How to destroy the world, p.1
How to Destroy the World, page 1
Table of Contents
How to Destroy the World
Copyright
Author Guides Series
Introduction
Using this Guidebook
Preparing to Destroy the World
Worldbuilding Basics
The Difference Between Tropes and Cliches
Popular Dystopian Tropes
Popular Post-Apocalyptic Tropes
The Genre Problem
Following Fear Trends
Making Monsters
Is the Zombie Genre Dead?
Creating Histories
Mapping Your Future
Backwards Engineering your World
Natural and Man-Made Disasters
Metaphor and Social Commentary
Finding the Hope and the Heroes
Creating Survivors
Character Arcs and World Arcs
Revealing Worldbuilding Through Character
Revealing Worldbuilding Through Story
Using your World as a Source of Conflict
Creating Future Worlds: Society
Creating Future Worlds: Inequality
Creating Future Worlds: Oppressive Governments
Creating Future Worlds: Generational Conflict
Creating Future Worlds: Technology
Climate Change: Solarpunk and Cli-Fi
A Chance of Redemption
Revolution, Retribution, Resolution
A Word on Info Dumping and Learning Curves
Ideas Dump
Want Even More Worldbuilding?
About Angeline Trevena
HOW TO
DESTROYTHEWORLD
AN AUTHOR'S GUIDE TO WRITING
DYSTOPIA AND POST-APOCALYPSE
A TREVENA
Copyright © 2020 Angeline Trevena
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be copied or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise, without express written consent of the publisher or author.
Cover art by P&V Digital
AUTHOR GUIDES SERIES
30 DAYS OF WORLDBUILDING
An Author’s Step-by-Step Guide to Building Fictional Worlds
HOW TO DESTROY THE WORLD
An Author’s Guide to Writing Dystopia and Post-Apocalypse
FROM SANCTITY TO SORCERY
An Author’s Guide to Building Belief Structures and Magic Systems
HOW TO CREATE HISTORY
An Author’s Guide to Creating History, Myths, and Monsters
COMPLETE WORLDBUILDING
An Author’s Step-by-Step Guide to Building Fictional Worlds
angelinetrevena.co.uk/worldbuilding
INTRODUCTION
I am one of those authors who have been writing, pretty much, since they were old enough to hold a pen. I have a folder of old stories, typed up on an old typewriter, that I don’t even remember having written.
I was rarely seen without a book in my hand, and spent every spare hour I had, buried deep in fantastical worlds. I was lucky in that my parents encouraged it. They never told me that I was wasting my time, or to keep my head out of the clouds. They even let me read at the dinner table, eating one-handed.
I was also lucky to have access to a local library, and quickly worked my way through the fantasy catalogue in their children’s section. I swept my way through all of the Choose Your Own Adventure books; not only following the adventures of kids—passing into a fantasy world to fight dragons, mounted on their bicycle steeds—but I got to control the stories. I could re-read them over and over, choosing different paths each time, creating a multitude of adventures for myself.
My love of speculative fiction had started young. It was my dad’s job to read the bedtime stories each night, all of us huddled together to listen. He often picked books from his own collection which, almost exclusively, consisted of classic sci-fi novels. And so, as a child, my bedtime stories were written by the likes of H.G. Wells and John Wyndham. Looking back, I suspect that The War of the Worlds and The Day of the Triffids were probably inappropriate choices for children about to go to sleep, but it must have caught my imagination. I will forever thank my dad for introducing me to such tales.
I was first introduced to dystopia in my late teens, when we read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as part of our English Literature A-Level course. It was my first Atwood book, and it fuelled a continuing love of her words. It was also my first taste of what would come to be, not just my favourite genre to read, but also my favourite to write.
Alongside my English Literature A-Level, my other two subjects were Theatre Studies and Sociology. Learning about the work of Karl Marx, I became very interested in Marxism, seeing the value in his words and beliefs when applied to a modern society. I felt, within the scope of my limited life experience, that my eyes had been opened. Of course, the opening of our eyes is a lifelong process that will never be fully completed. But this part of my education was something of a revelation.
I grew up in poverty. I was a statistic. And, for the first time, I was seeing the relevance of this within society as a whole, rather than from the perspective of my own, personal, experience of it. I am also female, and that became more important, and more relevant in a wider capacity. I was seeing the world afresh, and viewing myself as a product of it, and a part in it. A player in the wider game of life.
