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Craft Chat Chronicles
Craft Chat Chronicles
Season 4 Episode 7: How to Write a Dystopian Novel That Sells – Rebecca Dazenbaker’s Blueprint
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What makes a dystopian world feel terrifyingly real, and why is now the perfect time to write one? In this illuminating episode, we're joined by Rebecca Dazenbaker, debut author of the dystopian novel "Soul Match," who shares her winding path from initial inspiration to publication success.
Rebecca opens up about her surprising journey—how a random thought while passing a cemetery sparked a decade-long creative process that eventually became her debut novel. With remarkable candor, she details the 60 rejections that nearly broke her spirit, the pivotal moment when she almost quit, and the strategic changes that finally landed her an agent and book deal with Simon & Schuster.
The heart of our conversation explores the craft of creating dystopian worlds that resonate with both readers and publishers. Rebecca provides a framework for developing dystopian concepts based on problems you deeply care about, demonstrating how personal passion fuels the persistence needed in publishing. She reveals how to build worlds where things "go wrong in a very specific way," craft characters readers can root for, and balance the darkness with moments of hope and humanity.
For writers who've been told dystopian fiction isn't marketable, this episode delivers exciting news: the market has dramatically shifted. We explore the evidence of dystopian's resurgence, with established authors returning to the genre and romantasy writers pivoting to dystopian projects. Rebecca provides practical advice on positioning your work effectively in query letters and what terms agents are responding to right now.
Whether you're crafting your first manuscript or revising after rejections, this episode offers both technical craft insights and the emotional encouragement to keep going. As Rebecca powerfully reminds us: "Believe in yourself, believe in your story, and you've got this."
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About J.D. Myall
J.D. Myall is the co-chair of Drexel University’s MFA Alumni Association and a publishing and library professional. She is the creator and host of Craft Chat Chronicles, where she interviews authors, agents, and industry insiders about the art and business of writing.
Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Writer’s Digest, and HuffPost. Her debut novel, Heart’s Gambit, releases with Wednesday Books/Macmillan in February 2026.
When she’s not conjuring magic, murder, and mayhem on the page, J.D. mentors emerging writers through workshops and alumni programs, fostering community among aspiring and published authors alike.
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Introduction to Writing Dystopian Fiction
Speaker 1Welcome to Craft Chat Chronicles , the go-to podcast for tips on crafting best-selling fiction . Here at Craft Chat Chronicles , we bring you expert interviews , insights and tips on writing , publishing and marketing . Join the conversation and embark on a new chapter in your writing journey . For workshops , show notes and more information , visit jdmayalcom . That's jdmayalcom .
Speaker 2Hey guys , editing JD here In season four , episode seven of craft chat chronicles , we have rebecca dazen baker , whose books soul match is currently in store , so run out and buy two copies so you have one to share with a friend . She's going to be talking to us about writing dystopian fiction um , from and this is from the perspective of a debut author who has just sold a dystopian fiction that's in stores now , and she's going to tell you what the market likes , what will help your dystopian novels chances of sellability and give you some great tips and some insider knowledge . And she's going to go into way more detail than I will here . We go into way more detail than I will here , but since I too love dystopian and like to write dystopian , I wanted to share some of my quick and dirty thoughts on dystopian fiction too . So Imagine a world where everything sucks Now make it suck in a very specific way .
Speaker 2That's dystopia . It's a future or an alternate present where society has completely like lost the plot I'm kidding , the plot is there , but where society is like out of alignment . Maybe it's an evil government , like 1984 or the Hunger Games . Maybe it's an AI takeover , like the Terminator , where computers just rule and go full Skynet , taking things over , like Black Mirror and other shows . Maybe it's an environmental disaster , like the road or Mad Max . Maybe it's just human selfishness and greed have taken over , like Parable of the Sower and Children of Men . Some dystopians are a combination of all the above because , let's be honest , dystopia loves a good combo meal .
Speaker 2Dystopian fiction asks the question what if everything went wrong ? Would you survive it ? Spoiler alert you probably wouldn't , but your protagonist might , and that's why we like dystopian fiction . So when you're writing dystopian fiction , what you want to do is build a world that's the worst version of ours . Your setting should feel real enough to be terrifying , but weird enough to make the reader feel lucky that they don't live there . As you can see , baby girl has decided to join me and she needs a haircut . Anyway , yeah , readers should feel lucky that they don't live there . And here's how you make that work .
