Dystopian stories can be a powerful way to convey how the pitfalls and problems of society could become our collective nightmare. If you want to write a dystopian story there are many options to choose from. One of the benefits of writing a dystopian book is that, though it’s a subgenre of speculative fiction, it can overlap with other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction.
Dystopian fiction creates an ominous picture of a world that reflects individual and societal fears of government, otherworldly beings, artificial intelligence, and damage to the environment in its most extreme form. It is the opposite of a Utopian society and shows civilization at its worst.
This type of fiction can take ideas and sometimes actual historical events and create a world where these dark scenarios play out. They can have philosophical significance allowing you as the writer to showcase the power of ideas and consequences that can come from loss of freedom whether from the government, technology, or an outside invader.
Contrasted against these grim scenarios can be themes of human tenacity that show the strength of the human will and sometimes give the reader hope, depending on what direction you want your story to take.
When people are placed in extreme circumstances, authors can show the lengths that they will go to overcome oppression or just survive. It can also give the reader catharsis in the same way the horror genre often does by seeing our biggest fears played out and imagining what the outcome of them may be.
Take a free trial of Fictionary today and take your story to the next level.
Tips For Choosing a Dystopian Story Idea
If you want to write a dystopian story and are having trouble narrowing it down, here are some concepts to consider that might help you to narrow down your story.
Direction
Will this be more of a cautionary tale of how bad things can get or will good and human courage triumph in the end? This doesn’t diminish how dark you can make your dystopian world. Instead, ask what is the point you are trying to make?
Determining the themes you want to highlight, like anarchy and loss of autonomy or human potential for good and evil, is a useful starting point for coming up with ideas for a dystopian book.
What Do We Care About?
What are the problems that plague our society or the fears that we have of those problems?
Economic collapse, lack of resources, or nuclear war can all be a seed that could become big enough to lead to a dystopian future. While fear is often a great starting point to consider, what makes you angry is also a useful question to ask yourself.
Now Make It Extreme
Now that you have identified problems that make you mad or scared, think about how to use them in your story in a way that would create a large conflict.
Dystopian stories are extreme, so making your problem bigger is necessary to make it the central driving point of your book. For example, if you decide to write a story using people’s fear of artificial intelligence, think about what it might look like in the worst case scenario. Does it develop self awareness and take over all computers and control all communication? How can you turn these problems into a story premise that is dire enough to become a dystopian nightmare?
Who Are Your Characters?
Think about what kind of characters you want to drive the story in these dark scenarios. Sometimes the protagonist in a dystopian story is unaware that they live in a corrupt society and have a point of awakening.
Another approach would be to have a protagonist who is aware the whole time and is a source of strength and enlightenment for other characters. Whether or not they succeed in overcoming their dystopian circumstances is up to you, but having your protagonist be compelling is crucial.
Choose Your Setting
In what setting do you want your dystopian story to take place? Asking yourself this can help you determine what type of dystopian story you want.
Do you want it to take place on a different planet? Dystopian science fiction may be the direction that you want to go. Choosing what kind of setting you want helps you choose a genre, but it also helps you determine how the backdrop will intermingle with your story’s main problem.
If your dystopian story is set in a world where nothing can grow, then the conflict will be the survival of your characters. Dystopian fiction allows for rich possibilities to build a unique setting that can set your story apart.
With so many options for where your dystopian story can go, it can easily become overwhelming, so here are 30 dystopian story ideas that will get the creative juices flowing.
Environmental Dystopian Ideas
The threat of the consequences of environmental damage is a relevant and consistent fear in today’s society.
Consider what humans fear from this premise? Lack of resources, natural disasters, plants and crops dying, or destruction of the earth are all fears associated with the environment. So, here are 5 environmental dystopian ideas.
- When a sun flare fries everything on the earth and there is no longer any electricity, society has to live in medieval conditions and relearn how to survive.
- The world is now covered in water after a massive flood. The last humans that survived must compete with each other and the creatures of the sea to survive without earth to grow food traditionally.
- The world has become a frozen wasteland, and those that control fire are the ones in power. The fire holders become a cult, and fire becomes like a god that is worshiped. The remaining humans must bring gifts of tribute to have access to fire or risk freezing to death.
- The earth has become a desert and water is scarce. Rumors of a mystical water source lead a man to go on a journey to find it.
- After centuries of neglect from humans the earth rebels by making the air poisonous to breathe, and all the animals become vicious and start devouring the humans. They have to wear masks to protect them from breathing in the poison and survive by hunting and eating the animals before they are wiped out.
Dystopian Book Ideas About the Government
Dystopian stories about the government highlight themes like anarchy, censorship, loss of freedom, and war.
Famous works such as George Orwell’s 1984 showcase this type of dystopian story by creating a society that sensors and controls all aspects of life for their citizens. Government dystopian fiction presents many opportunities to expand on the different potential dangers that a controlling government can impose by expanding on existing fears in our society.
- An authoritarian government splits society into two classes with the lower class treated like slaves without human rights and the elite govern over them like kings. A group of rebels form an alliance in secret and make plans to fight back.
- One country has succeeded in colonizing all countries and has merged them together, and it’s now ruled by one totalitarian dictator and his followers.
- The government can read everyone’s thoughts, but a young woman discovers she can block them from her mind. She uses her ability to lead an uprising.
- In an effort to create the perfect human race, the government creates a program to genetically mutate certain humans. This backfires when a boy becomes stronger than expected and escapes.
- A woman struggles to survive after she secretly publishes a book exposing a controlling government that has outlawed women from reading and writing books.
