YA & Dystopian, anybody?

Anybody else out there writing YA Dystopian?

I am and I am shocked. I usually stick with straight realism/fantasy. Never sci-fi. This year comes along and a dystopian idea comes to mind. I'm floored. I've read maybe four dystopian novels, and I'm writing in this genre?

It should certainly be an adventure. Anybody else?

~Danica Page
http://danicapage.blogspot.com/

I LOVE dystopian. I'm not writing one, but I love it. I've read 1984 (which is, admittedly, not really YA, but fantastic), Little Brother (which is basically a YA, modernized, computer age version of 1984), Fahrenheit 451, Hunger Games, Survivor Antarctica (not many have heard of that one)... Oh dear, I can't even remember the rest. One of my favorite subgenres. Brave New World is on my To Read list, too.

Interestingly enough, it seems the term is unique to our generation. Nobody from my parents' generation or older know "dystopian novels" when I mention them. Once I explain, they know what I'm talking about, but they had never known there was a name for it.

Me! Me! The funny thing is, I don't even like dystopian novels. On the whole, I find them heavy-handed and simplistic (with certain exceptions - obviously, 1984 and Animal Farm are great, though the latter is more of just a political allegory). But since YA dystopian is all the rage with publishers right now, I figured I'd take a swing at the trend this year.

Anyway, I've posted the synopsis elsewhere before, but my novel basically concerns a not-so-distant future where human cloning is commonplace in Eastern Europe (due to a viral STD that has rendered much of the populations of Russia and its surrounding countries infertile), but considered barbaric by the US, which has by this point taken a swing to the far right and has become incredibly anti-science and anti-intellectual. My character Hannah, 16, discovers that when she was an infant, her parents sold her DNA to a Russian cloning syndicate, and now there are thousands of copies of her in Europe. The US government is planning to invade Russia in order to "liberate" - i.e. euthanize - its clone population, under the pretense of putting an end to what they consider grave human rights violations (though it's really just so that American defense contractors can profit). The military sequesters Hannah, along with three other people whose DNA has been used for mass quantities of clones, in Washington in order to run tests on them and compare their minds, reflexes, etc. to those of their clones, and in the process, Hannah develops a dark and unlikely friendship with her very first clone, 15-year-old Kira, who was raised in a laboratory in Moscow.

And then some other stuff happens. It's a big downer ending, just FYI. Much like Animal Farm, it's a quasi-dystopian political allegory (spoiler (?) alert: Hannah's character is VERY loosely based on that of Dr. David Kelly, who was murdered - oh, I'm sorry, "committed suicide" - by the British Ministry of Defense), but it also has certain aspects to it that I'm personally really interested in - questions of bioethics and what it means to be human, science vs. ignorance, that sort of thing. And clones.

I love, love looooove YA dystopian novels and will be stalking this thread.

Me! I'm writing a dystopian romance. *rolls eyes* I know, I know. But it was like a lightning bolt of genius from the muse gods, and how can I ignore that??

One of the novels I'm considering has a dystopic theme to it, involving a girl sniper in the ruins of Chicago. World War II has NOT turned out very well for the United States, let's put it that way . . . Most of the soldiers she has to kill are Chinese but the ultimate bad guy is Russian. It's probably too controversial to sell which is why I'm entertaining a different, less ambitious, idea.

World War III, I meant. III! I can't edit my posts anymore? Damn.

My non nano novel is a dystopian. I am normally straight contemporary YA. It's such a change, I have never enjoyed writing so much. The freedom and challenges it gives is fantastic.

Iam writing a dystopian, because i love the genre, its so great! and Iam loving writing it :D

I've never written dystopian, although I've read a lot of it - usually I write fantasy. But I figured I might as well try something new =)

Wow I absolutely love dystopian. My non-NaNo novel that I just finished writing last month was a YA Dystopian piece. Actually, it's one of my "pet" genres. I work in a bookstore and did up a whole display of purely YA Dystopian books, so if anyone needs any ideas on which ones to read to get the muses going and to get a feel for the genre, send me a message! (I just finished reading "Eve" by Anna Carey and it was quite good. I'm also very partial to "Divergent" by Veronica Roth!)