Speaker 2Figure out what went wrong . Was it war , an AI takeover ? A world where taxes go up to 90 ? Coffee and chocolate are illegal Truly dystopian , truly tragic . I'd never survive . Decide who's in charge . Is it an evil dictator , corporate overlords , elon Musk Are there ? Vending machines that charge $50 for a bag of chips Make everyday life awful , and people should struggle to find food , shelter or happiness , you know like Monday , but all the time Add a tiny detail that makes it feel real . Like what weird slang do they use ? How do they avoid getting arrested for wearing the wrong color socks , let's say , for example , the world is ruled by social media obsessed AI and people have to blog every moment of their day and if they stop getting likes , they're deleted permanently . Sound ridiculous . Yeah .
Speaker 2Sound scary , yeah , sound plausible , sadly also . Yeah , that's what makes a good YA dystopia and a good dystopian world . You want there to be that slight grain of this could possibly be our future , to get people uneasy . You want it to be a carnival mirror version of the world where it's twisted slightly or slightly bent , or where some smaller wrong is exaggerated and stretched so that we can see each other clearly . You want to give us a main character we can root for . Nobody follows a hero who just sits in a corner crying , even though , honestly , that's what most of us would do if you know , coffee was illegal . But in a real dystopia , we want our protagonist , who has a goal to survive , to escape , to overthrow the system , the overthrow corrupt system . To find their . To escape , to overthrow the system , overthrow corrupt system . To find their missing dog . To make everything better . They have flaws . Perfection is boring . We can't relate to that . We are not perfect . Let them make bad choices , like most of us in our teens and early 20s . Let them learn from those mistakes and grow like we do . Let them face impossible choices like would you best betray ? Like would you betray your best friend to stay alive ? Would you break the law to feed your family . Let them learn something by the end , hopefully how not to die in this horrible reality . We're in the walking dead here . Let them learn , if nothing else , how to kill a zombie and not be killed by one . And if they're funny , even better .
Speaker 2Stopian worlds can be depressing . Humor and tension keep the reader turning the pages and stops them from putting the book down and just curling into a ball of crying . Power imbalances , instant drama . Yes , tension is juicy and loved in a dystopia . If everyone is equal and happy in your dystopia , then congratulations .
Speaker 2You've accidentally written a utopia , not a dystopia . Someone needs to be in charge and someone needs to be suffering . In a dystopian novel , that's where your story gets the juicy tension that keeps readers flipping the pages . So you got to decide who has power a dictator , a robot , a cult leader and who claims the moon is God ? Who is oppressed ? The poor , the unvaccinated people who still use cash instead of credit cards or biometric chips ? What happens when someone steps out of line ? Arrest , exile , forced to work , customer service ? The more unfair and terrifying the world is , the more readers want to see your character fight back , the more invested they are in their struggle for survival and escaping the oppression .
Speaker 2Keep the action moving . Slow dystopias are boring . Readers aren't here for a 20-page essay on your fictional government's policies . They want tension . They want stakes . They want excitement . They want a ticking clock . We have 24 hours before the drones find us or Elon Musk fires us . We must act quickly to save ourselves . They want high stakes . If we don't escape , we're going to be turned into mindless corporate workers . They want unpredictable twists . The person we trusted was actually working for the government or the law enforcement this entire time building a case against us . Our best friend was actually plotting to body swap and steal our identity .
Speaker 2We want small moments of hope , even in the darkest world readers . Moments of light to cling to a shared joke , joke , a good meal , a dog that somehow survives everything . Think about the walking dead , those moments where Michonne and Rick would have their little romantic moments or have their little date night , or when they hooked up on the couch the first time . Those are the things that give the reader those moments of light to keep them going , even in these dark , dreary worlds , and the light keeps them from curling up and crying during the dark moments . They need those small moments of light and hope and positivity , even if you're going to snatch them away during the next zombie attack . Give them a little something to cling to in the meantime . Give readers something to think about .
