How To Write A Dystopian YA Novel
Aug. 24th, 2012 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricevermicelli1. Start with a sixteen year-old protagonist. I am sure there are reasons why the protagonist is always sixteen, and that they were not all thought up in the Marketing Department.
2. Put your protagonist on the cusp of a completely ridiculous Rite of Passage that will determine the course of her (because it usually is her) whole life. Surely you can remember the moment when, on or about your sixteenth birthday, you were introduced to your future spouse, sliced your hand open with a knife shared by 82 of your age peers, and foreswore all association with the color purple. It's a universal moment!
3. Scatter the backlot with an inexplicably large population. In a world with only 83 sixteen year-olds, someone should be at least a little concerned about accidental fatalities. Support staff, like cooks and quartermasters and people who know how to tie bandages, should be a touch thin on the ground. If there's an unaccounted for population that doesn't participate in the ludicrous rite of passage, make sure they don't come into consideration for these jobs. They're just Out There, man, being a portentious symbol of everything wrong in the universe.
4. Introduce a love interest. The law says you gotta have one.
5. Reveal the cracks in the system. As if being asked to foreswear purple didn't make it clear back at the beginning, take the time to show readers that this system is Bad, Mmmmkay?
6. Set up an opposing system. You can breathe for a chapter or two before revealing that it's just as bad as the first one. Build some suspense.
7. Sign a contract for two more books.
I believe, in books two and three, you get to tear down your opposing systems. You must, however, push the resolution as close to the existing, non-fictional status quo as possible.
2. Put your protagonist on the cusp of a completely ridiculous Rite of Passage that will determine the course of her (because it usually is her) whole life. Surely you can remember the moment when, on or about your sixteenth birthday, you were introduced to your future spouse, sliced your hand open with a knife shared by 82 of your age peers, and foreswore all association with the color purple. It's a universal moment!
3. Scatter the backlot with an inexplicably large population. In a world with only 83 sixteen year-olds, someone should be at least a little concerned about accidental fatalities. Support staff, like cooks and quartermasters and people who know how to tie bandages, should be a touch thin on the ground. If there's an unaccounted for population that doesn't participate in the ludicrous rite of passage, make sure they don't come into consideration for these jobs. They're just Out There, man, being a portentious symbol of everything wrong in the universe.
4. Introduce a love interest. The law says you gotta have one.
5. Reveal the cracks in the system. As if being asked to foreswear purple didn't make it clear back at the beginning, take the time to show readers that this system is Bad, Mmmmkay?
6. Set up an opposing system. You can breathe for a chapter or two before revealing that it's just as bad as the first one. Build some suspense.
7. Sign a contract for two more books.
I believe, in books two and three, you get to tear down your opposing systems. You must, however, push the resolution as close to the existing, non-fictional status quo as possible.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 03:21 pm (UTC)That is all.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 03:24 pm (UTC)The SATs. Been there.
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Date: 2012-08-24 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 09:18 pm (UTC)Sounds like this book type is all about empowerment and breaking free of a broken world that forces you to be something wrong...