-Avoid considering absolute worst-case scenarios. Absolute worst-case
scenarios are science fiction.
-A dystopian novel is that
cell phone tattoo they were talking about on the radio. Some scientist saw a
world where people walked around with ringtones implanted into their skins.
Vibrating pores. This is dystopia. Just close enough to be real. What’s more,
the skin-tones are customizable. Grandma: three rapid pearls; lover: urgent,
staccato ellipses felt all through the elbow. In that metallic knead some part of us tips
up to full and over time resigns to that vibration being one of the ways people
touch now. The dystopian novel is that patent going through.
-A nice way to start thinking about a dystopian novel is to consider a
rupture between the natural, “benevolent” order of things (things are going
“well”—good weather, marriage, etc.) versus a bizarre, hypothetical world: the
dissonance between an actual threat and what seems like a threat but in fact is
not.
-Make what is already known refract and repeat itself. Make excess of
caterpillars, hair, machines, people. Copy things. A dystopian novel ought to
make sense in the context of the world. In this way the dystopian novel brushes
up against what might be called horror.
-A dystopian novel is the film version of The Shining, where
Jack and the Overlook Hotel unite in their deterioration.
-Give the main character of a dystopian novel some arcane, throwback
hobby, a cultural referent to which we can all relate. Beethoven for Alex in A
Clockwork Orange. Some obsession that repeats throughout the book and which
sympathizes us to the character, which can somehow come in towards the
resolution to underline the arc of the character’s yearning.
- The end of a dystopian novel should serve as a reminder that the
future is not so bad.
-When deciding on the sex of a dystopian novel protagonist, err on the
side of “female.” It should be clear to the dystopian novelist why this makes
the most sense.
-People in their forties and fifties are more interesting than people
in their twenties and thirties, so the dystopian novelist should write about
them as often as possible. (On the subject of the elderly: the time will
inevitably come when the dystopian novelist will have no choice but to write
about them, so why rush it.)
-There is the argument that the dystopian novelist should write about
young people because the chances of relating to the reader are the greatest
here because all will have already lived through this age. (Actual young people
shouldn’t be reading this kind of a book anyway, so let’s just assume they’re
not.) A narrator around fifteen or seventeen years of age could be particularly
relatable. Then again, there is always the question of whether relating to
one’s audience is a valid concern for a dystopian novelist.
-Names are important. A character could always just be “she” or “her”
or a letter with a line after it like Hesse used, or a concept, or unnamed, or
a symbol. She could have two first names or no first name at all. She could be
a horse. She could be a mosquito.
-Make it about something more than love. More than some woman trying
not to turn out like her mother and so being more and more like her mother by
the day.
-Avoid the “preferred” ending, the utopic ideal. Avoid absolutes, avoid
resolution. Avoid the “this is mine and this is what I want to say.” In
essence, fight the urge to be an author.
-Begin with the mundane.
-On setting: In the city, always. Some deplorable housing situation.
Some eruptive excess of an already existent problem. Think of a problem in a
major urban area that hasn’t totally gone off the rails yet but is on the verge
of doing so. Make up the how.
-On form: take pleasure in the unknown.
- Do not compare
the dystopian novel with any other novel. Allow it to stand entirely as it its
own particular, impenetrable world.
-Do not go about navigating daily life
with any mind still hovering in the dystopian novel. Doing so assumes a
relationship between the world of the page and the world of the real, a
dangerous association: the imaginary and the concrete operate under wildly
different terms.
-Write a dystopian novel in an unexpected place: in a hallway, on a
staircase, beneath a beehive.
- Such an alliance
between fiction and fact simply cannot be made.