Speaker 2Dystopian fiction is fun in a horrifying way . It's also a way to reflect on real world issues . Great dystopian makes us ask questions . Is this actually happening in real life ? You know , could we be headed in this direction ? What would I do in this world , like in Fahrenheit 451 , where they were burning books , you know , in a world where book bans are on the rise in a lot of places , could this actually be happening in real life ? Those are the questions that linger in titles like that , still relevant all these years after they were initially published . Could we be heading in that direction ? These are the things we want readers reflecting on and thinking about . What would I do ? How would I survive ? You don't have to hit people over the head with your message . No one wants a preachy dystopian . Give them something to chew on while they're freaking out about your terrifying world . So again , those are my thoughts .
Speaker 2Here's my final takeaway , my quick and dirty cheat sheet . Start with the what if ? What if books were illegal ? What if rich people could buy extra lives . What if reality was controlled by AI that hates sarcasm ? Make your world miserable , but believable If your readers feel too comfortable . You did it wrong .
Speaker 2Give characters . Give us characters who fight back , who stand for something . No one wants to read about somebody who just accepts their awful fate Like , oh , zombies outside that sucks ,
Creating Terrifying Yet Believable Dystopian Worlds
Speaker 2but doesn't do anything to try to survive or improve their environment or get through it . Keep the plot moving . Action state gut punch , emotional moments . Leave us with something to think about . Make the horror feel a little too real , a little too scary , and that's it . Now go forth and create a world that would absolutely ruin everybody's day in the best possible fashion .
Speaker 2But seriously , dystopian fiction is about more than just doom and gloom . It's about hope , rebellion , survival and proving that even in the darkest times , people and their dogs will fight for something better . Now , excuse me while I stock up on canned goods , just in case I'm kidding . So that's it from me . Editing JD , and Jasmine Baker is going to take you on a much , much more deep , nuanced look into this , and she's going to do it from the perspective of somebody whose book her debut novel is in stores now , and she's going to talk about the market for dystopian and what will help you be successful writing dystopian fiction now ?
Speaker 4Hello everyone , thank you for joining in and I hope that what we're going to be talking about tonight with dystopian fiction is helpful . I've crafted a presentation that tells my journey as well as , hopefully , inspires you along your journey .
Speaker 2Okay , all right . So good evening everyone . Dystopian fiction has long captivated readers with its high stakes , conflicts and morally gray characters , and tonight we have the perfect person to guide us through crafting unforgettable worlds . I'm thrilled to introduce Rebecca Dazenbaker . She's a YA author known for heart-pounding character-driven stories with romance and intricate plots . Can't talk tonight . Tonight , she'll share insights on her writing process , her publishing journey and , of course , offer lots of tips on crafting dystopian worlds and worlds that resonate with readers . So , rebecca , did you want to start from the beginning and tell us how you came up with the idea for Soul Match ? What inspired your story , sure .
Speaker 4So first let me go back into my very first foray into creative writing and this will age me if my side part didn't do it already . Way back when I was in seventh grade , we got our first home computer and it was an Apple 2GS . And in addition to playing the Oregon Trail and where in the world is Carmen Sandiego ? I opened up a Word document and started to write my first novel , and I was a lifelong reader . So , of course , like , reading leads to writing , I feel like once you appreciate storytelling , you want to create your own stories . So in seventh grade I start writing my own novel . I print it off on my dot matrix printer , tear off the sides , the little loopy holes , and then hand it over to my friends with a stapler . Here's chapter one . What do you guys think ? And they're like oh , I love it , write some more .
Speaker 4So I was getting lots of encouragement from my friends and I would deliver them chapters at a time , and finally , like my English teacher , she approached me and was like , can I read it ? And I was like , sure , and so I was surprised in that she actually kind of poked fun at it once she had read it . Uh , and that really kind of disenfranchised me on writing in general so I stopped creative writing , like completely . I was like , well , that's not for me , um , and as you'll hear later , and I am just not great with rejection at all , so maybe not the best profession to be in in writing .
Speaker 4But um , fast forward a couple of decades . I was just riding down the road . This gets into my soul , match inspiration . Um , I was riding down the road . I pass a cemetery and out of the blue , I have this thought I wonder if my past life is buried there . I've never really even thought about reincarnation before . So it really did come from out of the blue . I have this thought . I wonder if my past life is buried there . I've never really even thought about reincarnation before .
