Writing Excuses 8.39: Dystopian Fiction with Cherie Priest

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Writing Excuses 8.39: Dystopian Fiction with Cherie Priest

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2013/09/29/writing-excuses-8-39-dystopian-fiction-with-cherie-priest/

Key points: Dystopia, a terrible place, is the opposite of a utopia. Dystopian fiction focuses on a person or group struggling against some form of oppression. Why do we read it? Boom times push weighty questions, bad times give rise to comedies. One flavor of dystopian is "the world ended yesterday, here's what happened next." Dystopias are fascinating, like the dark underbelly of utopia, because of the richness of the conflicts, and the question of how do you survive when everything changes? To write one, you can either decide how the world ends, and then what society looks like after that OR you can decide what you want the society to look like, and then figure out how we got there from here. Be aware, many dystopias are being built without worrying about the connection to our world, more as thought experiments -- what if X? Do you want an open dystopia, where everyone knows it sucks, or a hidden dystopia, where the dark secret is hidden underneath?
( Post-apocalyptic cornflakes? You want cream with that? )

[Brandon] [garbled] Mary, give us a writing prompt.
[Mary] So the writing prompt this week is to base a dystopia on breakfast cereal.
[Dan] Awesome.
[Cherie] Nice. [Garbled] Cheerios.
[Brandon] All right. You guys are out of excuses, now go write.