There is something inspiring about survival.

 Dystopian, Topics in Writing  2 Responses »
Aug 262010
 

Why is dystopian fiction important? Or is it?

Earlier this week I spoke on why we are interested in dystopian fiction and why we like it so much, and the thing I kept coming back to was this: unlike utopian fiction, and historical fiction, and contemporary fiction, dystopian fiction is still possible. It will always come up in the cosmic tarot reading. Utopian fiction has its own problems of probability that dystopian fiction doesn’t, while historical fiction has already happened and contemporary fiction is currently happening. Everything that is taking place RIGHT THIS MINUTE can lead to the eventuality of the dystopian fiction. Follow any troubling thread and you will find a dystopia in one shape or another waiting at the other end.

Follow any of the headlines you discovered in the exercise from Monday and you will get conceivable, believable, possible futures that people are already fretting over with or without your fancy imagination. This isn’t a conspiracy theorists plot to instill panic: we’re facing economic and environmental disasters every day.

Dystopian Fiction Can Teach Us About Our Own Worst Selves

I believe, and please realize this is purely my own opinion, dystopian fiction serves a useful avenue to imagine and explore the darkest possibilities of our own future and the choices we may have to make one day. Granted, we’re probably not facing a zombie, robot, or vampire apocalypse anytime soon, but other possibilities? Sure.

Dystopian fiction serves as an early warning system.

It allows us to question the road we are already walking and not take for granted the possibilities that exist in front of us. By questioning and imagining and playing pretend between the comfortable, safe pages of a book, we can shape our attitudes and choices when/if the time ever comes.

If early Star Trek series can inspire technological design, function, and invention, than certainly dystopian fiction can inspire us to avoid the worst possible outcomes by changing our own attitudes and choices about the future.

A novel can teach us how to treat each other better in the event of a disaster or a serious change in society. If dystopias teach us anything, it’s that when push comes to shove, we as a species are pretty ready to shove each other off the side of a building before we share our last loaf of bread. A common theme in all dystopias is that during the worst possible days of our lives, human respect is the first thing we cut from the new bylaws of human experience.

Young Adults and the Dystopia Trend

If I’m right in saying that dystopian fiction can teach us about ourselves and about the dark roads of possibility ahead, than who better to speak these lessons to than young adults? They may not be in charge yet when society changes, but they are likely the ones who will have to lead afterward.

Maybe I’m reaching. Maybe dystopians can’t really teach us how to behave (or how not to behave) if and when society faces a terrible change. If that’s too lofty an idea, we can put that aside for a moment and look at another reason that is closer to our hearts as readers.

The surviving characters inspire us in ways that other characters from other genres are simply unable to do.

There is Something Inspiring about Survival

Millions of people all over the world have been holding their breaths in anxious anticipation of the final Hunger Games book by Suzanne Collins. At the time of this posting, Americans have had the book in their hot little hands for two days. Millions of Americans are going to have devoured the book before this post even hits the stands…and I’m one of them. Is the reason we want to know what happens in Mockingjay because we’re all shaking our Team Peeta! and Team Gale! signs and just want to see someone get kissed already?

No.

Not really.

The thing that has bred inside our hearts is not our insane desire to pick a kissing team. It’s because Katniss has become a girl we all want to be. In some way, we want to infect our hearts with her bravery, her courage, her loyalty, her insight, her creativity, her protectiveness, her ingenuity, her rebelliousness, and her inner fire.

When we see the world through Katniss’s eyes, we want to know that if anyone did to us what they did to her, we’d stand up for ourselves, our sisters, our family, our friends, and the one we love. We want to believe that these characteristics are not fictional. We want her to inspire us to greatness. We want to save the world.

(Ok yes, we also want our Team kiss to happen, but focus please!)

