Why I Chose Dystopian

Let’s just state a literary fact: there is something uniquely compelling about a broken world. Like, really broken.

Maybe it’s because broken worlds tend to feel more familiar than we would might admit. The details may be exaggerated: the government more oppressive, the environment more hostile, the technology more dangerous, but beneath those heightened circumstances are so many struggles we recognize. There’s often fear, injustice, grief, control, division, and the question of whether anything damaged beyond recognition can ever be restored.

Whether we want to admit it or not, that is part of the appeal of dystopian fiction, for both readers and writers. The genre allows us to draw parallels between the world of the story and the characters who inhabit it. In the best dystopian stories, the setting is not merely a backdrop for the action. The world becomes a character in its own right. It has a history. It carries wounds. It has strengths, flaws, and secrets. It places pressure on the people living within it, and it changes because of the choices they make.

In that sense, the world might even have an arc of its own, similar to the characters in the story.

When the Outer World Reflects the Inner One

When dystopian fiction is done well, the condition of the world often reflects the internal struggle of the main character.

For example, a society fractured by fear, control, violence, or loss can mirror a character wrestling with those same forces internally. In the same way, a world physically falling apart can reflect someone who is emotionally unraveling. A government determined to control every choice can parallel a character who feels powerless to determine the course of their own life.

The physical and emotional conflicts begin to echo each other, and this underscores the themes of the story, and can often heighten the tension. The ruined cities are not only ruined cities. The approaching storm is not only a storm. The wall separating one group from another is not merely an architectural barrier. Each can become an outward expression of something happening within the characters: guilt, fear, prejudice, loneliness, anger, or despair.

That relationship creates a powerful kind of tension because the conflict unfolds on two levels at once. The characters are not simply trying to survive a collapsing society. They are also struggling against the beliefs, fears, and wounds that society has placed within them.

Changing the world may require them to first change themselves, at the very least, to decide who they will become within it.

Dystopian Stories Are About Choice

For all their destruction, dystopian stories are rarely only about the fall out. At their heart, they are usually about overcoming that destruction. What does a person do when every available option carries a cost? What happens when obedience offers safety but requires the surrender of conscience? How much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice to survive? And if the system around us is broken, do we resist it, escape it, attempt to redeem it, or eventually become part of it?

Those questions become especially meaningful when placed in the hands of young characters. Teenagers already live at the threshold between the world they have inherited and the people they are becoming. They are beginning to recognize that authority can be wrong, that adults do not always have the answers, and that the systems shaping their lives may not deserve their trust.

Dystopian fiction takes that natural awakening and raises the stakes.

The young protagonist is no longer asking only, Who am I? They are also asking, What kind of world made me this way? What do I owe that world? And what am I willing to risk to change it?

Why I Chose This Genre

That is exactly what I wanted to explore in No Sky But Red and throughout the ORACLE series. I wanted the destruction surrounding my characters to echo the battles taking place within them. Their world is divided, wounded, and shaped by generations of fear. So are they. They inherit conflicts they did not begin, prejudices they did not create, and loyalties they have rarely been allowed to question.

The world tells them who to fear, whom to trust, and what they must become in order to survive. Much of their journey is about deciding whether those inherited beliefs are true, and whether they have the courage to choose differently.

That is one reason the dystopian setting matters so much to me. It gives physical form to the philosophical and emotional questions at the center of the story. The danger is real. So is the world collapsing around them. Survival matters. Yet, beneath all of that is a deeper question: What do we do with what is broken?

Do we discard it?

Do we destroy it before it can hurt anyone else?

Or do we believe that even something deeply damaged can still be saved?

That question applies not only to the world of the story, but to its people. My characters must decide whether they can forgive one another, whether they can escape the identities others have imposed on them, and whether the worst thing a person has done must define who they will always be.

The crumbling world around them makes those internal questions impossible to avoid.

More Than a Warning

Dystopian fiction is often described as a warning. And it can certainly be that. It can expose the danger of unchecked power, dehumanizing technology, political extremism, fear-driven obedience, or the gradual surrender of freedom.

But I believe it can also do something more.

It can ask what hope looks like after the warnings have been ignored.

It can place characters inside a world already broken and ask whether courage, sacrifice, forgiveness, and love still matter there. It can explore whether people shaped by corrupt systems are destined to repeat those systems—or whether they can choose another way.

That is what draws me to dystopian fiction. The darkness gives weight to the light. The devastation makes every act of compassion more costly. And when hope appears, it does not feel shallow or effortless. It feels chosen.

Ultimately, that is why I chose dystopian. It allowed me to make the world itself part of the story’s central question:

When something—or someone—has been deeply broken, is it still worth saving?