-offs to be made. Perhaps the majority in this society is willing to trade some personal freedom for better living conditions, even if it does seem like the worst thing in the world to your adolescent character. 

If your main conflict will be about taking down the dystopian society, ensure your character has a good reason to want this. Show them discovering this need or being thrust into it. Just as unexplainably evil characters are boring antagonists, unexplainably heroic and “good” protagonists are also boring. 

Give the reader a good reason to identify with the protagonist , and they will care about whatever that character's ultimate goal is. 

The basic building blocks of any popular fiction story remain true in the dystopian genre. Once your main character has a goal, you can create suspense and drive conflict by putting barriers in their way . These barriers should be put into place by the antagonist, forcing the protagonist to learn and grow, creating a character arc. 

The climax should be the most impactful and difficult moment for the character. Whether the protagonist achieves their goal and defeats the antagonist will be up to you. 

For more on plot structures, check out our story structure hub here . 

When you've written and edited your dystopian manuscript, you'll still need to have it professionally formatted for publishing in eBook and print. 

With Atticus , you can actually do both the writing and the formatting. You can even see what the finished product will look like right in the tool, allowing you to customize it to your liking with just a few mouse clicks. 

You can also set writing goals, edit with ProWritingAid, insert your own scene breaks, and much more. Check out Atticus here to see everything it can do.

Whether you're writing a novel or a dystopian short story, the tips above should help you create an original and market-honed piece of literature. The combination of setting and character can help you establish the details of the story. And when you determine your primary conflict, you can put barriers in the protagonist's way as they work toward their goal. 

If you want some story prompts you can use to jumpstart the writing process, check out our dystopian writing prompts article .

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

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Imagine a world where exploration is forbidden, and write a story about a character who defies this rule to satisfy their innate curiosity., write a story imagining 'what if' one historic invention had never happened. how would our world be different now, set your story in a world where time travel has been perfected, and people can use it to hop between alternate timelines — but at a cost., set your story in a society where everyone is constantly aware of unwanted surveillance., set your story in an unfiltered world, where people are always honest about how they feel..

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Write a story that starts with, "The clock ticked past 61."

• Write about the end of the world… of Atlantis.

A mobile app tells you the amount of time that you have left to live. One morning, this time on everyone's phones syncs to the same number.

The last ragtag group of humans on earth meets the last ragtag group of zombies on earth..

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• Write a story about two enemies who must band together to survive the aftermath of the end of the world.

You are a clone designed to mimic your human's every movement and habit so that you can seamlessly take over after the apocalypse starts, but there's just one problem: your human is the weirdest human being ever.

It's one hour before the end of the world. what do you do with that time.

• Write a story about a group of zombie friends who go adventuring together after the apocalypse.

No one left on Earth knows what the color blue looks like… until one day, the great fog parts and the sky appears for the first time in a millennia.

In the form of diary entries, write a story from the perspective of the last remaining person in the world., in the end, it wasn't humankind that destroyed the world. it was (fill in the blank)., set your story in a town that’s teetering on the edge of something dark, literally or metaphorically., your character, by chance or habit, peers through a telescope. they see something unusual — what is it, set your story in a silent house by the sea., win $250 in our short story competition 🏆.

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The best dystopian writing prompts

We're living through strange times — but they could always get stranger. Dystopian literature allows us to project ourselves into the distant (or not too distant) future, and imagine what we might find. Perhaps a post-apocalyptic landscape ravaged by war, a nightmarish government who are in absolute control of its citizens, or a human race that has merged with technology. The possibilities are endless, and we're here to provide some more inspiration.

To get you started, here are our top ten dystopian writing prompts:

• Write a story about a character who is certain the world is going to end today.
• In the end, it wasn't humankind that destroyed the world. It was (fill in the blank).
• You are a clone designed to mimic your human's every movement and habit so that you can seamlessly take over after the apocalypse starts, but there's just one problem: your human is the weirdest human being ever.
• A mobile app tells you the amount of time that you have left to live. One morning, this time on everyone's phones syncs to the same number.
• No one left on Earth knows what the color blue looks like… until one day, the great fog parts, and the sky appears for the first time in millennia.

If you're looking for some more help writing your dystopian story, check out this free resource:

• The Ultimate Worldbuilding Guide (free resource) — To write a dystopian story, you need to understand the world you're creating, inside and out. What kind of resources are available? How has society changed? Is there crime, or poverty, or has the world left its issues behind — or at least the government claims it has? Our worldbuilding template will ask the questions you need to find this information.

Want more help learning how to write a dystopian short story? Check out How to Write a Short Story That Gets Published — a free, ten-day course guiding you through the process of short story writing by Laura Mae Isaacman, a full-time editor who runs a book editing company in Brooklyn.

Ready to start writing? Check out Reedsy’s weekly short story contest , for the chance of winning $250 , plus potential publication in our literary magazine, Prompted ! You can also check out our list of writing contests or our directory of literary magazines for more opportunities to submit your story.

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How do you write a dystopian story? 5 tips

Dystopian stories about characters or societies grappling with ‘bad places’ like post-apocalyptic wastelands remain popular for several reasons. For one, their situations naturally supply intense conflict, drama and suspense. How do you write a dystopian story? Start with these 5 tips:

• Post author By Jordan
• 19 Comments on How do you write a dystopian story? 5 tips

First, what is a dystopian story?

The word ‘dystopia’ comes from the Latin prefix dys-  meaning ‘bad’ and the root topos meaning ‘place’ (literally a ‘bad place’).

The word is often contrasted with utopia . Thomas More coined utopia in 1516. It was the title of his book about an imaginary island where legal, political and social systems all create social harmony. The word thus suggests ‘paradise’ and is often taken to mean a ‘good place’, even though utopia’s roots actually mean ‘no place’.

In fiction, a ‘dystopia’ is:

‘An imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.’ ‘Dystopia’,  Oxford Dictionaries Online

Famous dystopias in books

Famous dystopian novels include George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In Orwell’s classic, Great Britain has become a totalitarian province and the government has outlawed ‘thought crimes’.

Another example is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). In this novel, women are kept as baby-making servants with scarcely any basic rights.

How do you write a good dystopian story?

1. Start with a strong scenario

Classic dystopian novels and stories begin with a troubled scenario . For example:

• Great Britain, now named ‘Airstrip One’, has become a province of a greater territory named ‘Oceania’ ruled by the ‘Party’. The Party uses ruthless ‘Thought Police’ to persecute individualism and independent thought ( Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• A radical religious group calling itself ‘The Sons of Jacob’ overthrows the United States government. It replaces it with a religious political system based on Old Testament fanaticism, removing women’s rights to read, write, own property and handle money ( The Handmaid’s Tale )

We can easily see why each of these would be ‘bad places’ (or dystopian settings) for characters who value their freedoms and rights.

What makes these good dystopian scenarios?

Each of the above scenarios is strong. It presents a situation that would give any character interesting motivations, to either uphold the system or destroy (or simply survive) it .

The two dystopia examples above are both political dystopias.

Other types of dystopian scenarios include environmental ones . For example, the post-apocalyptic environment in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake  (2003).

In this novel, characters struggle in the fallout caused by scientific, medical experimentation. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), a father and son must journey and survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where some unnamed catastrophe has destroyed most of civilization.

These are all dramatic situations that give rise to interesting stories of hope, resistance, survival, memory and loss. They’re cautionary tales about the dangers of power or the fragility of the lives or rights we might take for granted. And sometimes they’re optimistic stories too, showing the power of the human spirit to endure the difficult and painful.

2. Create a believable dystopian world

A believable dystopian world typically presents a keen sense of threat, menace or discomfort .

Example of a fantasy dystopian world

Even though it is not a ‘dystopian novel’ in the strict sense of the word, C.S. Lewis’s beloved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) from his Chronicles of Narnia  series has elements of dystopian fiction.

In The Lion […], four siblings stumble upon a magic world where the ‘White Witch’, Jadis, has stopped the seasons. By magic, Jadis keeps Narnia in eternal winter. This dystopian environment affects Narnia’s talking animals who plead with the siblings to help free them from Jadis’ spell.