Lots of heroes and heroines from lots of genres inspire us, but few actually get to face the worst the world and triumph. Remember the definition of a dystopia? As Bad As it Can Be. Characterized by suffering, misery, overcrowding, famine…dystopia is the only place where things are required to be as bad as they can be and then we ask a character, boy or girl it doesn’t matter, to not just survive but to achieve self-actualization, human satisfaction, and maybe save the world if they’ve got time before the end of the book.

It sort of makes achieving self-actualization in our own lives a small task in comparison, right?

How to torture your characters

 Dystopian, Theme Week, Tools and Resources, Topics in Writing  4 Responses »
Aug 252010
 

The Craft

So, now that we understand what dystopian fiction is and why so many people like it, how do you write it? It really isn’t as easy as sitting down and thinking up the worst place you can stick your character and what sorts of terrible things you can do to her. That’s part of it, sure, but those are symptoms. The problem, the essential break down of our society, has to be believable and thorough.

It has to actually become a character in the story.

That’s weird, right? That an affliction on society could become a character? Whether it’s robot oppression, mind control, famine, virus, oil, war, or zombies, it has to be so well thought out and so well integrated that the reader instantly internalizes the plight, can put themselves right there in the middle of it all, and feels what the characters are feeling right from the beginning. Treat the affliction like an invisible main character.

The story has to show how the characters are affected by a social collapse – an issue complicated by the fact that most of us don’t have direct experience with that level of day-to-day misery. And if we want to get down and dirty with the human condition, the best place to start is with Abraham Maslow.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham was this crazy smart guy who came up with this idea that the satisfaction of a human’s existence can be broken down into a pyramid of needs…Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs…in which each level starting at the bottom must be fulfilled before the next can be fulfilled and so on. Dystopian fiction is built by taking away Maslow’s Hierarchy and stripping people of the essential satisfactions of their human existence.

So the secret of writing a good dystopia is to take Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, figure out which your Big Problem begins stripping away, and work your way down from there.

First, let’s talk about the levels.

