7 Day Story Writing Challenges: A Brief Guide to Writing Utopian Fiction
This guide is all about utopian fiction. What it is, tips for writing it, and a list of utopian stories you can read online for free. We also discuss the difficulties, limitations, and pitfalls of writing in this genre. This guide is a must-read for anyone assigned utopian fiction in a 7 Day Story Writing Challenge, or for anyone wanting to explore new or unfamiliar literary genres!
Looking for more writing competitions to enter? Check out our ‘Big List of International Writing Competitions’.
What is Utopian Fiction?
For the purposes of our 7 Day Story Writing Challenges, we’re defining utopian fiction as a story set in an indealised world or society. A place where the laws, customs, and politics have been refined or engineered to be almost perfect. Your story can take place in a utopian re-imagining of the past, an idealised future, an alternate present, or even a place of pure fantasy. But, it’s important to note that utopian fiction is not fiction where nothing bad ever happens. Instead, utopian fiction is usually about how undesirable utopia is, what happens when something interrupts the status quo, or it plays with the idea that even in a perfect society, human nature can’t help but find a way to royally f*** things up!
Difficulties, Limitations and Pitfalls of This Genre
OK, here’s something we think we’re going to see in a lot of entries for this genre and why we’d advise against it. The tendency when writing utopian or dystopian fiction is to spend the first few paragraphs explaining the utopian/dystopian world to the reader. Most short stories submitted to writing competitions begin with a big old chunk of exposition. This can include setting up the story, introducing the characters, explaining the world the story takes place in, providing backstory, or a lengthy description the setting in which the story takes place. It’s not always a bad idea to do this, it can work, but mostly it doesn’t. Especially with short stories, especially with a story of only 2,000 words.
Here’s why we think beginning with too much exposition is a bad idea…
Fiction is wonderful because it gives us experiences we can sink into. And for that we need actual scenes. The quicker you can give the reader an actual scene that they can inhabit, the better. This is especially true when writing for competitions. The judges are not going to be reading your story in isolation. They’ll be reading many stories one after the other, and most of them will begin with exposition (setting up the story). The judges will probably read 15 stories that begin with exposition for every one story that actually begins in the story. We cannot stress enough how much more enjoyable it is to come across the latter kind when you’re reading multiple stories in one sitting. If there are certain things you think the reader needs to know to understand the story, that’s fine. Exposition is a necessary part of writing fiction, but it’s perfectly possibly to give the reader this information during the story, instead of in one big chunk right at the beginning. Remember, stories are supposed to unfold.
Top Tips for This Genre
We think the best place to start would be with some serious worldbuilding beacuse you need to design your utopia. We’d probably begin by thinking about everything that’s wrong with our current society, then we’d use those grievances to create a perfect world. A world where all of these issues have either been resolved, socially engineered away, or outlawed. Don’t just focus on what this ideal society is like, but how they got it be this way. Think about the laws that were created, the technology used, how different education would be in this place, the kinds of jobs people would have now, how order is maintained, how people who threaten this idyllic way of life are dealt with. It’s perfectly fine if there are dark undercurrents, moral ambiguity, or authoritarian systems that have created this utopia or are used to maintain it.
We advise working out all the details of this world before you start thinking about characters and plot. With worldbuilding, you’ll probably want to leave at least 70% of it off the page (maybe more, depending on the length of your story). Remember, you’re not necessarily writing the story of this society. Instead, it might be better to focus on one story that happens to take place in it. Although you might know all the details of this utopia, it’s not necessarily a good idea for your reader to know it all. We suggest only giving them the information they actually need to understand this story, not to understand the entire world in which it takes place.
After worldbuilding, it’s probably time to think about plot and characters. There also needs to be conflict in your story. Either something or someone needs to threaten or disrupt the perfect order of this world or your character/characters need to experience the dark, bleak, or cynical side of your utopia.
One more bit of advice. Whatever happens in your story, it doesn’t necessarily need to lead to the complete breakdown of the society. Just to reiterate, you aren’t being asked to tell the story of the utopia itself. Instead, you’ll probably want to focus on a select number of characters within the society. This is their story, so the person or event that threatens to disrupt the utopia need only threaten to disrupt the utopia within your story (for these characters), not necessarily threaten society as a whole. Although, it certainly can!
Utopian Fiction Short Stories you can Read Online
"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut
(Yes, we know that Vonnegut begins this story by explaining his utopian world! But It is only a short bit of exposition, it fits with the style, the story was written in the 1960’s, and it’s Kurt Vonnegut! Notice too, how only one aspect of this society is explored. This is what me mean about not having to include everything about your utopian world, only what is pertinent to the story you’re telling.)
‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ by Ursula K LeGuin
‘Minority Report’ by Philip K. Dick
‘The Cull’ by Robert Reed
‘The New Utopia’ Jerome K. Jerome
‘2 B R 0 2 B’ by Kurt Vonnegut