I have struggled to find a way to provide consistent content over the long lulls between book releases. They say play to your strengths, so for me that would be giving terrible advice and sarcasm. So I have launched a new youtube channel called Terrible Writing Advice where I give, surprisingly enough, terrible writing advice. It’s basically a parody of those saccharine how to guides I keep seeing everywhere. I also use these videos as an excuse to poke fun at storytelling cliches across various genres. All videos will be around 3 to 5 minutes in length and I will try to keep a weekly release schedule for now. The premier episode is all about the dystopia genre.

My Real Thoughts on the Dystopian Genre

To be honest, I was and still am ambivalent towards the genre in both its classic and contemporary forms. Classic dystopias were all about how terrible X was with X being whatever the author hated like fascism in 1984, television in Fahrenheit 451, or the Ford Motor Company for Brave New World. I found most of the classic dystopia novels rather stale as they tended to sacrifice interesting characterization and plot for the sake of hammering home how bad X is. In fact, that seemed to be the point of classic dystopia; to make the reader feel bad about whatever the author didn’t like. This is a stark contrast with the current wave of young adult dystopia novels which is more about teen romance and shallow wish fulfillment at the cost of the believability of the setting. All these new dystopia stories did was trade one set of things I don’t like for another I also don’t like. Meh. Not that I begrudge anyone who likes either the classic or contemporary dystopias. To each their own. Me though? I’m a cynic. I already live in a dystopia. I don’t want to read about another.