  1. The bottom of the pyramid, the fifth and largest level, is called Physiological Needs. That is breathing, food, water, sleep…but also warmth in the winter, comfort in the summer… clothing, shelter, medicine when sick, a place to cook your dinner, etc. Most dystopians work to make one or more of the characters Physiological Needs impossible or very difficult to attain at the beginning.
    • This level is probably the easiest to play with. For example, create a strain of bacteria that destroys grain and corn crops that cause wide spread famine. Take the rain from the sky and turn 70% of the known Earth into deserts. Kill the oceans. Pollute the air so that breathing is reserved for the rich. Destruction is easy and fun! In The City of Ember the characters live underground without the sun and the generator that runs their lights is dying. When the lights go out, the people will be in a very bad place indeed.
    • Dystopian characters, unless they are very creative, very clever, and/or very strong willed, do not begin with this level of satisfaction fulfilled.  (Hint hint)
  2. The fourth level are Safety Needs, and it doesn’t take an author’s imagination to dream up a dystopian world where characters never feel safe. And we’re not talking just physical safety, although that is part of it. In a world where everyone is starving or there’s not enough clean drinking water, neighbors turn on neighbors in acts of desperation. It is also about security and peace of mind, and part of that is tied in with how we view our governing body and financial stability. More often than not, the governing body in dystopian worlds is corrupt or missing, with the rich at the top and everyone else left to squalor. They can also be the bad guys, using and abusing the lower class for their own pleasure (See: Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games). In those worlds no one will ever feel secure except for those at the tippy top.
  3. The third level is Love and Belonging. That is, friends, family, coworkers, teachers, schools, communities, and siblings. Sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, and romance all belong to this level. Authors love to play with this level because it is usually where the most powerful character growth can occur. (Romance doesn’t usually happen until the fifth and fourth levels are stabilized)
      • A beloved father who took care of the character’s first two levels of need is now dead and there is no replacement.
      • A mother cannot be counted on to worry about anyone but herself.
      • Because of the problems of the world, nothing feels permanent and in the end everyone is out for themselves.
      • Characters look for a false sense of belonging and love by trusting the wrong people or throwing in with a corrupt government who wants to use them for the promise of belonging to something better.
    • Destroying the character’s third level is classic author move. Z for Zachariah by Robert O’Brien and Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines are all about messing with this level of need.
  4. The second level is Esteem, both for others and for one’s self. It is hard to feel particularly esteemed by ones government if they pack you up and send you off to be killed by your friends for entertainment, or they stick you in some sort of mind experiment that could kill you for the sake of science, or when you’re sleeping on the dirty floor with thirty other orphans and the only thing you own is a pair of hand-me-down shoes and a ragdoll gifted from a long dead parent. It is hard to feel like a respected individual if you have nothing to contribute to a flagging society or at 16 years old you’re forced to have babies not for love but for social need. It is hard to feel respected when the government spies on your every move and you have no personal privacy of any kind.
    • Usually the climax of a dystopian book sees the character attaining this level once they realize that not only can they fight the Big Bad, but they can win, that they must win, for themselves as well as the ones they love. It is a sentiment largely missing from society in a dystopia due to the unsatisfied first three levels of needs.
    • In Pam Bachorz book CANDOR, the Big Bad are the people who control the town of CANDOR. As a unique sort of dystopia, they actually fulfill the first three levels of needs for their people. No one in CANDOR lives in squalor. No one lives miserable lives. Everyone feels secure and everyone feels like they belong to something greater than themselves- the town of CANDOR. What those people don’t have is esteem. They are servants of the mind control of their government. To those running CANDOR, they are not people anymore, they are tools for creating the perfect little Stepford. Robots. Bodies to be programmed to fit a particular need.
  5. The very top and final level of need is that of Self-Actualization. It is not simply an understanding that I AM, but that I AM WHO I AM CAPABLE OF BECOMING. They are not just a gutter rat. They are worthy. They are human. They are free. (Braveheart anyone?)
    • And here is the special bit about this: it’s not just that the character understands that they have fulfilled their own potential, but they understand that the world is capable of so much more than what it has become. The character understands that they cannot just beat the bad guy; they must lead the people of their world to become who they are all capable of becoming. (Queue the next two books of the series.)

So, did you catch my hints? I even made them bold for you. Maslow, bless his little heart, literally wrote a story outline for every writer of dystopian fiction to fuse on top of their novel. Every single dystopian novel begins towards the bottom of the pyramid with a character living in misery, and through the stages of the book, achieve each level of need up through self-actualization, even if they don’t save the world from its affliction, they always save themselves from the world.

The Devil is in the Details

You’re going to have to rethink everything in your world. Who has electricity and how? Running water? Hygiene? Soap, shampoo, toiletries? Razors? Toilets? Clothes? How do people dress? How does that change how people see them? How do they individualize themselves? Money? Barter? What are the world’s necessary items? How do neighbors treat each other? What do characters do all day long? What do people carry with them in their purses and bags? What is the air like? The streets? Technology? Entertainment? Cops? If they don’t have electricity, how do they see in the dark? How do they keep their hair out of their eyes? How do they get glasses if they need them? Do they have a different type of slang? What about mail? What about teachers? What do they teach in school? What sorts of books are important? Can characters drink and smoke and over eat? What are their vices if they can’t? What about church and God? Do characters travel? What age do they have babies at? Can everyone have babies? Is it a choice or a need? What happens to new babies? Is it regulated? What’s the life expectancy of the average citizen? How are women treated differently than men? What does the typical family look like? The typical home? The typical dinner?

The devil, my friends, is in the dystopian details.

What’s in your survival pack? (CUE THE SAXON RAIDERS ARGH!)

Ok so here’s today’s exercise. When you are building your characters who will exist in this dystopian world, play the deserted island game we played the other day. Ask yourself (about your character), if your character was stranded on a deserted island, which three items would they take?

