The Catharsis in Building a Dystopian World

It's been said (ad nauseam) that if you are waiting for the perfect time to begin something, you will never start. This is one of the reasons I began chipping away at my first novel long before I had the time I wanted to devote to it. It seems that I may have also been inspired to start for the benefit of my own mental health.

Studying the Masters

Dystopian fiction has always appealed to me because at its core, there is such rich commentary about the present time in which the writer lived. With a little context, you can almost always find the seeds that sprouted in the author's imagination. You can study their world, even their life, to find the subtle clues that triggered their projections about our collective future. It's incredible to compare their imagery of what lies ahead to whatever reality we, the future, have found ourselves in.

Many people believe that society doesn't listen closely enough to the messages of its creatives. Dystopian artistry exemplifies this sentiment.

I thought that writing a novel would require a herculean effort to reprogram my mind. I knew it would be a challenge to shift from assembling focused articles with a 5,000 word max to crafting an intricate, interwoven microsphere with real, complicated humans living their complicated lives.

A few months in, I discovered that it wasn't about reprogramming, it was about allowing. I just needed to open the floodgates of my imagination. Of course, the difficulty with opening those floodgates is learning how to redirect the flow.

In tinkering with my creative process, I've found I get particularly lost in world building. It has served as an odd coping mechanism to confront the harsh future that is taking shape before our eyes- in all its dark and dire glory. I wasn't prepared for how all-encompassing it can truly be, and what joy I would derive from fleshing out all those detailed little nuggets that make it feel real.

Processing the Present

A big part of world building has been analyzing some of the potential worst- and best-case scenarios for how our current woes will ultimately play out. This research can feel never-ending and it is easy to find oneself deep into a new rabbit hole. There is always something else that occurs in our present time that wants to add a nightmarish twist on this already bleak future (I'm looking at you, ChatGPT).

There was some concern on my part about delving into this subject matter. I've been so surprised that although much of it is undeniably depressing, looking at it through a creative lens has helped me process it. On some level, I am better equipped to cope with new details about our destructive impact on the planet and on each other by viewing it as fodder for an interesting tale about the foibles of humankind.

Though I can't accept the most extreme projections for our future, maybe I can at least come to terms with what horror may unfold. Maybe I can soothe my angst by writing in some fragile, flickering ray of hope just beyond the horizon.

Fiction or Non-fiction?

Perhaps I embarked on this undertaking as a form of catharsis, so I could release my deepest fears about the direction of humanity onto paper. Perhaps, like so many writers before me, I felt some self-righteous drive to deliver a warning - to unleash another hollow scream for sanity, only for it to be muted by the roar of impending doom.

Whatever the reason, it is strangely satisfying to reduce the stress-inducing dynamics of our modern world to the seedlings of a story.

It is just a story, right?