How to Write a New Dystopian Script

Integrity, meh. Who needs it in a secular world, right?

I’m thinking of writing a script for optioning. I think I’m onto a winner.

Picture this for a moment: a world where corporatocracies sign up for a membership with a privately owned international organization, meet regularly to discuss and solve their world’s problems, and implement solutions to benefit their portfolios with ease through their huge, intricate webs of linked businesses, technologies and platforms, all the while them believing in their own narcissistic benevolence that would be bestowed upon the peasants. Sounds very James Bond or even Inspector Gadget if you’re of that vintage, doesn’t it?

We could even move it forward another step and introduce an algorithm-type technology, almost human-like in its ability, to pick up on millions of keywords at the same time and censor any article, paper, research or video that contains them, no matter how factual they are.

And speaking of facts, we could also pretend that there are terms and concepts in existence in this New World, borrowing from books like 1984, We, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Minority Report, etc., that conjure emotional reactions in support of doublespeak and newspeak—particularly among those who’ve drank from the wells of said organizations’ media outlets—such as ‘fact-checking’, ‘fake news’ and ‘far-right extremism’, where the privately owned members of the abovementioned organization pay those most loyal to them to report on what is asked of them. After all, who’ll be brave enough to decline a job that feeds the children, pays the mortgage, and offers more power?

Integrity, meh. Who needs it in a secular world, right?

We could script along the lines of a fallen society where Christianity is turned upside-down, where Catholic priests contemplate marriage to women rather than God, where biology is up-ended for the sake of political science and squished like a cockroach on the lab floor, and where nations who vow to protect orthodoxy end up under attack. We could also write in an anti-hero or two, maybe call them Klaus, Vlad, or Joe, only for them to turn out to be the antagonists, and rather, have superstar protagonists die suddenly just for a plot twist.

I’ve also considered adding some sci-fi elements to it, too. See what you think: AI-controlled cars, just like in Minority Report, that can turn on a dime towards the local cop shop, just at the flick of an official’s switch. Then, there would be the cameras in the supermarkets, watching what you scan to be sure you can’t purchase more than one steak or bottle of water a month; we could probably add elements that include ‘happy juice’, as seen in Brave New World, I know, but maybe rather than pills, we could just use an Epi-type pen? Administration would need to be quarterly based, though, for it to work.

For a sinister plot, maybe something with retirement funds could be added, too. Just for a minor arc, where governments could seize those pensions from those who’ve died prematurely to bolster the coffers, and for those who don’t expire, they wouldn’t need their pensions anyway because inflation would force them to work indefinitely.

As a prologue, to set the story, I’d ban travel due to the climate change element in the plot, and that would be the biggest plot twist of all. The script would start with streaks of white in the sky, dimming the sun for the sake of survival. White papers would already be in existence claiming such programs exist, but those who drink from the privately owned members’ media can’t comprehend or research this on their own. The irony, of course, would be the lowering of the temperature over nations’ wheat belts, and thus crops would wither, famine would ensue, and the Hegelian dialectic could then be imposed by the said aforementioned privately owned international organization that comes in on its white trojan horse to save the world from itself before the population declines to below 500,000,000.

I could go on, I suppose, for a sequel. Disease X could be a killer of an idea and might even have a 100 percent success rate, particularly if I base it within a large, expansive nation with massive populations that have a government official or two as members within the aforementioned privately owned international organization. What if, even, I include some crazy hair-brained virus that sees its way with the leftover dissidents—wipes the poor buggers right out completely.

I have so, so, so many ideas to incorporate into my new dystopian novel, but my instinct’s telling me it may already have been written.

Can anyone write in the comments of any authors who may have covered this? I’d hate to be the instigator of such a concept. What if it really came true like my last books, the series I wrote for Amazon, and the first book that bloody got banned just pre 2020. I had to re-write that fucker just to re-publish it…it must’ve been the urban drone warfare I mentioned or the electronic tattoos, maybe? Maybe it was the underlying warning about corporation takeovers or freedom fighters taking a last stand in the USA. It was all sci-fi, though, so who knows? *shrugs*. Amazon refused to tell me.

But this one, though. Once it’s sold to the world, it’d be a best-seller for anyone left to watch it, and those unfortunates that survive, they’d, God knows, never forget it.