Dystopian Society Ideas About Conformity
Dystopian stories about conformity often include themes like loss of autonomy, individualism and freedom of ideas.
For example, the popular novels in The Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth tell a story of a young girl who must choose a faction to belong to when she turns sixteen but discovers she fits into none of their categories. This is a great type of dystopian fiction to explore for young adult readers because the pressure to conform is a relatable concept for that age group. It does however provide lots of appeal for all age demographics.
- When displaying emotion becomes illegal and punishable by death, a young man must learn to hide his feelings for a woman he has just met.
- A militaristic society has outlawed all religion, and any who practice it are driven into hiding. A high ranking general falls in love with a religious woman and begins to question everything he knows.
- When the belief that the world’s problems come from science, and technology becomes dominant in society, a young scientist must create her scientific inventions in secret until she can prove they are not inherently evil.
- The government has outlawed all marriage and natural procreation. They only create humans in pods. But when a couple secretly fall in love and accidentally conceive a baby, the government tries to capture and eliminate them.
- A teenage boy lives in society where part of the population is “blessed” with supernatural abilities on their 18th birthday. As he nears his 18th birthday, he accidentally discovers that he has to defeat another teenager in a battle to the death to claim his powers.
Science Fiction Dystopian World Ideas
Science fiction is a great genre overlap with dystopian novels as seen in H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds where the world has been invaded by aliens who threaten the survival of humans on earth. Science fiction creates the opportunity to introduce an outside element into our worst fears. It can also create possibilities for interesting settings like a different planet or technological advancements.
- Because of constant alien invasion, the earth has become a warzone with the little civilization left turning into military bases. A scientist makes the pivotal discovery that he can use the aliens’ DNA to build a weapon to potentially defeat them.
- Aliens have wiped out half of the humans and begin to populate the earth with their offspring. The surviving humans become the main food source for their young.
- A highly contagious disease has spread, making the earth uninhabitable. A group of humans go to another planet to restart but when they get there they discover that somehow one of them has brought the disease with them and they must now decide if they will eliminate the sick human or create a cure.
- Humans have made such advancements in technology that they can use it to perfect humans by combining them with machinery. A scientist begins to notice that as society becomes a majority cyborg, the alterations start to alter their humanity.
- The world has been without technology or robots for centuries, but humans no longer remember how it came to be that way. A young man discovers a robot somehow still exists and thinks it may be the answer to bring back technology. He finds out that the robot may not be the answer but the original problem.
Fantasy Dystopian Plot Ideas
The fantasy and dystopian genres play well together because you can be creative about the types of adversaries humans can come up against, if you even want your characters to be human at all.
Fantasy expands the possibilities of conflict from typical societal fears and includes elements of magic, monsters, and different realms. It’s also a great way to engage readers into a new genre when they may not typically stray from the genre they favor.
- Mythical creatures have come out of hiding and enslave all the humans. They make them fight in a deadly competition once a year to keep their population from overtaking them since the creatures are outnumbered 5 to 1.
- In a world where vampires rule, humans are livestock harvested for their blood. A human discovers a group of humans living freely in secret and manages to escape one of the human farms to find them.
- It’s a society where humans without magical abilities are enslaved by ancient fae. A human discovers her inexplicable ability to use magic and has to uncover the origin of her powers and how to keep it a secret.
- In a cursed kingdom, All human boys are born with a magical illness resulting in them becoming wild beasts by their 20th birthdays. A 19 year old boy goes on a journey to break the curse before his 20th birthday.
- Humans rule the realm with an iron fist after a violent war with witches. The witches have to go into hiding and conceal their magical powers to avoid persecution until one day a girl is born with enough power to someday lead an uprising.
Apocalypse Dystopian Plot Ideas
Apocalypse is a very common sub genre to be paired with dystopian fiction Some favorites of this combination include mass destruction of civilization, survival, and lack of resources.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks tells a fictional history documenting the stories of different survivors of a zombie apocalypse and is a great example of this type of dystopian story.
- An unknown disease has ravaged the world making it impossible for food and plants to grow. Humans have to start figuring out alternate resources for food that may include eating each other.
- All civilization has been destroyed by endless wars and the humans begin forming small groups that roam the earth to hunt and end up like prehistoric societies.
- Nuclear war has demolished almost all life except for a small group of survivors who hid in a bunker. When their descendents return to the surface they discover that the only things to have survived are mutated bugs the size of horses.
- When the core of the earth overheats the planet, the surface becomes as hot as lava. The surviving humans must live on large floating ships that harvest rain for drinking water and battle each other for the last resources left.
- A meteor hits the earth destroying a third of the human population and creating a toxic environment on the surface. The remaining humans must survive by building underground.
Now you have explored some dystopian story ideas, it’s time to do your research. The more information you have to create your dystopian world, the more believable it will be to the reader.
If you decide to write an environmental dystopian book, do your research on the environment to create a scenario that is rich in detail and plausible.
Reading notable books in the dystopian genre, such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which is well known for its depictions of a society that gives up freedom to become overly reliant on technology, is important research because it gives you further inspiration on how to tell your own dystopian story.
Hopefully these dystopian ideas have sparked your imagination to the darker aspects of humanity and society to create a compelling story. Whether or not you decide to merge your dystopian ideas with other genres, remember to identify the problem that will be the backbone of your story’s conflict, make it extreme, and create compelling characters and settings.
Dystopian fiction has a lot of potential to create powerful stories, so don’t shy away from the grim and the extreme in this genre!