At the start of Lewis’ novel, Narnia is a world that used to be better, freer, easier to live in. It has become a dystopia through the abuse or misuse of power (in this case, magical power). This is a common theme in dystopian fiction .

To create a believable dystopian world:

• Know how your world got to its current state:  Lewis’s shows us early in the children’s adventures in Narnia why things are in their sorry state. It’s up to you whether you reveal the origin of your dystopia early, later, or keep it as a mysterious background detail that shapes characters’ arcs .
• Describe dystopian settings well:  What is a dystopian setting? It’s a ‘bad place’ of suffering and injustice, like the winter world in Narnia that disrupts animals’ life cycles. Describe these settings so we can tell clearly what makes them so uncomfortable. 
• Brainstorm and imagine details: Think of details down to what characters are able to eat, wear, do. How might their altered social, natural or political environment change ordinary interactions and activities?

3. Develop your dystopian settings

Dystopian settings such as cities razed by global conflicts will naturally present characters with many challenges, from dangerous, crumbling infrastructure (environmental challenges) to social issues such as increased lawlessness, mutual mistrust and other social effects.

When developing a dystopian setting, ask questions such as:

• Who now has power now, and why?
• Who is the most vulnerable in this dystopian society and why?
• What still works and what no longer exists?
• What do people remember and what have they forgotten (e.g. names, cultural practices, people, places)?

Example of an effective dystopian setting

In David Mitchell’s era-hopping adventure novel Cloud Atlas  (2004), the middle section is set in a time that could be post-apocalyptic or ‘pre-civilization’. It’s hard to tell, at first. In this section of the story titled ‘Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After’, Zachry, an old man, narrates his memories of an event called ‘The Fall’ that wiped out his people’s predecessors. Mitchell brilliantly camouflages familiar places and names using deliberate misspellings, so we gradually see pieces of Zachry’s past (the earth we know today) emerge. He writes ‘Hawaii’, for example, as ‘Ha-why’ in Zachry’s narration.

Mitchell uses shifting language to show what changes in a place after a catastrophe. We see history’s process of holding onto and forgetting in action. This creates a sense of Zachry’s world spanning a long, partially forgotten history. Some events are remembered in detail, while others fade, enter folklore.

4. Create conflicts, threats and challenges

Because a dystopia is a ‘bad place’, it follows they are usually places rich in conflict and ‘trouble’ .

In ‘Sloosha’s Crossing’ in Cloud Atlas, Zachry recalls cannibal raids by rival tribes. In The Handmaid’s Tale ‘Unwomen’ are women unable to bear children, and are banished to highly polluted areas called ‘The Colonies’.

Where there is a system of injustice, unfairness, danger or oppression, there are interesting situations for characters to resist, avoid, escape or confront.

When writing a dystopian story, it’s helpful to think about best- and worst-case scenarios. These help us identify what characters want to do, and also what they want to avoid. 

What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character in this dystopia? And what is the best? [ Use the ‘Characters’ section of Now Novel’s story outlining tools to find characters’ individual best and worst case scenarios.]

Bringing characters into close scrapes with worst-case scenarios is good for creating tension and conflict.

5. Give characters credible motivations

In dystopian fiction, as in other types of stories, character motivations are important . There has to be a reason  why the government bans free thought, or decides to meddle with women’s reproductive rights and other liberties.

A tyrant, such as the leader of the ‘Sons of Jacob’ in Atwood’s novel, may be motivated by:

• Ideology – the set of beliefs they hold (tyrants may believe, for example, that a fanatically literal interpretation of the Old Testament is the only ‘right’ way while quietly ignoring how it also gives them extreme gender or other privilege)
• Lust for power
• Backstory such as personal trauma that has left them embittered

Whatever your characters’ reasons for upholding or demolishing your story’s dystopia, it has to make sense for the story. Ask yourself:

• What does my character gain if they choose to be complicit with the ‘bad’ aspects of this dystopia?
• What could my character gain if they attempt to fight or overcome the underlying situation?

We see these differences in how people respond to tough environments in a story with dystopian elements like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. One sibling, Edmund, is more selfish and less immune to flattery. He is thus easily charmed and manipulated by Jadis to do her bidding, betraying the others.

Get feedback on your dystopian story idea or extracts from your draft, and use Now Novel’s story outlining tools to brainstorm the many settings, characters and situations that will shape your story.

Related Posts:

• How to write dystopian fiction: 9 core ideas
• How to write the middle of a story: 9 tips
• How to write your life story: 7 tips to start
• Tags writing dystopian stories

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

19 replies on “How do you write a dystopian story? 5 tips”

Good stuff. These tips would also apply well to other genres. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for reading and sharing your feedback (and sharing our articles on Twitter), Elias.

Thanks, Mo!

This really helps with all my homework and my english

Hi Nyambura, that’s lovely to hear. Good luck with your homework.

Key thing really is concept (strength of concept) and detail. I also truly value believability – make it relatable! “Novel: Coronavirus” wouldn’t be a bad working title, thinking about it. PS Surprised there’s no examples from Ray Bradbury or Aldous Huxley!

Hi Josh, thank you for sharing your interesting insights on this. I agree regarding believability. I like your working title idea, the play on words. Good point re: Bradbury and Huxley, perhaps when this article gets an update there’ll be more seminal dystopia examples included. Thanks for reading and for your feedback!

Hi, Thanks for all these tips. I need to write a dystopian novel. It will help me!

It’s a pleasure, Lila! We’re only glad to help with your writing.

First, my name is a play on words. Second, qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm SO HELPFULLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Is it a play on ‘anonymous’? ? thank you for your feedback!

Trying to write a dystopian novel, Big help!! Ty!!! Im taking notes down now! Maybe youll see a book some day!

Hi Holly, that’s great to hear. Good luck with your book!

I am writing a short dystopian story and it has to have an idea of the greater good, some dialogues, and descriptive language.

That sounds interesting, thank you for sharing that. When you say ‘has to’, are you writing it for a school assignment? If you’d like feedback on any part of it, you can swap critiques with other members in our writing community.

It is very helpful thx.

Thanks so much for these useful tips! For a while now, I have been trying to write a dystopian book/piece. I will definitely use this tips to write it!

Hi Harry, it’s a pleasure! Good luck with your dystopian story.

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100 dystopian writing prompts

November 23, 2023 by Richard Leave a Comment

Imagine chilling futures where emotions are suppressed, memories are hacked, nature is walled-off, and totalitarian regimes control everything from relationships to the weather. Welcome to our 100 dystopian writing prompts. 

Let your creativity run wild envisaging sinister agencies, social manipulation, banned contraband, restricted freedoms, underground resistance, and daring escapes.

Buckle up for a thrilling ride into menacing speculative worlds where you’ll encounter thought police, memory black markets, mandated cryogenic freezing, sinister surveillance, climate totalitarians, and other dystopian threats.

In this comprehensive prompt collection, you’ll find 100 disturbing, tantalizing scenarios captured through cliffhanger “write about…” cues guaranteed to spark new realms of suspense, conflict and tension.

From emotion-suppressing drugs to memory-recording devices gone wrong, mandated matchmaking by genetic compatibility to expiring at a certain age, these prompts zoom in on rebellious individuals fighting corrupt power structures for a second chance at passion, self-determination and a future they define.

Let these dystopian sparks ignite stories of defiant resistance, dangerous flaw-exposing exposés, tense psychological operations, off-the-grid escapes into the wild, and other bold tactics to undermine oppression. Can truth and justice prevail? That’s for you to decide…

Now, enter these speculative dystopian worlds and let your imagination run wild! Where will these 100 dystopian writing prompts take you?