Everyone tells you that, when you have children, you see the world anew, through your child’s eyes. Eyes of wonder, where everything is magic. As a parent of two, I can tell you that this is absolutely true. You do rediscover a wonder in the smallest of things that you have long-since given up noticing at all. But there are many moments of similar unveiling-of-the-new in our adult lives. Sadly, they tend to be based more on becoming more cynical, or hardened, or cautious. They may not be bathed in the dizzy glow of childhood, but they are equally important, and transformative. They are still massive shifts in our understanding of the world, and ourselves, and deserve recognition.
We learn through doing, just as babies do, and, most of all, we learn through falling.
My fiction is an interpretation of my world view. My world view is an interpretation of everything that has influenced and pressed upon me in my life. My culture and its history, my peers, my parents, my personal experiences, both good and bad. It is also an interpretation of trying to step inside ‘the other’, and to see the world from another perspective.
At university I studied Drama and Creative Writing, and wandered away from my love of magic and fantastical worlds. I can’t say why, it just happened. Perhaps I felt pressure to finally grow up. Perhaps I felt the oncoming cynicism of adulthood. Perhaps my university course pushed me towards literary fiction. Perhaps I simply needed a break from it for a while. I don’t know.
After university, as I began to navigate the confusing and cynical world of adulthood, I barely read anything at all. For a long time, I hardly managed a handful of books a year. During this time, I read my first ever Stephen King book. It was, interestingly enough, On Writing that I picked up first, and I finished it in just a few days. And so, I was brought back to literature with a renewed desire to read, as well as to write.
Although I’ve been writing since I was very young, it was never my ambition to make a career from it. I wanted to act. I wanted to be on stage. My whole childhood was filled with drama lessons, singing lessons, lessons in several different forms of dance. I was always performing; music concerts, amateur dramatics, school plays. If there was a spotlight, I was in it.
While I was at university, studying Drama, I discovered that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I’d expected to. I had a long heart-to-heart with myself, finally accepting that the ambition I’d had all of my life, my singular goal, simply wasn’t what I wanted anymore. And it was difficult to let go of. This vision had shaped my entire life, my entire personality, and I had nothing to replace it with.
But, I couldn’t pretend to myself anymore. And, as I continued with my degree, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be onstage, blinking into the spotlight, speaking someone else’s words. What I wanted was to sit in the back of a darkened auditorium, watching other people perform my words. I wanted to write.
Even with this revelation, I still didn’t imagine myself making writing into any kind of a career. The first Kindle wouldn’t come on the market for another six years. The publishing landscape was a very different one to what it is today. Becoming a published author was a pipe-dream. One that seemed to rely far more on luck than any kind of talent. A who-you-know rather than a what-you-know industry. And for a young woman barely into her twenties, and still reeling from losing the footing of the one constant she’d had in her life, it all seemed like an impossibility.
As part of my Creative Writing class, our tutor asked us to write a personal introduction to an imaginary book about ourselves. Much like this introduction you’re reading right now. The difference being, in that imagined introduction, I wrote “I can’t imagine writing ever being anything more than a hobby for me.” When I wrote that, I wouldn’t have believed I’d ever be writing one for real.
When our assignments were returned, my tutor had highlighted that sentence, responding with the note “That would be a shame.” That single comment began a shift in mindset which, over the following years, led me to this moment right now. And this book, through all those that have come before it.
Inspiration tends to come from the most unexpected sources, at the most unexpected of moments.
&
USING THIS GUIDEBOOK
If you’re looking to write dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction for the first time, and you’re not sure where to start, this is the book for you. If you’d like to deepen and expand your idea for a dystopian, destroyed world, this is the book for you. If you find the idea of these genres daunting, and you’ve been putting off starting to write, this is definitely the book for you.
This guidebook breaks the genres down, exploring the worldbuilding and ideas behind them. It will lead you through the process of creating a strong, solid basis for your world, characters, and story. It will help you to understand your readers’ expectations, as well as showing you how those expectations can be twisted, upended, and smashed.
This book and its prompts are not, by any means, exhaustive. Depending on your story, your characters, and the world you need to create for them, you may need to continue worldbuilding beyond the scope of this workbook. Likewise, not all of this book will necessarily be relevant to your specific story.
Think of it like a garden. This book gives you the foundation to build upon. It helps you to plant the seeds, and offers you seeds you may not have considered planting yourself. But, you’ll need to cultivate it, and water it. And, you may have plants of your own that you want to include. A special tree, your favourite flower. You may like to have a pond, or a bench, or a marquee.
You will also need to create a safe, singular place to keep all of your worldbuilding notes, whether in hard copy or digitally. It’s surprisingly easy to get lost in your own world, and surprisingly easy to forget the details of it. This will become your worldbuilding bible. Your one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about your world. When you come to writing your story, keep these notes next to you, so that everything you need to know about your world is in easy reach.
