Understanding Change through YA Dystopian Fiction
We all know our world is changing at a drastic rate – but keeping up with how and why is difficult without becoming confused or feeling patronised.
Global changes - whether environmental or social - can seem dry and boring or difficult to understand coming from news readers or journalists. A better way to approach them might be to pick up a YA novel.
Showing, rather than telling a specific issue, i.e. wars or the melting of the polar ice caps, is one of the most important skills a writer can use when trying to get a reader to fully engage with the issues that are contained within their stories, especially environmental ones, which as previously discussed in the above paragraph, can sometimes be hard to understand.
Two books that I’ve read which have been successful in this sense for me are: Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick, and, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Both of these authors managed to successfully explain the issues which led to their stories through their clever use of description and character’s emotions – which are two great ways in which a writer can successfully hold onto a reader’s attention and engage them in the issues of their world and what their characters are going through, thus showing the reader the state of the world of their stories.
One of the issues I looked in my YA Dystopian novel, Tremor, was the depletion of the Earth’s oil resources, and the problems that could stem from complete exhaustion. I found the best way to put this issue forward was not to use large descriptions or speech from one character, which could overwhelm a reader, but to incorporate it fully into the events of the storyline, rather than breaking away from the events and going into mass explanation on the issue, therefore showing, rather than, telling.
Global changes - whether environmental or social - can seem dry and boring or difficult to understand coming from news readers or journalists. A better way to approach them might be to pick up a YA novel.
Showing, rather than telling a specific issue, i.e. wars or the melting of the polar ice caps, is one of the most important skills a writer can use when trying to get a reader to fully engage with the issues that are contained within their stories, especially environmental ones, which as previously discussed in the above paragraph, can sometimes be hard to understand.
Two books that I’ve read which have been successful in this sense for me are: Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick, and, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Both of these authors managed to successfully explain the issues which led to their stories through their clever use of description and character’s emotions – which are two great ways in which a writer can successfully hold onto a reader’s attention and engage them in the issues of their world and what their characters are going through, thus showing the reader the state of the world of their stories.
One of the issues I looked in my YA Dystopian novel, Tremor, was the depletion of the Earth’s oil resources, and the problems that could stem from complete exhaustion. I found the best way to put this issue forward was not to use large descriptions or speech from one character, which could overwhelm a reader, but to incorporate it fully into the events of the storyline, rather than breaking away from the events and going into mass explanation on the issue, therefore showing, rather than, telling.
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