• A device is invented that allows the government to control people’s thoughts and actions. Write about someone trying to escape this fate.
• Strict laws are passed limiting how many children families can have. Tell the story of a family faced with an impossible decision.
• A catastrophic event wipes out most of humanity. Write about a small group of survivors banding together.
• All books and writings from history are burned. Write about an effort to preserve or recreate knowledge.
• A virus spreads causing infertility. Follow individuals desperate to have children in this dire world.
• The population is segregated into zones based on genetic engineering marks. Write from the perspective of someone yearning for the outside world.
• Water becomes extremely scarce. Write about the lengths one teen goes to in order to save their community.
• A company develops AI androids used for manual labor. Tell the story of an android developing forbidden aspirations for freedom.
• Citizens’ use of language is restricted and simplified. Write about a group secretly communicating in metaphors and code.
• Memories and dreams are recorded as digital data. Write about a hacker who accesses people’s intimate memories illegally.
• The government mandates that certain emotions must be suppressed. Write from the perspective of someone struggling with this.
• Time travel is invented but strictly forbidden. Write about someone risking it all to change past atrocities.
• The population is herded into city centers while the wildlands are off limits. Write from the view of someone escaping to experience natural life.
• A virus spreads that removes facial features. Write about the fear and identity issues that arise in afflicted society.
• The government replaces school with endless VR propaganda simulators. Write about an underground effort to preserve free thinking.
• A strict rating system quantifies each citizen’s worth. Write about someone striving to boost their rating or hide their true selves.
• The population is forced to take pills that alter perceptions of reality. Write about someone slowly realizing the deception.
• Strict beauty standards are set by genetic modification. Write about someone pursuing dangerous underground procedures for a boost in status.
• The elderly are exiled once past working age. Write about someone hiding an elderly relative.
• A curfew is set banning unauthorized night activity. Write about a group of youths planning secret late night events.
• Population growth is restricted through mandated cryogenic freezing at certain ages. Write about someone fighting the system or going on the run as their freeze date approaches.
• A pandemic requires protective gear covering the body and face, removing unique identifiers. Write about someone desperate to see a loved one’s uncovered face before they are frozen.
• The government tracks every move of citizens through mandatory chips. Write about a man who tries to live off the grid, undetected.
• A tiered citizenship system is based on serving in civil or military duties for years at a time. Write from perspective of a low-tier citizen dreaming of elevation in status.
• Failure to take your mandated medications results in banishment to lawless outlands. Write about someone hiding mental clarity without chemicals.
• The natural landscape outside congested urban centers is off limits behind walled boundaries. Write from the perspective of someone who escapes to experience freedom in nature.
• A company owns the patent to a synthesized formula needed for human health and jacks up the prices, causing suffering. Write about activists trying to recreate it.
• The government controls the weather and all climate conditions. Write about a group that wages weather terrorism demanding natural variability.
• Corporations run sovereign city-states. Write about a skilled worker trying to break their never-ending contract.
• A virus makes most animals extinct. Write about underground efforts to save remaining species.
• The government mandates matchmaking based on genetic compatibility. Write from view of someone struggling when they fall for the “wrong” match.
• The ability to reproduce has become allocated to only certain designees. Write about a black market for illegal conceptions.
• A pandemic requires everyone to live in isolated pods. Write about someone fighting sensory deprivation to stay sane.
• Lifespans are significantly cut short at a certain age through mandated termination procedures. Write from view of someone approaching their expiry trying to fight it.
• Write about the invention and consequences of a device that can record and play back memories.
• Only ultra high-IQ individuals are allowed in leadership roles. Write about identity struggles for a character judged unintelligent by mandated measurements.
• Write about teams competing in a post-apocalyptic city for scarce resources needed to survive decaying conditions.
• Write from the perspective of a hacker who works to take down an authoritarian technocracy from the inside.
• Write about someone forced to become an “information specialist” manipulating news and data feeds to serve ulterior motives.
• Write about a pandemic leading to development of advanced robotic caregiver technology that goes awry.
• Write about a protest against emotion-suppressing drugs led predominantly by teenagers seeking freedom and passion.
• Write about a survivor banding groups together to restore culture in a controlled dystopia that has erased past artifacts and identity.
• Write about black market dealers who smuggle banned physical books to those yearning for lost knowledge and history.
• Write about a student who discovers long-suppressed writings revealing troubling truths about their society’s history.
• Write a conversation between an elder and a young person who yearns to experience fundamental rights and choices stripped from society, like childbearing.
• Write about a small group that escapes into the wilderness and attempts to build an equitable utopia outside dystopian constraints.
• Write about someone fighting the system through graffiti symbolizing hope and metaphorical messaging to incite revolution.
• Write a debate between a rebel faction leader and authoritarian regime loyalist on freedoms vs order.
• Write a prison narrative about inmates alternating virtual reality experiences to mitigate their sentences through psychological manipulation.
• Write a tale of genius inventor who creates wondrous technology in secret that could undermine authoritarian control or elevate freedom if revealed.
• Strict sleep quotas are enforced via brain implants that monitor REM cycles to maximize productivity. Write from the perspective of someone suffering from sleep deprivation who secretly changes their schedule.
• In order to improve worker compliance, the government has developed a chemical to make citizens enjoy menial labor tasks. Write about a janitor who loves their job a disturbing amount.
• A powerful caste system has formed among humans after rampant genetic experimentation. Write from the perspective of an oppressed “inferior” caste dreaming of a better life.
• Most animals have gone extinct except for those pets approved by the Environmental Ministry. Illegal pet ownership is severely punished, but a thriving black market exists.
• In a bid to reduce crime, the government now requires parents to screen embryos for a variety of physical and psychological illnesses. However, many families now feel pressured to produce the “perfect child”.
• Due to food shortages, restaurants and grocery stores have been outlawed. All meals are now supplied by the Nutritional Distribution Bureau’s ready-made, cost-effective food products. However, a speakeasy dedicated to actual cooking has opened.
• In an effort to increase efficiency and national unity, a universal language with strictly monitored vocabulary and grammar standards is imposed. Those who fail language tests are penalized by social restrictions.
• The Life Extension Agency provides age rejuvenation treatments, but primarily to the social and financial elite. The poor struggle with shortened life expectancies, leading some to join radical insurgent groups.
• An innovative new Direct Neural Interface allows people’s brains to connect directly to a vast online network. However, hacking into someone’s mind is now disturbingly easy.
• In order to prepare youth for the harsh, dangerous streets, local Fight Clubs are organized to systematically toughen up teens and channel aggression effectively.
• Due to rampant unemployment, the government now drafts citizens into mandatory civil or military service positions for 10-15 years. Failure to accept an assignment results in imprisonment.
• In a bid to improve public safety, petite auditory assistants called “Shoulder Angels” are issued to all citizens to provide helpful guidance. However, their advice is not always ethical, wise or in one’s best interest.
• In order to improve citizen health and longevity, the ingestion of all non-synthetic foods and beverages is highly restricted. However an underground movement of “Whole Food Rebels” persists.
• Due to widespread infertility, prospective parents are only allowed children via cloning, therefore insuring a continuous labor force. However, a generation of identical offspring creates disturbing identity issues.
• In order to eliminate homelessness and unemployment, all citizens must work as general labor at massive collective Farms that supply the nation with food and textile materials. The division of labor is demanding but fair.
• Rigid rules dictate what colors, textures and styles of clothes that citizens may wear depending on their age, profession and social status. Fashion diversity is forbidden, with black market clothing trends continuously emerging.
• Due to rampant hacking, personal data devices have been outlawed and removed. However an illegal group of elite hackers known as “The Archives” still uncovers and leaks confidential information.
• Write about a future in which a volcanic eruption blots out the sun for years, killing crops and plunging society into chaos, violence and despair.
• Write about an agency that pushes invasive brain implants that allow video recording of memories and forced data sharing against people’s will.
• Write about a future where dreams can be bought and sold on a black market operated through tapping into people’s minds as they sleep to steal visions.
• Write about a divided territory where selected wealthy elite live safely in utopian cities while the remaining majority survive dystopian wastelands of pollution and scarcity.
• Write about those battling a law requiring registration with Social Harmony Agency that tracks emotions and punishes discord deemed damaging to psychological unity.
• Write about resisters fighting against authoritarian rules forbidding casual relationships, friendships or non-approved personal connections in order to boost productivity.
• Write about an uprising against an enforced caste system that assigns professions, living quarters, resources access and more based on DNA-based hierarchies.
• Write about rebels secretly trying to instill history, art and free thinking in younger generations raised in a neutered, whitewashed and overly structured world.
• Write about someone from an agency assigned to manipulate records to maintain historical propaganda narratives confronting their buried conscience.
• Write about teachers secretly providing banned materials, intellectual freedom and emotional nurturing despite rigid restrictions on permitted lessons and development.
• Write about twin siblings torn apart by diverging citizenship tiers granted to each one, leaving the other in oppressive conditions they try escaping.
• Write about time travelers tasked with altering past mistakes and unintentionally fracturing reality through over-corrections of history.
• Write about nature rebels trying to preserve plant life needed for clandestine botanical experiments to undo genetic disasters humans have caused through manipulation.
• Write about librarians archiving confiscated artifacts, art and documents on the black market struggling to preserve cultural history for future generations.
• Write about a hacker leaking scandalous secrets of upper-crust elite, revealing their criminal hypocrisy and oppression behind friendly public facade.
• Write about investigators tracing early warning signs of current totalitarian injustice back many generations to disturbing past historical events.
• Write about rebels secretly planning targeted infrastructure sabotage or disruptive hacks of controlling surveillance systems to enable societal chaos that disrupts tyranny.
• Write about scientists furtively trying to revive extinct species in a controlled environment before authorities crush their unauthorized genetic efforts.
• Write about youth experiencing forbidden cultural artifacts like non-digitized photographs, physical vinyl records or ancient paper books for the first time, feeling awakened.
• Write about a team planning a high stakes escape mission to lead refugees from border detention camps to safe international territory.
• Write about hackers digitally falsifying citizen records to manipulate assignment of soul-crushing undesirable labor mandates.
• Write about activists utilizing hidden shortwave radio signals, coded language newspaper ads and other old-fashioned techniques to secretly coordinate resistance.
• Write about rebel scientists planning risky psychological experiments challenging theories that current authoritarian rule is an inevitable consequence of innate human society dynamics.
• Write about smugglers obtaining prohibited goods like sugar, caffeine or alcohol from foreign black markets to cater to restricted domestic population demands.
• Write about resisters launching independent radio broadcasts challenging state-sanctioned news propaganda to circulate suppressed truths.
• Write about rebel journalists using old-fashioned typewriters, printers and paper materials to publish and distribute banned insider exposés anonymously.
• Write about a team capturing footage of dystopia oppression via hidden shoulder cameras to make viral videos awakening outside world to atrocities.
• Write about citizens banding together under pretense of harmless community sport team as disguise to enable secret seditious coordination.
• Write about defectors and infiltrators leaking confidential information regarding government-sponsored experiments trying to control or manipulate citizens’ minds.
• Write about a duo discovering shocking classified files revealing orchestrated crisis events used as pretext to justify implementing incremental totalitarian measures.
• Write about activists utilizing public wall art, performance protests, symbolic clothing and defiant slang phrases to express seditious messages under the radar.
• Write about rebel families harboring unauthorized pregnancies in concealed rooms or underground spaces, despite harsh penalties if newborns are discovered.
• Write about defiant hackers digitally attacking key infrastructure in Vendetta-like psychological operations to expose regime corruption, undermine authority and awaken masses.