I will be stalking this thread, most definitely!

I absolutely love dystopian novels. I had no idea I was even going to be writing a dystopian until I had a dream that inspired this story plot to be fixated into my brain.
To be honest, I'm not really into how the dystopian YA novels out on the market right now are so...redundant. Is it just me?
I don't know - I just hope that I'll be able to write a much more different dystopian novel than most that are out right now.

I might be. I was sort of thinking over the Dystopian/Post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel that has whammied me and told me that it is getting written this year, and I realized that it might actually be a YA novel. I'm not sure yet. We'll see as it develops. The central characters are definitely going to be in the right age range, and some of the issues that it deals with are going to be ones that will fit the YA genre, but I don't really know if it will turn out in such a way that I would feel comfortable labeling it YA.

I'm definitely going to be checking in with this part of the forum as it develops though...

Adrien Etienne

I've had this idea bouncing around in my head for close to two years now, and I'm thinking its time has come this year... it's set roughly five years after World War III has, mainly through devastating biological warfare, made the world almost unrecognizable - there are no countries, few freedoms, and people are identified by number instead of by name. The new government runs quite a tight ship, and in order to treat the surviving victims of the biological attacks (at least, those who can afford it), they begin a system of human testing and arranged mating between those who have the desired genetics to ward off the diseases. The story centers around a network of resistance operations located in what used to be Europe, and their attempts to make the world into what it used to be, which obviously comes with a huge set of problems.

As you may be able to tell, there are lots of kinks to be worked out, but I'm quite in love with my characters so far so I think I'm going to run with it :)

My book is set in a place between future and present. Sara (name will change) lives in a society where everything is decided for her, what she does, what she wears, who she'll marry. One summer, her parents send her off to camp, in a world like ours, where you have freedom to do what you choose. Sara realizes that the world she's been living in isn't all she thought and when she meets a guy who she's not supposed to marry, she has to leave her world to defeat the society she's living in.

Last year I attempted a Dystopia, because I LOVE reading dystopias, but I cannot write them to save my life... Regardless, I may or may not be taking another stab at my FAVORITE genre for NaNo this year. :)

I agree with a lot of you guys. I was hesitant to try to write a dystopian novel, because a) I've never really read dystopian novels b) because I'm usually a straight-fantasy/realistic writer, and c) because they are so popular right now.

I think I have an original idea for my novel, but I'm afraid my novel may be too similar to other dystopian novels.

But at any rate it will be fun to write dystopian either way, and it is what I want to write, so I'm going to.

~Danica Page
http://danicapage.blogspot.com/

@ JGHarris -- it looks like our plot "babies" are quite similar lol. I've only read one dystopian book before, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let me Go" (after seeing the film) and it's been a huge influence on my plot as I've got it going thus far. It is also a bit inspired by the recent film "Contagion", too; i.e. a virus will be the cause of everything.

I've never written dystopian fiction, nor have much of a background reading it, so I'm excited to see if it pans out!

My big concern is that it not be a YA piece though, in spite of the age of my protagonist, who is going to be 19/20. I think 22 will be the cutoff age for her and her friends (incidentally, I notice a lot of us are planning female protagonists on this thread). "Never Let me Go" was not YA, even though a large part of it dealt with the main character's childhood and early twenties. If any of you have suggestions, I'm all ears as I plan. Thanks!

I am! It's not too technical, more of a social dystopian than anything totally apocalyptic. Although I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. Mine may be middle-grade, may be YA, not sure. May be the third book in a series, may be the third act of a very long book. Structure is not my strong suit. Fun to read. Fun to write. Good luck to all you YA dystopian writers out there, whether you're riding the wave or happen to love what happens to be popular.

Wish I could write Steampunk middle-grade fiction, as that's my 2nd grade son's favorite genre. He eats the Leviathan series for breakfast. Sigh. So not qualified ...

I'm doing a distopyan apocalyptic, potentially with some horror twists, because as far as I'm concerned, dystopia and apocalypse go hand in hand (well, can anyways...) I'm so excited!