This is going to tell you what sort of person they are in their new dystopian wonderland based on what they take with them.

  • If they take the backpack, bowie knife, and change of underwear, they know that their environment will give them what they need to start fires, hunt, build rope, build shelter, and build water vessels from trees, bones, or stomachs (THAT research was a lot of fun.) This is your practical hunter who will not care if he/she is dirty, won’t care that they’ve worn the same thing over and over again, and won’t mind gutting something open and using their eviscerated bowels as useful kitchen items.
  • If they take things like books, photos, or nostalgic items, they are stuck in the past and may have a very hard time surviving, relying on others for most of their needs.
  • If they take things like notebooks, pencil or pen, medical supplies, and useful books (medical, survival, etc) they might be more academic, relying on their knowledge or scientific method to survive. They are more likely to have a book about edible plant life for that area of the world, or a book on survival engineering for building a working shower or water receptacle. They’ll drive the hunter from above crazy with their note taking, trial and error, and need for permanent habitation, but they are more likely to take care of other people before themselves and think long term survival and comfort. The nostalgic character will drive them insane with their uselessness.
  • A character who takes food, water, and weapons with them is short sighted and will survive in the beginning but will need the hunter or the academic to keep going.
  • A character who takes spare clothing, blankets, pillows, favorite foods, sun tan lotion, etc are interested in their own comfort and will not be a very good team player. They are not adaptable.
  • A character who brings books, games, sports equipment, or music understands that survival is also built on happiness and entertainment is part of that. Chores, hunting, hunger, and misery do not a life make. They need other people on the island to help them survive, but the other characters on the island need this character to make their lives bearable.

Once you’ve figured out what sort of survivalist your character is, it’s a lot easier to slip them into the world and keep them consistent. It’s easier to know how someone will react when they face a certain obstacle. One character is not likely to fulfill all of the characteristics I listed above. And that’s what makes it so interesting! It is my experience that readers tend to identify with one of the survivor types and that becomes the character they attach themselves to. And you know what? It isn’t always the main character.

There is something romantic about survival.

 Dystopian, Theme Week, Topics in Writing  1 Response »
Aug 242010
 

The Romance of Filth and Oppression

Why oh why oh why do we like stories about characters that are unwashed, half-starved, and oppressed financially, socially, culturally and sexually? Why do we enjoy that? It sounds terrible right? No one wants their main character to have to deal with lice and rotting food and constant pain. Ugh.

And yet. And yet. And yet. Dystopian fiction is EVERYWHERE in all shapes, sizes and colors, for all types of dispositions.

There’s a Dirty, Miserable Dystopia for Everyone.

  • The-worlds-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket, all financial sectors in all major countries have collapsed leaving scary barter systems and massive movements of organized crime and corruption as in Restoring Harmony by Joelle Anthony.
  • Your horror dystopians with zombie apocalypses (The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan) vampire apocalypses (The Passage by Justin Cronin).
  • Speculative resource loss (Empty by Suzanne Weyn, Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd, etc etc)
  • You’ve got your 1984 type dystopias like, well ugh, 1984, but also CANDOR by Pam Bachorz, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, etc etc.
  • There are plenty of fatal stories about all the men dying out or all the women dying out or some variation there of (The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, Nomansland by Lesley Hauge, Epitaph Road by David Patneaude)
  • There are dirty Mad Max style dystopias and super regulated Bladerunner style dystopias.

There’s Something Romantic About Survival

The one thing they all have in common is one character glances up from the dark tunnel of their miserable life and dreams of something more. Maybe they are forced into this dream, maybe it is one of necessity or one of hope, but they all have it. The character is resourceful and resilient and defies the status quo in order to find the light.

We like following these characters because we all like to think we could be them if it came to it.

There’s something romantic about survival.

The Future as It Could Be

Lots of people love historical fiction because it is something we’ll never be able to experience (Unless historical = within our lifetime and that’s really more contemporary or out-dated contemporary)

But the future holds all the possibilities of the world. All that is possible is probable and all that is probably is easily romanticized.