I hope you enjoyed our 100 dystopian writing prompts, and I hope they inspire you to write something great. If you write something you want to share, please leave it in the comments. Also, please remember we have many other writing prompts on our site you might find helpful.

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About Richard

Richard Everywriter (pen name) has worked for literary magazines and literary websites for the last 25 years. He holds degrees in Writing, Journalism, Technology and Education. Richard has headed many writing workshops and courses, and he has taught writing and literature for the last 20 years.  

In writing and publishing he has worked with independent, small, medium and large publishers for years connecting publishers to authors. He has also worked as a journalist and editor in both magazine, newspaper and trade publications as well as in the medical publishing industry.   Follow him on Twitter, and check out our Submissions page .

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How to Write a Dystopian Novel

Last Updated: May 28, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Lucy V. Hay . Lucy V. Hay is a Professional Writer based in London, England. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lucy is an author, script editor, and award-winning blogger who helps other writers through writing workshops, courses, and her blog Bang2Write. Lucy is the producer of two British thrillers, and Bang2Write has appeared in the Top 100 round-ups for Writer’s Digest & The Write Life and is a UK Blog Awards Finalist and Feedspot’s #1 Screenwriting blog in the UK. She received a B.A. in Scriptwriting for Film & Television from Bournemouth University. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 89% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 188,244 times.

Dystopian writing focuses on a future world in which things have not gone well for the human race. This genre can be a fun way to explore technology, global issues, and powerful institutions in a creative, action packed way. To write a dystopian novel, start by brainstorming ideas and reading good examples of the genre. Then, sit down and compose the novel with well written characters and a detailed dystopian world.

Brainstorming Ideas for the Novel

• Try taking a current technology and adding your own spin on it. You may add features to technology that complicate people’s lives or make it harder for them to connect.
• You could also create your own version of an existing technology by adding elements to it. For example, you may create a communications network that runs on how many likes you get on social media.

• For example, you may tackle the issue of climate change by creating a world where cities are underwater and people live with a limited supply of oxygen.

• For example, you may look at the effects of gentrification by creating a dystopian world where only a select group of young men thrive in modern, clean homes and the majority of women and old people live in sewers.

• For example, you may wonder, what if no one had any rights except for a select group of people? What if women were only used for reproduction? What if corporations ruled the world?

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• The Earthseed Series by Octavia Butler
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Son by Lois Lowry
• The Maze Runner by James Dashner

• The Selection by Kiera Cass

Writing the Novel

• What are the laws of the world? Is there a legal system, and if so, what does it look like?
• How are people punished for their actions? Does everyone receive the same punishment for their actions?
• What is considered taboo in the world?

• For example, you may go for a descriptive, moody opening like the first line of William Gibson’s Neuromancer : “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
• Or you may go for first lines that gives character and personality like Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke : “If you’re going to read this, don’t bother. After a couple pages, you won’t want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you’re still in one piece. Save yourself.”

• For example, you may have a main character who is employed by the shadowy government in control in the dystopian world. You may then show the main character struggling to help others overthrow the government.

• For example, you may have a minor character who is the mother of the main character. She may try to help the main character succeed in overthrowing the shadowy government using her little known hacking skills.

• For example, you may describe the metallic smell of the government headquarters, run by robots. Or you may describe the charcoal taste of the food given to the poor and elderly.

• For example, you may have a main character who tries to ignore the evil actions of the dystopian government until it affects their family. They may then decide to take on the government so they can free their family.

Polishing the Novel

• Reading the novel aloud can also help you catch spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.

Revision is an essential part of the writing process. "Failure is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."

Expert Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/writing-dystopian-fiction-7-tips
• ↑ https://nybookeditors.com/2016/02/how-to-build-a-dystopian-world/
• ↑ https://www.toptenz.net/10-great-opening-lines-in-dystopian-literature.php
• ↑ https://josephblakeparker.deviantart.com/art/6-Tips-for-Writing-Dystopian-Fiction-537030426

About This Article

Since dystopian novels frequently focus on technology and the impact it has on society, choose a kind of technology you’d like to write about, or create your own version of an existing technology. Once you’ve brainstormed some basic themes for your dystopian novel, it’s time to create the rules for your fictional world, such as the laws, legal system, and punishments. Finally, decide on the major conflict that the characters will need to fight against, such as an unjust government. To learn how to polish your novel, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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• Literary Terms
• When & How to Write a Dystopia
• Definition & Examples

How to write a Dystopia

A dystopian setting always begins with a social or political idea. What is the greatest threat to human society or happiness? Disease? World war? Robot uprising? Whatever your answer to that question is, take it to the extreme and you have the basis for a dystopia.

The besetting sin of dystopian literature tends to be that it slips into a one-dimensional tone. The dystopian idea should form the backdrop for a story, not be the story. For example, if the author’s ideology is anti-capitalist and the dystopia is the aftermath of capitalism run amok, that makes perfect sense as a dystopian backdrop. However, if all the characters ever talk about is how much they regret their decadent capitalist ways and how much better things would have been if they had abolished the profit motive – very quickly, the story will start to get long-winded and boring. Some kind of human or philosophical drama has to play out in the story that goes beyond the author’s mere political or social statement.

