Anyone writing dystopian fiction?

[stripyeyes]

My novel is set in a modern dystopia, where the details of how society is ordered is gradually revealed.

The story centers around a young man and his boss, who has a not-insignificant power over him. She asks him to take actions which are increasingly morally and legally ambiguous and it is the consequence of this which makes the story.

My current issue is I've read the damn thing so many times, I've lost the ability to "see" what a new reader would know, and whether the implied threat is great enough to affect his actions. Does anyone have any tips? Or fancy a read?!

I'm reluctant to give it to friends and family to read at this stage due to all the usual issues regarding biased or kindly reviews!

I've been quite fortunate in that most people from my Uni course (those who have pursued writing, anyway) have done okay so far. I have a very skewed perception of the industry :)

I went and got a 'proper job' (as my mother would say), and then DH and DS came along... And my novel is hard/complicated, so its definitely sat on the shelf for a bit whilst I got my head around it.

I'm also lucky in that DH is pretty understanding. Yes, he doesn't 'get' why I need silence to write and will often hunt me down to bother me. But he does get how important it is to me, so I feel pretty grateful for that.

It really helps to have a supportive family.

I always joke that one of these times I will put as my dedication 'with non thanks at all to my family' .

But actually they're pretty good. It's just that when I work from home it's very easy for them to forget I am bloody working.

Yesterday, DS was on study leave and said ' what have you been doing mum?' Err I've typed up the edits if an 80,000 word novel. Not a bad day's work to be honest son.

My husband also likes to chat when I'm writing so I end up going to another room!

My kids are still v little so I live in fear that one day after they've been on the laptop I shall open the file to find my novel has been replaced by jdisbdodhwiskxjfj

My dc are pains because they're desperate for me to write the 3rd in the trilogy to see what happens. They keep craning over me, annoying me and getting in my face. Pah. Kids. How very dare they want to read my books

Talking of head-drafting, though, I had this whole new idea for a book last night about midnight. I got the idea down this morning after not a lot of sleep

Doesn't my mind know I have another book to finish before I go off on new flights of bizarre sci-fi fancy? Humphh. Saying that, I'm excited at the idea - it'll just have to go on hold for a good while.

It's all very well loving making up random shit but it can be most inconvenient.

stripy I do that too! I always go and hide upstairs away from him . But he then gets lonely and comes to find me. And then he gets shh'd. I don't know which is worse...

DS is obsessed by my laptop. He's not allowed near it and he knows. Doesn't stop him (he's only 1 though, I'll forgive him).

Ahh Mad that's really sweet! Oooh that sounds exciting! My head has been too filled with this book to even consider anything else. It's become an obsession. And probably not a good one...!

Spider I have the same with my just 2 year old. As soon as laptop is opened he's over like a flash. And my 5 year old is currently writing her own 'story' on there now *

Mad* it must be helpful getting feedback from your target audience?!

I actually struggle with mental planning- I need to write my ideas down else they drift off in random directions!

Having had some very useful (and lovely) feedback this week on my ms I think I'm going to be brave and try joining my local writing group so my main goal this week is to contact the lady who runs it

I have always been plagued by too many ideas.

They come especially thick and fast when I'm at the tricky part of the current project. I think some if it is distraction - ooh look at the bright shiney objects! And some of it is a sign that I'm boring myself. So I try to ignore the former whilst staying alive to the later.

That's probably the case with this one for me, Get - I'm boring myself with heavy editing of my first 2. I just need to get on with the third rather than start fannying around with something new and shiny

Stripy - you should totally join the writing group - how lovely to have a local one! I think they must be invaluable for helping one another. Some of my friends and I are thinking about starting one up, really must get to it.

Yes my dc can be so helpful when it comes to feedback - they read my first without knowing I wrote it so I could get completely unbiased thoughts - they loved it, so it gave me the encouragement I needed. They were when I told them I wrote it - mum? An author? Since then though, they've both been writing their own stuff more, especially dd (15) which is lovely to see - she has quite a descriptive gift, though needs to learn the art of adverb slaying, as do we all, really....sigh!

Ah, I wrote a 50 000 book when I was 15. Thought it was great at the time but found it a few years ago and it was awful! But I still love the storyline... Maybe one day I'll re-write it properly using it as a reference for how a 15 year old really thinks!

How's everyone doing?

As most of you know, I'm juggling a YA project and my usual milieu - crime fiction.

The draft of the later is with my agent who likes it and hasn't got any major changes to suggest ( Hoo-fucking- ray). We're due to meet in a fortnight or so, this I can park it until then.

This makes me doubly happy because the YA thing is needing much attention. I have about a week to turn around the series one outline .

Get It's like you knew I was on Mumsnet instead of writing...

That sounds really exciting! Congrats on not getting any huge changes. Hows the outline going?

I've started to rewrite mine. I was finding it hard getting past chapter 8 in the first person, so am now attempting chapters 1-3 in the third as a comparison. Mad, I know.

spider this is what I did with my book. Some events needed to be told in 3rd person from someone else's POV because the protagonist was not even in the scenes that I was describing. I had a moment of doubt and rewrote the first few chapters in 3rd person limited from the protagonists POV but it lost the intimacy that you get from 1st person narration. I changed it right back 😀 The middle act is told in 3rd person from other characters' POV and then I go back to 1st person in the final act.

No harm in playing around till you get what's right for your book. It may even give you a fresh pair of eyes for the story.

spider the outline is going okay I think.

