How to Live in a Dystopian Fiction https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/28/how-to-live-in-a-dystopian-fiction/
@enkiv2 the first point already makes me think... would it work if you *didn't* start the book in the middle of a situation already brewing?
might be able to devote a little more time to depicting what it's actually like to live in that world. really sell it. maybe invert the typical strategy of fantasy tales in these matters...
then you can start something, and it be more meaningful? 🤷
@KitRedgrave I think maybe the reason is that figuring out how to describe a collapse in an entertaining way is hard. Often, dystopian settings have complicated structures that would require a lot of justification. (For an example of this done well, watch the V miniseries)
@enkiv2 i kinda like how the first few chapters of "the diamond age" were. you see this tangentially related guy's life and how he (doesn't) handle some impending doom, and it already shows you a lot about the world.
@KitRedgrave I think dystopian fiction generally manages to do this. We spend like three chapters of 1984 with Winston's day job and shitty flat before he has any revolutionary sentiments. Half of Zamatayin's We is about the protagonist being happy in his glass house with his government-assigned wife.
@enkiv2 @KitRedgrave *angry russian noises* zamyatin. za-mya-tin.
@devurandom @KitRedgrave Sorry! I have a hard time remembering russian names because I don't recognize their components. (I took some russian but I was never too hot on the handful of actually-slavic words & leaned too heavily on the greek, german, and french influences.)
@enkiv2 @KitRedgrave i'm also sorry. i'm not actually angry, just slightly surprised as to what a weird misspelling that was. it's all okay ^_^
@enkiv2 @devurandom @KitRedgrave ah, ok, i get it.
(crap, tried doing the same thing as you did at the end, but not before realizing the words i used were all too short for that.)
@devurandom @KitRedgrave When I read a word in a language I don't properly know how to chunk, my brain becomes that early-internet meme where Srftnaod Uinersvtiy rhrecaesres fnuod taht you can sltil raed sbelrmacd txet so lnog as the frist and lsat lretets rmeian in pacle.