When to use a Dystopia

A dystopian setting can be great inspiration for a short story or novel. It lends philosophical weight to a story and gives readers the opportunity to work out ideas and concepts as they read. However, dystopias can also play a minor role in formal essays , especially those about political theory. If you think that a particular theory is wrong, you might show how following it would lead to a dystopian future: for example, a society with no environmental protections might be prosperous and free for a while, but ultimately it would exhaust its natural resources, destroy the air and water, and collapse under the weight of its own waste and pollution.

If you do want to use dystopian imagery in a formal essay, though, don’t get too caught up in it. Remember, you’re just using the imagery to illustrate your point – it is not, in itself, the point of your essay.

List of Terms

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• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
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How to Build a Dystopian World

So, you want to create a world that’s filled with grinding oppression and palatable misery? One where the ruling elite manipulate the masses and create a glistening veneer that hides and contradicts a seedy underbelly of corruption?

Are you sure you’re not writing a modern-day political commentary?

I kid. If you’re looking to create a “fantasy” world characterized by bleak skies and quiet brutality, let’s do it.

In this post, we’ll discuss the most important elements to consider when building a dystopian world for your novel. Let’s focus on setting the scene and creating believable characters for your reader to rely on. Ready to start creating this brave, new world?

Would you like a printable list of questions to help you get started on building your dystopian world? Subscribe to receive this free resource.

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Set the Scene

Show don’t tell.

This long standing advice is never more important than in a dystopian setting. You are likely creating a world that’s completely foreign to the reader. Take your time to describe how this world looks and feels. Show how the characters of your story interact with the environment. Is it harsh and unyielding? Probably… but not necessarily.

Environment may or may not be a secondary character in your dystopian story. The environment could be friendly and fruitful and not something your protagonist struggles against. Instead, the protagonist could struggle against humans, technology, or some created system.

Don’t leave the major details of your physical world up to interpretation.

Explain the Rules

Establish what the rules are in this dystopian world and do it early, but not too early. What I mean by that is to let it unfold naturally within the course of your story. Don’t create a prologue where you discuss the world’s rules, if you can help it. There are two reasons for this

Most readers skip over your prologue. So, if you’ve shared crucial information in there that you don’t flesh out in your novel, you’ll lose a lot of readers.

The rules are part of your story, not an “oh, by the way.” Use the strength of your storytelling to weave these rules into the narrative.

Explaining rules is far easier with a third person point of view , but you can still effectively discuss it as a first person narrator. It’s important to decide who the narrator thinks he’s sharing the story with—it could be a newbie who needs to know everything about this world from scratch. It could be self documentation in a series of journal entries.

If the main character is writing to himself journal-style, it may be unnatural to go into exposition about rules in engaging in this dystopian world. However, if he’s speaking to a newbie who has no idea how to operate in this world, it would make sense to explain how things work.

No matter how you choose to explain the rules, make sure you set it up within the first chapter if possible, giving the reader as much knowledge about the rules as the main character has. It’s okay to discover new rules as you progress through the story along with, or even before, the main character. Whatever you do, make sure that the reader feels informed enough to carry on through the journey.

Otherwise, it will be a head scratching, confusing mess that will frustrate your readers because they have no idea of what’s going on.

Go for the Big Picture

Let’s say you’ve created a dystopian society here on earth, set 50 years into the future. You’ll probably focus in on one country, maybe even one town.

While it’s great to be specific, it’s majorly important to zoom back so that the reader can see the entire world. How are other countries affected by what’s happening in your dystopian society? Is there one global society? Is the world divided into factions that fight with each other?

Give your reader context by pulling back to show others not directly connected to the protagonist. You can do this by introducing a secondary character who’s from another part of this world, or from news story tidbits.

Create Believable Characters

Start here:.

Give your character something to look forward to.

Your main character may or may not know that their world is corrupt or damaged in some way. Just like you and I are able to see both positives and negatives in the world around us, so can any relatable character you create. It’s human nature to try to find balance and good in the most miserable conditions.

Remember to give your main character something bright and positive that they appreciate, even if it’s a cockroach whom the main character befriends.

Disney's WALL·E, Image Courtesy of Neogaf

Do the Characters Know They’re Living in A Dystopia?

What does your protagonist know and believe about his world? Perhaps he lives in a utopian compound, shielded from the misery of the world beyond the compound’s walls. He may not know that anything exists beyond his immediate reality.

Perhaps your character was born into this dystopian wasteland and only knows its realities, without having any touchstone to the past.

Or, your character has a fuzzy knowledge about the society that existed before his current reality and recognizes that his reality is worse.

Decide early on what your character knows, feels, and believes about the world he lives in. Of course, these ideas can change as you move through the story.

Is Your Character Alone?

Creating a one-man survivalist is a common device in dystopian storytelling. It’s an easy way to convey loneliness and utter desolation. But it’s so overused and expected that it’s become a cliche way of sharing your dystopian vision.

Not to mention, it’s pretty unrealistic too.

How long could one man (or woman, or child) survive with just their wits to guide them? Is he the only person on earth, or are there others who prey on him? How does he eat and keep himself healthy while navigating this walk alone?

It can get really boring really quickly—and not just for the main character, but also for the reader. There needs to be an interplay with the main and secondary characters to add dimension and well-rounded insight into this dystopian world.

Gray Skies, Gray Intentions

Bad guys rarely think they’re bad.

Is your dystopian world the result of an unethical government? It may be a mistake to paint with a wide brush, showing all those involved in the government as soulless monsters. Surely, the governing class has a rationale (however flawed) behind creating and participating in such a government.

Showing just a smidgen of impartialness when crafting your secondary characters can help bring balance to your dystopian world. It also adds a weight of realism that every dystopian fantasy novel needs.

Be careful to not make your protagonist fully good and your antagonist fully bad.

Final Thoughts

Use these tips to help you craft the ultimate dystopian world. Remember, this is only a starting point. Let your imagination and gut guide you into a world that makes sense for your story.

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Society in Decline: Your Guide To Writing a Dystopian Story

Dystopian fiction, considered to be a subgenre of science fiction, covers all novels, novellas, and films that are set in a sometimes-futuristic, always-unjust world in which the average man or woman has little say over their respective lives.

Common threats to humanity that occur in dystopian fiction are loss of freedoms, food and resource insecurity, general suffering amidst injustice, etc. If you base your protagonist in a setting in which they continually suffer at the hands of an oppressor and few citizens live securely, you're writing a dystopian novel.

Ask "what if?" to prompt a sharp storyline

If you're set on writing a dystopian novel but can't settle on the type, then ask your "what if?" Think of our current world and ask what it would look like if we lost certain rights, freedoms, advantages, etc.

For example, what if religious zealots accrued enough power to take over and rule your country? What if half the sea life was wiped out across the world's oceans? What if time travel was mastered by the wrong people who chose to go back through history and alter the planet's most life-changing events?

Know the law of the land

Now that you have an idea of what type of dystopian story you want to write, it's time to establish its laws, or lack thereof in some cases.

No matter what type of dystopian world you choose, rules will inevitably play a major role. While it might be tempting to jump in and begin writing, it's best to create the appropriate rules for your story and setting so you can refer to them as you write and edit.

Novels set in dystopian worlds tend to revolve around a detailed plot and intricate setting, so with a set system of laws and guidelines on hand, you can avoid the literary faux pas of inconsistency and ensure continuity for your reader.

If you're having trouble coming up with a defined set of rules, you can try to answer the following questions:

• Who, if any, is the governing body within your world? E.g., is it the government, police, military, civilians who have attained power post-coup, etc.
• How are the rules and regulations enforced by this body?
• How are transgressors punished when they break the rules?

Know your world's history

Whether you choose to reveal the cause of your world's dystopian elements or keep it to yourself, it's a good idea to know just how your characters' current way of life came to be. In The Hunger Games it's revealed relatively early that the games were established as a penalty for a past rebellion aimed at the Capitol.

