Backyard Dystopia

With Hunger Games and Divergent the popularization of dystopian stories has grown. I think the biggest reason for this is that heroes tend to standout much more in climates where there is more demand. Can you imagine for example the Lord of the Rings story if there wasn’t such pressing need for the heroic journey: the ring wasn’t actually evil and just needed to be returned to a good neighbor just down the street who’s pleased to see that his ring was found and returned?

In my story the dystopia isn’t as distant as those stories. While still a fictional story, Sarah discovers that hidden just under the surface of everyday life things aren’t nearly as pleasant as they pretend to be. The thing I really like about that is that in real life it doesn’t take that much effort to see real suffering that happens all around us. There exists in real life a real dystopia, a need for real heroes. I would like my book to be the kind of book that helps readers to feel inspired to face their problems, become the heroes that a real world needs.

I realize that my book isn’t quite where I wanted it. As I work with my editors on improving that, I hope that those have bought it already are happy to hear that it’s getting even better. One of the first problems that have been pointed out to me is that a little more motivation is needed to convince Sarah to look into the Illuminati and Savants. So I’m adding the following:

Sarah reached absentmindedly under her bed for the box that held pictures of her mother. As she pulled it out and looked at it she remembered why she had hid it away. It was too painful; she couldn’t keep doing this to herself. Though she wanted to keep her mother’s memory, she was afraid the nightmares of her mother’s death would never end.

No, even though it wasn’t a nightmare she had last night, she didn’t want to open the box right now. She knelt down to find a better hiding spot for the box, and started sliding it back under her bed. That was when she noticed a piece of paper poking out of the plastic, flower patterned wrapping. She slowly pulled back out the tin box of pictures.

It looked like it was a note card hidden on the outside of the box. She pulled on the corner, dragging it from under the thin plastic wrapping. It looked like her mother’s handwriting on it. There was a drawing of a pentagram – Sarah’s birthmark. Under the pentagram were the questions, “Why did the Pythagoreans find this symbol so important? Why did so many diverse and unconnected cultures find it important?”

And then later, when she finds that it’s not a note card but rather a piece of paper so warn and tightly folded that it was tough to see that it could be unfolded, she finds another clue that leads her to look into Illuminati and Savants. Thus she and the reader are more carefully lead to the hidden dystopia of my imaginary world.