The main trouble is I don't actually know what they want it to look like as I've never seem a series outline . I really am in un chartered territory. I can only hope there's no industry standard I'm unaware of.

My plan is to simply send what I have in about a weeks time. And it will either be what the producers are looking for it it won't.

As for changing POV in a novel; this can really make or break it I think. Structure has so much more impact than most writers realise.

My YA project began life as a novel. A pretty uninspiring one actually. But then I changed the POV and everyone's eyes lit up. From there I decided to write a film script concurrently which has morphed into the current project. But it would not have happened without that change of POV, I'm sure of it.

Get Good! :) I did a Scriptwriting degree and I can't remember there being an industry standard for series outlines... But it was a while ago. -unhelpful-

Cant I've done a chapter and I think I like it. It's either that, or play around and write a large section of book 2 (ha! Book 2!) from another characters POV. I'm not sure. There's so much 'world' stuff to explain I'm not sure it works from first person.

Basically, the protagonist grows up in World A. But for the first half of the book she gets taken to World B. Explaining why World A is so terrible then becomes quite complicated - and I don't want loads of explanation dialogue about it. Technically, I can get away with it - she's never been to World B before and there's loads of new and interested people to meet/talk to. But its just so booooring.

I think I'm just going to have to keep playing with it until I love it.

spider this is the problem with first person, I agree. You cannot tell the reader anything that the protagonist could not know. (But then again, it's one of the the best ways to get inside the character's head also!) I am sure you will find the best version by playing around with it and finding what works.

Cant I rewrote one chapter and didn't love it - not in the same way as when I re-read the first POV stuff. So that's that decided then :D

I have a day off today :O I've been so excited about it all weekend. Just me, some coffee and my laptop (although not in the same way that my old laptop got killed...)

Aiming to do a good 2,000 words or so. We'll see how that goes...

Changing from shifting third person POVs to one first person POV was what made this project work for me.

Perhaps because it's YA, so that self absorbtion works. Also the present tense brings that breathless, living in the moment quality. But yeah, nothing can happen off stage (which brings its own problems).

I spent a lot of yesterday working on the Mos Eisley scene . I need to balance the visual aspect with dialogue/action. I want the place itself to give the wow factor, but not at the expense of plot. I don't think I've got it quite right yet.

Hello. Is it too late to join the quiche? Or possibly hang around offering cups of tea while others quiche away?

I am drafting a dystopian story but at the moment only in my head while I'm running. I'm on maternity leave from my publishing job (not in fiction publishing, not editorial) and finding it tough to get headspace while the kids are around. I'm never thought of myself a writer, but I have been writing shorts since I was a teenager, and I have a proto-story that just won't go away.

It's dystopian but really it's about human interaction and how out of step with nature we all are. I have the structure sorted and the rough shape of the plot but it needs a lot of work.

I've convinced myself that all I need is a new notebook and some planning. That's all there is to it, right? 😀

That's comforting to hear Get. I've decided I quite like the idea of the secrecy first POV brings... For now, anyway :D

I hate that frustrating feeling when you're close to 'getting' something, but not quite having it 'there'. If you know what I mean? It drives me crazy.

And hi Nameless!! Welcome to the quiche. I'm a sucker for notebooks. I have more than I know what to do with, and yet I still buy more...

How old is your DC? I said last year that I'd write the novel when on maternity leave, but I was so overwhelmed by it all I could barely write anything. So much easier now I'm back at work, even if it is frustrating finding the time to write.

Thank you spider. I think a little graph squares notebook might be just the thing 🤓. Do you use your notebooks much? In fact does anyone write text with pen and paper? I just use paper for notes and visual planning, really.

The baby is 8 months and my daughter is 4.5 and starting school in Sept; it's terrifying to think where the time has gone. Neither of my kids sleep well so I just sort of muddle through. I can't bear to be interrupted when I'm reading or writing so I often don't even start anything, which is rather counterproductive.

I love thinking about how point of view and narration alters a story. I think drafting chapters from different POV is the only way to test it out really, though it's hard to remember what you're not supposed to know if you're not the writer.

Sounds really good Nameless, welcome to the quiche! I like dystopian stories where the 'new world' is background to what the story is about and

As well as a notebook you need highlighters. Shiny pretty new ones which children are NOT allowed to play with. And a ring binder or three

Ooh thanks stripy. A little stationery shopping is in order then .

My favourite writing is always about people and their relationships, whatever else is going on with plot or whatever. I saw some comments upthread about Battlestar Galactica and I loved that, but mostly for the characterisation and power play, less so because of the crazy sci fi stuff.

But as others have said upthread, the details and background need to be flawless otherwise it is distracting for the reader. Much harder to get dystopian fiction 'right' in comparison to straight fiction, I think.

So well done on making it hard for yourselves .

Oh I love those notebooks! But I just doodle in them . I use a mix of plain paper for brainstorming, a small notebook which lives in my handbag and then a bigger one if I want to actually write properly (rare).

I'm the same with interruptions. I get super grumpy with my husband (he's prone to random whistling/singing/commentary when I'm writing).

I've spent four years battling this novel and its world. I'm damned if I'm going to stop now... she says, weeping in the corner

How is everyone's week going?

I hit my 2,000 word target on Tuesday [chuffed emoji]... Trying to motivate myself to take advantage of DS napping now to get some thoughts down. It's not going well.

Not too bad here.

I've been inventing a character who is a healer. She's part Macbeth witch, part Chinese herbalist. I've called her Libertine, which I like .