However, The Walked Dead series creator refuses to explain the cause of the outbreak that led to the zombie apocalypse. Spell it out for the reader or keep the answers in the background to maintain a little mystery surrounding the inception of a world gone wrong.

Compare then vs. now through your characters

Whether you have an ensemble protagonist cast or a solo main character, it's informative and entertaining for the reader to be provided a comparison of the old, yet superior way of life to the newer, no-so-improved status quo.

A character born into a dystopian world will view the constraints of their time far differently to someone who has tasted freedom and lost it. This latter type character, even in taking a minimal role in your story, might light the spark that sets a younger, more determined team along the path to rebellion.

Establish strong motivations

A character's — or overall society's — actions don't occur in a vacuum: each need strong motivations to either, for example, undertake a coup or survive a totalitarian regime. The innocent party in a dystopian story may be motivated to regain control by enduring or witnessing the suffering of the downtrodden, whereas the guilty party is likely motivated by their warped ideology, extreme greed, and desire for power.

A strong and established motivation for a character's actions is a necessity across every literary genre, but writers can at times get caught up in the action of a dystopia and forget to share the reason behind those actions.

If you're unsure of what exactly is motivating your protagonist to act, ask yourself:

• How does my character benefit or lose from continued compliance within their status quo?
• Will life improve for my protagonist — and society overall — if they rebel against their oppressors?

Setting your story

Considering the suffering endured by those living in a dystopian world, it's no surprise that the typical dystopian setting is bleak and desolate. In some cases, the land is ravaged following a natural disaster, in which resources are scarce and venturing outside can be fatal. Here, pay attention to detail and retain some aspects of the old world order, like buildings or landmarks.

In other cases, the physical nature of a setting is undisturbed, but the overall nature is foreboding and hopeless due to a lack of autonomy. Certain settings are typically found in dystopian stories, and while clichés should be avoided at all costs, remember that adding your own spin and exhibiting a flair of imagination will add nuance to your setting.

Popular types of dystopian settings

While there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing, if you plan to write a dystopian story, you should be more than familiar with the general types of dystopian fiction. Think of your favorite dystopian stories and see if they fit into one of the following categories.

Disease-ridden world

With this type, you have two main choices: Set your novel in the midst of a major disaster that spreads a deadly virus, or place your characters in a somewhat inhospitable world post-virus, still living with the consequences. Perhaps only the affluent have access to medical care and the powerful now call the shots, and your protagonist is neither, simply trying to survive an in increasingly unjust world.

Permanent military control

To survive a military or police controlled world, your character must obey what rules have been implemented, at least for the time being. But before you place any military in control, you first must establish exactly why they're in power. Was your country's government intent on avoiding international conflict, bowing to the whims of other country's so often that its military decided to take control? Or was the military industrial complex so profitable that a military was permanently installed to keep funds rolling in?

Invasion of aliens

Remember that it's best to place your characters under alien control years after their conquest. If you choose to start your novel with the invasion and feature your characters as they maneuver this new way of life, you're crossing the border of dystopian fiction and entering sci-fi territory. Perhaps your protagonist is living somewhere still unknown to the aliens, plotting with their cohorts to regain control? Or maybe the aliens in question are acting with our best interests in mind, so your protagonist attempts to reason with the alien overlords rather than launch an attack.

Anarchy in a power vacuum

This type is less about control and more about the daily struggle of man to exist in a chaotic and dangerous world. Nobody is benefiting from oppression, but suffering is prevalent. Perhaps your characters' government was disbanded or removed in favor of citizens running the show and failing to provide the necessary resources. Or a civil war waged in the past has left a government destroyed, with rival factions infighting to take over, and your protagonist fills a leadership role to inspire like-minded people.

Your dystopian novel doesn't have to fit neatly into one category: feel free to combine the different types to give yourself the literary space you need to tell your story. For example, following a global pandemic, a previously reviled political group or party is the only one to provide the resources people need to rebuild their lives. Stirred by this apparent benevolence, the people appoint them as their governing body, only to be controlled after those in power install a police state to dominate the proletariat.

Be vigilant when writing

Your options for creating a dystopian world in which your protagonist can merely survive or eventually thrive are limitless. With the space to flex your literary prowess, you can establish any kind of world that falls in line with the above guidelines that form a dystopian story.

But with this space for creativity comes risk: writers can find this space to be imaginative somewhat too freeing, and this is where plot holes, inconsistencies, and failures of clarity tend to occur. As mentioned, have an exhaustive list of rules and details on hand as you write, and, unless you're intentionally aiming for mystery surrounding the cause of the status quo, ensure that you've established for the reader the reason your dystopia currently exists.

Header photo by Dmitriy .

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How to Write a Dystopian Movie or TV Show

Utopia is a narrative term created by writer Sir Thomas More as the title of his fictional political satire published in 1516. It created the idea of a near-perfect society with little crime, poverty, or violence. It later evolved into the notion of paradise — an ideal place that most would love to live in.  Sounds great, right? Well, with every paradise comes its antithesis. That place is known as a Dystopia.  So, how do you write a dystopian movie or TV show? Let's break it down!

What is a Dystopian Story?

A dystopian story is characterized by its portrayal of a fictional society or world that is marked by oppression, suffering, and often, a sense of hopelessness or despair. If a utopian society is the ideal place to settle, then a dystopian society is most people’s worst nightmare. 

Dystopian settings are frequently marked by:

• Tyrannical governments and oppressive authorities
• Catastrophic deterioration in societal conditions

Just imagine the worst a society could get — that’s pretty much the setting of a dystopian story. And within those settings, you usually witness protagonists rising up against tyrannical and oppressive antagonists and villains that have control over the people by way of propaganda, censorship, lies, denial of free thought, and enforcement of conformity.  

Read More: The Biggest and Baddest "Big Bads" of Sci-Fi & Fantasy

'Mad Max: Fury Road'

Examples of Dystopian Movies and TV Shows

Examples of cinematic dystopian stories include:

• 1984:  Based on George Orwell's novel, the film portrays a totalitarian society where the government monitors and controls every aspect of people's lives.
• THX: 1188:   In the 25th century, a time when people have designations instead of names, a man, THX 1138, and a woman, LUH 3417, rebel against their rigidly-controlled society.
• Blade Runner:  Set in a bleak future, this film follows a detective who hunts down rogue artificial humans known as replicants in a dystopian Los Angeles.
• The Matrix:  This sci-fi classic envisions a world where humanity is enslaved by machines and trapped in a simulated reality, while a group of rebels fights to free them.
• Children of Men:  In a world where infertility has led to a global crisis, a disillusioned bureaucrat becomes involved in protecting a pregnant woman who may hold the key to humanity's survival.
• The Hunger Games:  Based on the best-selling novels, the franchise is set in a future society divided into districts and follows a young woman who must participate in a brutal televised competition to the death.
• Mad Max: Fury Road:  This post-apocalyptic action film features a wasteland where resources are scarce, and a group of rebels fights against a tyrannical warlord.
• Snowpiercer:  After a failed climate-change experiment freezes the Earth, the last survivors live on a train that circles the globe, with social classes and conflicts emerging onboard.
• The Handmaid's Tale:  Based on Margaret Atwood's novel, the TV series depicts a future where women are subjugated and used for reproductive purposes in a theocratic society.
• The Last of Us:  Based on the hit videogame series, the TV series depicts a postapocalyptic zombie-like story where a pandemic has killed off much of society. The dystopian element is showcased by a paranoid government body that becomes oppressive to ensure the survival of the human race while attempting to do so in a very inhuman way. 

'The Last of Us'

Key Themes to Use in Dystopian Movies

You have a plethora of story options and themes to utilize when writing a dystopian movie or TV show. Here are just a few:

Totalitarian or Oppressive Government

This is where you usually start. Dystopian movies typically feature a government or ruling authority that exercises extreme control over its citizens. 

• A totalitarian regime
• A dystopian dictatorship
• A surveillance state

These governing or ruling powers often enforce strict rules and regulations that limit individual freedoms to maintain their power. This will become the source of all of your story's conflict — and dystopian movies need  a lot  of it.