Dystopia is never about what was, it is always about what could be, and so no matter how improbable the zombie/vampire/robot apocalypse might seem, because it HASN’T happened yet there’s always a chance that it COULD happen. And there’s something very satisfying to our ego when we daydream about not just surviving but kicking zombie/vampire/robot ass in the coming war. How will our trusty iPads serve us in the coming dystopia? What crazy Fifth Element fashions will we be wearing? How will we be thrown together with our passionate romantic lead? Will they live? Will I live? Will we go down in a blaze of glory together?

Games to Play with Your Friends

Ok, here’s another little exercise. Think back to the hype that surrounded the first episode of LOST. Everyone and their mother wanted to see the show about a group of people stranded on a deserted island. Why? Well, everyone raise their hand if they remember watching that first episode and imagining all the things YOU would do to survive such an ordeal. How many of you thought Sawyer had the right idea about hording? Or were you with the group that wanted to build a bigger bonfire in an effort to be spotted by a plane or ship? Were you thinking you’d run around helping people or were you the one thinking you’d organize everyone, find shelter, food, and water?

The way you watched the first episode of LOST is the reason we like to read about dystopias. We want to imagine what we’d do if we were put in such a terrible situation (without actually being put in it) and then how we’d survive.

There’s something romantic about survival.

Here’s another exercise: If you were stranded on a deserted island, and you could only have three items, what items would you take with you?

Hard question, right? Most people would think of the easy things: Food, Water, Weapon. Or they’d think nostalgic things: Notebook, Favorite Book, Picture of their kids. Someone very resourceful would say: Backpack, Bowie knife, and an extra pair of underwear. Most people could play this game with friends for hours. It’s fun to imagine and whittle your list down.

Would you survive the coming dark times? It’s a very important meme floating around Facebook these days. I know I wouldn’t. Mentally and creatively sure, but physically I need to lose some weight and join a gym first if I’m running (from zombies, crazy neighbors, radioactive clouds WHATEVER). If I don’t have to run from anything I’ll probably be ok.

Would you join the resistance movement or just plod along in the hopes it might get better?  Would you do whatever was necessary to survive? Man, I could play this game for HOURS.

I think I’m more of a resistance joiner myself, but who knows? I don’t think I’d be very good at starving, or drinking ditch water, or lying to robots, or living without soap, or shooting my thieving neighbors when they sneak into my secret backyard vegetable garden.

I think I’m just better at reading and writing an imaginary world of Very Bad Things.

Hot Dystopian Summer Nights Schedule of Events

 Dystopian, Theme Week, Topics in Writing  11 Responses »
Aug 192010
 

I’d like to invite you all to discuss Dystopian Fiction with me next week while we all anxiously await the release of Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay on August 24th when the whole world stops working, feeding their kids, or getting out of their pajamas while they read the exciting and epic end to one really awesome series of books.

The schedule for Hot Dystopian Summer Nights is as follows:

August 23: What is dystopian fiction?

A post dedicated to defining the concept: What is dystopian fiction?


August 24: There is something romantic about survival.

Why do we like dystopian fiction?


August 25: How to torture your characters

How to write dystopian fiction.


August 26: There is something inspiring about survival.

Why is dystopian fiction important?


August 27: What flavor is your dystopia?

Pick a flavor, any flavor.


Hot Dystopian Summer Nights continues the next week starting August 30th with discussions and reviews of Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, followed by reviews of really great dystopian stories pulled from the list posted on August 27th. I will also have a Spoiler post on August 30th in which I will post a spoiler review of Mockingjay and all spoiler comments and discussions can go there. We don’t want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the book!

Come stop by, tell your friends, and definitely stick around to comment! It’s not a discussion if I’m the only one talking. (I just look like a know-it-all with no friends.)

I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of Mockingjay.