Futuristic Dystopian Romance

When I started thinking about writing a book, I thought I might write a mystery or a nice crime procedural, but I couldn’t face the idea of writing a book where someone had to die and we spent the whole book focused on it. I tried to think of ways around that, and maybe sometime I will, but in that process, I read some great books on writing and it came down to the basic premise that if you want to be a writer, you need to write.

Then, because I am an SJ on the Myers-Briggs, I assumed I had to have a solid plan and that all my chapters had to be written in order. Also, top quality from the start. But luckily those books I read were great help in getting around that thinking. Stephen Kings suggests putting two people together in a situation and see what happens. Anne Lamott says it is okay to write shitty first drafts. Kurt Vonnegut says to write to please just one person. Terry Pratchett wrote 500 words a day, every day, not more, not less and cranked out an incredible set of work.

So, in pondering what I might write that would please one person, it occurred to me that I might need to do one of those charts that shows the intersection of what I am good at, what the world needs, and what I love. Now, most people wouldn’t admit this I suppose, but what I love most is a good disaster. This may seem at odds with someone who doesn’t want to write a murder mystery, but to me, those turn out to be very different things. I am pretty good at science and explaining things and I read widely about math and science. I maybe the world needs a way to imagine the changes we are making now will matter in the future, all is not lost, all is not futile. Even the little stuff matters. In the back of my mind I turned this over and I also remembered I love romance novels. I do love a happy ending. Which is why I think I might not be able to spend a lot of time writing crime fiction. Catching a criminal is satisfying, but someone still had to die to move the plot forward. That is not for me.

The list looked something like this:

Things I love:
1. Cats, my House, my husband and family.
2. Reading books. The kinds with words. Also, the kinds with pictures.
3. Science, in all it’s mucky, confusing, misleading, jump-forwarding, awesomeness.
4. Disasters. In an abstract way. I like to study them, to watch how people act, to see what we could do better, to stop the next one before it impacts us. I also like to imagine what would happen if… (something terrible happens.)

Things I am good at:
1. I tell an okay story. Sometimes I forget and tell you the end first. Other times I forget and tell the beginning at the end. But mostly I can tell a good story in the right order.
2. Reading. I do it a lot.
3. Imagining. I do that a lot, too.
4. Science and math. Someone has to be, I guess. Mostly I excel at redneck engineering with duct tape, bailing wire and twine. And I am a good tester. I am an experiential learner.

What the world needs:
1. More stories with disasters in them. I mean, think about the bible. Floods, plagues, famines. They make good reading.
2. More hope. With a dose of reality. Humans don’t always have to suck.
3. More romance. Why are all dystopian futures filled with children killing each other?
4. More worship. Those moments where we decide what is important and pay attention to it with care and focus opening ourselves to awe filled moments.
5. More stories with science in them. Maybe even with women saying the science, doing the science, being the experts.

And so, here goes. Futuristic Dystopian Romance (click the film thingy, roll the cameras) Take ONE. And I will take the advice of those successful writers I mentioned. I will put characters together and see what happens. I am sure something will. Now, who will those characters be? And what caused this future where humans are few and far between, fertile soil a rare commodity, and romance unusual in an society accustomed to filling out questionnaires to find the perfect match. I think, like all of the best disasters, it will be a confluence of unlucky events. And really, humans are a fragile lot, with so many single points of failure that it isn’t hard to imagine going from 8 billion to 1 million pretty easily.