Social Injustice

This is where your characters come in. Dystopian societies are often marked by profound social inequality and injustice. Discrimination based on class, race, or other factors is common in these stories and drives the character arcs of your protagonists.

There is usually a clear divide between the privileged elite and the oppressed masses. That will fuel the conflict within the story and begin the arc of your characters as they deal with these conflicts.   

Lack of Personal Freedom

Dystopian worlds frequently depict a lack of personal freedoms and civil liberties. Citizens may be subjected to constant surveillance, censorship, curfews, or restrictions on their actions, thoughts, and speech. This creates a boiling point where your characters move from the first act to the second as they rise up against those who oppress them. 

'The Handmaid's Tale'

Economic Hardship

Economic hardship is also a common theme in dystopian movies. Audiences can often relate to this element because it exists in the world we live in today. In these dystopian stories, many citizens struggle to survive due to the scarcity of resources. This economic hardship can reinforce the divide between the haves and the have-nots — creating that boiling pot dynamic within characters that are looking to break free from their strife. 

Technological Control

In some dystopian stories, advanced technology is used as a tool of control and oppression. Governments may use technology for surveillance, mind control, or to maintain their grip on power. This dynamic creates an excellent series of conflict hurdles that your characters must surpass. 

'The Matrix Revolutions'

Environmental Decay

Many dystopian movies explore environmental degradation and the consequences of unchecked pollution, climate change, or ecological disasters. These factors contribute to the overall bleakness of the setting. This is often used as a forewarning to audiences when it comes to possible circumstances of issues we face today in our society. 

Loss of Individuality

In dystopian societies, individuality and personal expression can be suppressed. Citizens may be forced to conform to a rigid set of norms and expectations, and any deviation from these norms is punished. 

'Children of Men'

Resistance or Rebellion

As mentioned above, many dystopian stories feature a protagonist or group of individuals who resist the oppressive regime. These characters often embark on a journey to challenge the status quo and seek freedom or justice. This works as both a character element and a story element. 

Commentary on Contemporary Issues

Screenwriters and filmmakers often use dystopian stories to serve as social and political commentary, highlighting and exaggerating issues and trends present in the real world today. This is where you can really get the audience to relate to the issues the characters are dealing with because they are augmented, exaggerated, and speculative versions of what we see in today’s society around us. Look no further than the likes of  The Handmaid’s Tale  for an example — a series that stands as the result of the tipping of scales from where we may be teetering today. 

So, all, or at least some, of these elements are where you should start in your dystopian screenplay. Now let’s explore the basics of how you can develop and write your story. 

How to Write Your Dystopian Movie

In the end, it’s your creativity, ingenuity, and vision that will create the next great dystopian film. But here are some foundations that you can use to develop and write your story. 

Start with Worldbuilding

Dystopian stories are initially all about the world you build. That’s what really stands out. Rebellions and uprisings are great — and all of that will come — but what will differentiate your dystopian story from all of the others that came before yours will be the particular dystopian world you build. 

Ask yourself these development questions:

• What started this dystopian society? 
• Is it post-apocalyptic, near-future, or set on another planet?
• What is uniquely frightening about the dystopian world you’re going to build?

You need to see this world. You need to know what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, and how those elements are different from what we’ve seen in prior dystopian movies. 

Find Relatable Themes and Issues to Explore

You want and need to connect with the audience. The easiest way to do that with a dystopian story is to find those augmented, exaggerated, and speculative versions of what we see in today’s society around us — and then use them to wrap around the world you are creating.

Ask yourself questions like:

• What if we let corrupt politicians have all of the power?
• What if we allowed Artificial Intelligence to run our world?
• What if we had a second Civil War?
• What if we had a Third World War?
• What if we ignore global warming? 

Whatever the hot point issues in our current world may be, you can find themes to explore. 

Create Your Cast of Characters

Then you need to figure out who the characters who populate your dystopian world. 

• Who is the oppressor?
• Who is being oppressed?
• How are they being oppressed?
• For what purpose is the oppressor oppressing people?
• Who is going to rise up against the oppression?
• Why are they the ones to lead the resistance or uprising? 

Your lead protagonist(s) need to have a higher purpose and a deeply layered inner character arc to warrant them being the ones to lead the oppressed. 

Your supporting characters need to fill in the blanks that the protagonist(s) lack. 

And let’s not forget the most important element — the antagonists and villains. They need to embody the oppression that the protagonists are fighting against. While the protagonists can preach about the oppression they face, and the reasons why the oppression is inhumane enough not to live under any longer, the antagonists and villains need to embody why they feel the oppression is necessary.

This leads to the ultimate conflicts of your story as protagonists versus antagonists/villains boils and boils until the pressure can’t be contained any longer.

Start with the Ordinary World of the Protagonist

Presenting your main character in their everyday life at the start of your dystopian story provides an opportunity to showcase the start of their  inner  and  outer  character arc. 

It then shows how profoundly difficult their journey is going to be when faced with the choice to take the call of adventure to rise up against the dystopian oppressors. 

• Show the oppression.
• Show their struggle. 
• Show their ordinary life and how it will be rocked when they choose to rise up.

Now, you have a couple of options on how to showcase their ordinary world. 

• Show them under the rule of the oppressors. 
• Introduce them on the outskirts of the oppression and wanting to free their people.
• Or, as a third option, have them be part of the oppression who wakes up and decides what they’ve been doing was wrong.

Consider the Ordinary World openings of the following: 

• In  The Hunger Games , Katniss is living in District 12 with her family, struggling to survive.
• In  The Handmaid’s Tale , June is on the outskirts of the oppression, trying to escape to Canada when she, her husband, and her daughter are caught by Gilead foot soldiers.
• In  The Last of Us ,  Joel  is working the dystopian system to survive and try to find a way to find his brother. While he’s not the oppressor, he’s also not trying to lead an uprising against them. He’s doing what he can to survive. 

Read More:  Exploring the Twelve Stages of the Hero’s Journey Part 1: The Ordinary World

The Rest is Up to You

There’s no one single way to write any genre or subgenre of movies. When you’re dealing with a subgenre like dystopian movies, you need to educate yourself on the common elements that define such a story (see above) and find a unique and interesting take on it. 

• Subvert expectations. 
• Find ways to offer unexpected  twists and turns .
• Take the audience down one path, only to push them onto another.
• Play with  character archetypes , cliches, and tropes. 
• Find unique set pieces and sequences. 
• Pile on the conflict. 
• Raise the stakes . 

Know what a dystopian story is, embrace the key story and character elements, build your dystopian world, consider finding relatable themes and issues audiences can identify with, create a compelling cast of characters on both sides of the struggle, showcase their ordinary world while selling the setup to the audience, and then find ways to make your dystopian story engaging and unique. 

Read More: 101 Epic Sci-Fi Story Prompts

CHECK OUT OUR SCI-FI & FANTASY NOTES  SO YOU START YOUR STORY OFF ON THE RIGHT TRACK!

Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and then as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.

He has many studio meetings under his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, and Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development deal with Lionsgate, as well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseries BLACKOUT, starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner, the feature thriller HUNTER'S CREED, and many produced Lifetime thrillers. Follow Ken on Twitter  @KenMovies  and Instagram  @KenMovies76 .

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How Dystopia Begins: 50 First Sentences

Why Does Velveteen Rabbit Make Us Cry?

How does dystopia begin?  

Sparingly, it seems:

In a sample of fifty young adult best-sellers—these are the shortest. The average is just over 11 words, with 85% falling between 6 and 16, making something of an industry standard out of the 12 word openings of The Hunger Games and The 100 :

It takes Jane Austen 23 words to tell us what rich single men want, Twain 25 to re-introduce Huck Finn, Hemingway 26 to tell us how long his old man has gone fishless, and 28 for García Márquez’ Colonel Buendía to wax nostalgic before the firing squad. Forget Dickens (he wasn’t paid by the word, but he more than earned the slight).  

Of course, there’s Beloved : “124 was spiteful.” And: “Call me Ishmael.” What makes these striking, though, is that this sort of brevity is an outlier. Stylometrics—the elegant name given to studying what is measurable in style—clocks the average between 15 and 25. An average below 15 severely limits complexity; an average above 25, readability.   

