How to Create Amazing Dystopias

Sometimes I just feel like all the perfectly dystopian ideas have been taken. I mean seriously, love the districts from the Hunger Games, fascinated by the caste system from The Selection, and blown away by the factions from Divergent!

So today I'm here to help all the dystopian/sci-fi writers out there to spark brilliant ideas for dystopian worlds. (Also because I've neglected my blog for a while -_-)

The first most common thing dystopian authors do is to create a utopia. Make it unique, but perfect. Everyone's utopia looks and appears differently depending on their personality. Again, try to make it as lively and perfect as possible.

Then what you'd want to do next is twist it up a bit, in other words, destroy your utopia. Add in things like robots/highly advanced machines, aliens, animal hybrids, powerful dictators, etc. Or you could even take some things away. For example, what's something we treasure but don't necessarily need to survive? Video games, technology, it could even something like nature. If none of these ideas work for you, just turn your utopia into a dystopia! Take away things we know as normal and replace it with something else. Enforce strict laws prohibiting things we normally do and add a touch of unfairness into your dystopia. For example, citizens in District One have more luxuries and better lives than those of District Twelve.

Governments. They are the ones that rule over your world of doom. There are many different types of governments I learned from a writing workshop. 'Hitler Style' aka  dictatorship is when one individual takes over and enforces unfair and cruel laws. Normally, they also overthrow the previous ruling government and change everything, which is an excellent addition for your dystopian novel. Other governments include tyranny, royalty, religious, democracy, and many more.

Next we must name our newly created, terrible, horrid dystopia. To me, online name generators aren't really my thing. I prefer sparking out ideas at random, but that's probably not the case for others XD. Some writers I know prefer brainstorming, others take words and combine them together or even try misspelling them. There is no right or wrong name for any dystopia, but I doubt you would name it, 'Butterfly Meadow'.

Try reading dystopian books for finding inspiration. A few include:

- The Search for WondLa by Tony Diteralizzi

- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

- Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

- Matched by Ally Condie

- Crossed by Ally Condie

- Reached by Ally Condie

- Divergent by Veronica Roth

- Insurgent by Veronica Roth

- The Selection by Kiera Cass

- The Elite by Kiera Cass

- Legend by Marie Lu

- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Good luck with you dystopia!

- Ashlyn, Aspiring Author of Today