Above all, enjoy creating your dystopian or post-apocalyptic world. Enjoy exploring it, and watching it come to life around you. I promise; even if you’re building the darkest of worlds, the most terrifying of futures, you’ll enjoy it. Even if only in a malicious, vengeful God-like kind of way!
As a simple human, this may be the closest you’ll come to performing real magic. To visualise an entire world from nothing. To pluck things from the air and make them real. To take breath on the wind and form it into something tangible. That is the most real, purest magic I know of.
Of course, I’m being presumptuous here. You may have magical abilities beyond my comprehension. In fact, you may even be a little more than human...
PREPARING TO DESTROY THE WORLD
Dystopia and post-apocalypse are, strictly speaking, sub-genres of science fiction.
If that sends a cold shard of fear through your heart, and results in you running around declaring loudly “But I’m not a sci-fi author, I don’t know anything about science”, fear not. I know exactly how you feel. Because I did the same thing.
I know next to nothing about space travel, or how astronauts go to the toilet, or how hyper-drive warp speed boost initiators work. In fact, I’m pretty much clueless as to how my toaster toasts, or my kettle kettles. Electricity is a little bit like magic, and self checkouts are something that should have remained in the realms of science fiction.
And, if you’re anything like me, that’s absolutely fine. Don’t stress.
As an author, as a human being, there is one thing that you do know. And you know it well. And that is: people. You know how to person. (At least, to some degree, and only after coffee.)
First and foremost, before anything else, writing dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction is about writing people. It’s about writing characters. As, of course, almost any kind of fiction is.
Absolutely everything in your story and your worldbuilding should always come back to character. They are the reason your readers stick with the story. They are the reason your readers keep turning the pages. They are the reason your readers fall in love with your book. You can write the most fantastic, amazing, perfect story of all time, but without characters that your readers can believe in, can root for, you have nothing.
Don’t stress because you were never very good at physics or chemistry, don’t worry if you don’t know the mass of each planet in the solar system or, in fact, if you can’t even name them all. As long as you know how to write people, you can write wonderfully dystopian worlds, and fantastic post-apocalyptic worlds for them to exist in. To survive in. To change and revolutionise.
Because, while these genres are, officially, under the metallic, robotic umbrella of science fiction, they don’t need to be heavy on the science. They don’t need to involve space travel, or futuristic technology, or clever survival strategies. All they need is compelling characters.
You can build a world that is far more based in fantasy than it is in sci-fi. You can build a world in which technology has actually regressed, or been destroyed, or outlawed. You can build a world that is, clearly, a future vision of earth, or something that is barely recognisable as the same place. You can set your world three hundred years into an unknown future, or you can set it tomorrow.
So, don’t worry about filling your world with scientific, technological, medical, and survivalist knowledge you don’t have. It doesn’t need it. It’s your future vision, and you can create it however you like. After all, the only person who can tell you, with absolute certainty, that your future vision is wrong, is a time-traveller. And, generally, there don’t tend to be very many of those. (Besides, I hear they’re usually more into romance novels.)
If you need it, here it is. This is your official permission to write whatever the hell you like. Whatever excites you, and sets your soul ablaze. It doesn’t matter if it’s crazy, outlandish, or entirely unlikely. If you do your job properly, with the characters and the world you create for them, then you can get your readers to accept almost anything.
Go mad. Make your dream a reality. If you want to, you can always reign it back in later. If you want.
The other permission I give you now, is the permission to be truly, deeply, and unapologetically evil. Pull up every malicious thought you have ever had, every moment of rage, every hardened ball of guilt, or jealousy. Relight that fire of hatred that you extinguished after you left school. All of that, take it, smoosh it into a malformed lump of play dough, with all the colours mixed together. Remember not to taste it. Even out of curiosity.
That lump of grossness is what you will use to build your world. Have fun. It’s meant to be fun. In fact, practice your booming evil laugh. Right now. Give it a go. There, doesn’t that feel good?
This is the place to pour all of that evil. To express the sadistic side of you. Put it all here, and don’t forget that evil laugh. It’s ok, you can work on it. If you keep all the evil here, then you can go about your real life with a lovely, sunny personality, and stroke kittens and puppies, and ride around on rainbows. Because life is all about balance, right?
Next time you see someone with a beaming smile, ask yourself what book they might be writing at home…
WORLDBUILDING BASICS
Now that you are, officially, a science fiction writer, we need to discuss worldbuilding.
