A couple of months ago, we created our own dystopian society for a team activity. Team Surreal made "Lucille's" a story about a society where aging past the age of twenty-two and death itself are eliminated. The protagonist Harrison has a realization about the purpose of life and discovers adverse effects of the "fountain of youth" style technology of this supposedly perfect, yet corrupt, society.
I found the process through which our story was designed fascinating. We started by choosing a central concept. Early ideas were a society with no self expression, one with a universal beauty standard that forced everyone to look the same through surgery, and a party society where the upper class is continuously drunk 24/7 and lives off the labors of the oppressed lower class. We settled for the "problems with a fountain of youth" idea because it had the most immediate depth and theme, making easy to plan around.
After choosing a concept we created three characters. The protagonist who finds flaws in the society and sets out to change it. He is assisted by Bernice, who although was put in a sidekick slot is much older and wiser. The two set out to stop the antagonist Lucille, the totalitarian leader of the society who's fountain of youth system is not only corrupt, but the source of underlying morals dissonance. (Because people are not dying naturally, the only people dying are the ones Lucille has removed from the system because they disagree, and no one is allowed to have children without her permission.
The final step was to create a plot, which with a concept and characters already laid out, kind of wrote itself. The Heroes must find a way to remove the fountain of youth system in order to restore humanity to the natural state you and I live in today.
My favorite part of this assignment was the way it laid out a plan for creating not just a dystopian society, but fiction of any kind. For a long time I have wanted to create my own stories but haven't had an idea where to start. In creating a dystopia I learned how to put my own ideas of fiction into motion
-C. Gilchrist
Yes, I remember doing that project...good times. What I found the most challenging about this project was coming up with the climax that would shake the protagonist out of the same routine as everyone else in the society. It was difficult, but we finally came up with a solution that made sense. What did you find to be the most challenging part of the assignment?
ReplyDelete-Jillian D.
Our general group consensus on the protagonist's motivation didn't really make sense through several versions, so I would say that designing that was the hardest part.
ReplyDelete-Collin G.