Between 6 and 16: high readability, low complexity. Maybe this is just dystopic first sentences, though. A quick glance at ten of the more famous adult dystopias shows similar beginnings to their youthful counterparts, 10 the average. The lowest, Never Let Me Go ’s 5: “My name is Kathy H.” The highest at 16, Jack London’s The Iron Heel (perhaps not coincidentally one of the earliest examples of modern dystopia): “The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweet cadences over its mossy stones.” 1984 is 14: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Closer to the average, The Handmaid’s Tale : “We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.” The best, Fahrenheit 451 : “It was a pleasure to burn.”

Perhaps, after the world ends, we have to do more with less. This would be a fitting rationale for a spare style. Though the adult and teen dystopias seem unified primarily by their length and not the kind of information they are conveying: metric similarity against dissimilar meaning. The Iron Heel ’s Still-Life with Moss has much more in common with the beginning of Anne of Green Gables —“Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place…”—than the similarly numbered Maze Runner :

An important component of the adult dystopias is unveiling that the described world is, in fact, dystopic, or at the very least, why it is so. You can see an example of the gradual reveal in one of the first YA examples, The Giver .  Narratively, accomplishing this mystery requires a lot of description. On the high end, where the effect slowly solidifies for the reader, we call this “world-building”: the clock in 1984 , the burning in Bradbury. The counterfactual history… how we got here …is woven together with and indispensable for the plot… where will we go .  

On the low end is the literary equivalent of the opening crawl: the “info dump.” History, here, is anything you have to dispense with to get to plot:

This is the beginning of Delirium . Mystery is not a priority. These quantitatively sparse openers are not legacies from the adult dystopia, then, but the function of the YA dystopia’s alignment with a different genre: action-adventure.  Info-dumps serve to provide the reader the bare minimum of information necessary to invest them in the 350 page car chase that follows (or, in the case of dystopic romance, the 200 page car chase interspersed with 150 pages of Twilight ).  

Thus the seamless translation to film.  Divergent ’s movie version starts with a voice-over info-dump—a war! a wall! a curiously small number of castes!—before showing all the castes sitting around or standing or kneeling. Except this one:

A paramilitary caste of elite parkour roofers trailed by a spunky Laura Ingalls Wilder. The pacing, the lack of filler, the full-tilt dominance of plot, the protagonist whose marked difference is her unique qualifications—all virtually indistinguishable from action-adventure.

But not the conflict. In action-adventure, it’s one man against a powerful group (of his former bosses or illuminati or the mob…whatever). If his purpose is to save the world—and it isn’t always—it’s crucial that we never know we were being saved. In the YA dystopia, we have the girl or boy—and some like-minded friends—resisting the world to save it.

It would seem resistance is a hard sell, though, because the largest unifying pattern between the YA opening sentences isn’t that they invite action (though many do) or that they are comparatively short (though most are), but that they share a tone of dread. 72% of the openings fall on a tonal spectrum between anxiety and terror. Between Katniss reaching across a cold bed and Clarke knowing death has come for her.  

How does dystopia for young adults begin? With speed, with few words, and above all—with fear. Analysis of mass literature trends is generally consumed with two angles: classification and resonance. What characteristics mark something as belonging to the trend and why do we like it?  Classification—of tropes, clichés, plot devices, archetypes—spawns the most jokes, which when done well, also hint at meaning, e.g. Dana Schwartz’ YA Dystopia twitter :

The resonance suggested by these tweets is one of a highly dramatized version of some common psychological struggle. This is one of the most common ways of answering the question of what we like about a certain trend, that is, what work it does for us , or, in the less neutral form, what work it does to us .

What’s not satisfying about this type of resonance answer is that there are, in fact, a lot of ways to reflect common psychological struggles, and it’s unclear why this particular form does it better than any other. You can have a teenager choose between an alt-right gamer and a manarchist in a symbolically elevated manner without ending the world. Based on these 50 first sentences, then, I wonder if “what does dystopia do for us” is the wrong question.  

A world beyond the walls where there is slim odds of survival for youth, where there are death squads and perpetual war and instability, where there is a caste system—in fact, a world system –which places people inequitably into a majority who produces raw materials and a minority living off that production…these places exist here and now.  What if the better question is: what exactly is dystopic here? Adult dystopia is traditionally understood to function as a material warning —a narrated slippery-slope of the ramifications of a cultural phenomenon—whereas young adult dystopia is understood to function as an affective catharsis —a way of dealing with the emotional effects of actual material instability. An escape, not a warning.    

This opposition—warning vs. escape—is its own kind of sorting hat: art or entertainment, classics or mass literature, literary fiction or genre, adult or youth literature. The distinction is, obviously, a weighted one. The former does intellectual work while the latter does emotional work . High art challenges; mass art soothes.

The classification of serious literature does its own emotional work, of course: the one that assures the literate that their language, their stories, their conflicts are the crucial, timeless ones and that everyone else’s are divisive, unrelated distractions from the Real Problems. Conversely, I think teen dystopias do a kind of intellectual work, that is, that part of what we “like” is that they help us think, rather than feel, through some material contradiction. And I think these beginnings might hold a key: one where the warning is in the form. The dread, the speed, the brevity—they say, here is how it happens: when history is dispensed with to get to action, when what’s past is what we don’t have time for. Here is how it begins.

* Wither ; Witch & Wizard

*** Under the Never Sky ; Unwind    

**** Enclave ; Angelfall

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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Literary Genres / Dystopia

Dystopia Essay Examples

The dangers of a dystopia.

Dystopian literature often foreshadows the future, revealing what life may be like if current societal issues are not appropriately resolved. Characterized by injustice and mayhem, a dystopia is a flawed society in which citizens are considered an extension of the dysfunctional environment that they live...

Real World Dystopia

Utopianism has slowly made its way into a literary genre by authors comparable to Thomas More. More’s book, Utopia was written to show his disdain about the political corruption that happened in Europe during his life. Comparing the word “Utopia” to both a good place...

Dystopian Short Story: Comparison of Bradbury’s and Shur's Works

A dystopian text is an imagined world in which the illusion of a perfect society is maintained through technological and authoritarian power. This is one of the dystopian short story essays where we will analyse some of the dystopian short stories. The first one is...

Different Approaches to Utopia: Problems and Innovations

This utopia essay aims to discuss and examine the ideal order, system, life and society ideas that the human world is always in search of. It will address the impact of multiple interactions between society and the future state management systems. The problems and innovations...

Representation of the Problems of Contemporary Society in Ender's Game

The concepts and proposition put forward by an author present to the audience relevant problems which might be embedded in today’s society. Sci-fi novels occasionally portray our world as a dystopian environment within the future, emphasizing problems of contemporary society. These novels allow authors to...

Nineteen Eighty-four: Dystopia Story

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984 Nineteen eighty-four (1984 ) is a Dystopia story - what could be regarded as the worst possible life,a political satire novel written by George Orwell. The story is...

Fahrenheit 451 is the Dystopian Novel

Fahrenheit 451 is the dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury in 1953. The novel is set in a future American society in which books are burned once they are found by fireman. In the novel Bradbury uses the art of symbolism to help strengthen the...

Dystopian Society in the Lord of the Flies

While the serenity of the island may have hinted towards an edenic utopia, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies quickly deviates to a dystopian society as the boys become inundated with Their animalistic instincts. Golding uses imagery of the dense jungleto express the sense...

The Elements of Dystopian Society in Anthem by Ayn Rand

The novel ‘Anthem,’ by Ayn Rand is an example of a dystopian society. A dystopian society is one that is as dehumanizing and as unpleasant as possible. In the dystopian society that Rand has created people must only be referred to as ‘we,’ rather than...

Depiction of Violence and Harassment in Ender's Game

In the book, Ender’s Game, written by Orson Scott Card and the movie, there is a lot of violence and harassment. This violence seems to be brought on by older figures, like the adults. The forcefulness transfers from the adults over to the children, so...

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About Dystopia

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopia or simply anti-utopia) is a speculated community or society that is undesirable or frightening. Dystopias are often characterized by rampant fear or distress, tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

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