Speaker 4So it really did come from out of the blue , and then that thought spiraled into the next . I wonder if someday we might have the technology to figure out who we were in our past lives , and wouldn't that be really cool ? Maybe because our DNA comprises so much of our outward appearance , including our gender and our race , and so much of what we're born into is out of our control the states we're born into , or the countries , or the family dynamics . What if in each of our lives , we're born into a different body and then we find out who those were , and so that changes everything . When you go in to find out who you were in your past lives , you see all of these different things .
Speaker 4And so I came home to my husband after that drive and I was like I have an idea for a YA novel , and he was like what are you talking about ? This is ? I mean ? He loved the idea , but at the same time , I had a corporate job . I was working , you know , long hours with that . I had two children , ages three and one at the time , and I was also building a photography business . I started my photography business in 2008 . This was a couple of years later I was still trying to go full-time photography in order to have better work-life balance , and so I had no time to write a novel .
Speaker 4So over the months and years that followed , occasionally I would think of this brilliant idea that I had driving down the road one day and I would make little notes on it . Like well , what if they could also figure out , scientifically identify , who your soulmate is ? Wouldn't that be cool ? And how would it change the world to know that reincarnation is real ? Would you then not pass your inheritance to your kids ? Maybe you would pass it to your next life ? So when you show up to find out who you are in your past lives , you also get all of the money that you are owed from your past life , and so that kind of gives you an impetus to go , because you're like , oh , I'm going to get my soulmate , I'm going to be rich . And if you pass your talents on to your next life , then it kind of alleviates a lot of the anxiety that teenagers go through in finding out , like , what should I do with my life ? And I'm still figuring that out , but what should I do for a living ? So I again like had no time to write .
Speaker 4So along comes COVID , and I think this is probably true for a lot of us . We are suddenly given all the time in the world . My kids at the time were teenagers or preteens and they didn't need me to babysit them . They were very independent . They would go out and play six feet apart with their friends and rollerblade and things like that . They had ways to occupy their own time .
Speaker 4And so I was left with all the time in the world and I was in the middle of doing a photography workshop on CreativeLive and I just had this niggling idea and I stopped the workshop right in the middle of it . And I went on CreativeLive and I just had this niggling idea and I stopped the workshop right in the middle of it and I went on CreativeLive and instead searched how to write a novel . And the first workshop that came up was one by Lisa Krohn . You probably know her as the author of Story Genius . It's a very popular writing craft book .
Speaker 4But she had a workshop on CreativeLive called Wired for Story . So I was like , why not ? I'm in the middle of doing nothing and I think it was on sale for $20 . And I was like sure . So for a few days , I used this world that I'd been building for 10 years in my head and I used what she was teaching me about crafting story to knock out an outline and then started writing it . So over that COVID summer , where I wasn't working on photography , I worked on my first draft .
Speaker 2Awesome . The road to publication is different for every writer . Can you tell us how you got started ? And did you always know you wanted to write dystopian and YA .
Speaker 4Yeah , so I read a lot of YA dystopian and when I got that idea back in 2010 , that was YA dystopian heyday , like Hunger Games had just come out . I think the movie had been announced . Fast on Its Heels was Divergent Shatter Me series . Ember in the Ashes . Announced Fast on its Heels was Divergent Shatter Me series , ember in the Ashes . I could go on and on and I was like scooping them all up .
Speaker 4I love YA dystopia , but I'm also a huge fan of romance and so I feel like it was natural for me to incorporate a lot of what I read in romance stories into my YA dystopia and to create this YA dystopian romance . So my publishing journey was long and arduous , I feel like , but I also feel like in other aspects from other people's stories that I've heard , it wasn't too bad . But if I'd known that it would take me five years from writing the first draft to publication , I probably wouldn't have stuck with it . But I can kind of like really briefly go back to like where I left you off , where I finished my first draft , how I then took this into the querying world and stuff . So I had two friends only two friends that I knew that had ever written a novel and published it . One had self-published , one had traditionally published . And I , because I seek external validation , like I did from my seventh grade teacher I was like I want the traditionally published route . I want somebody who knows good writing to tell me this book is good and that it's worthy . And I also thought it would be easier to go the traditionally published route because I was by that point by COVID , I was running my own business , and I was back to running my own business by the time I finished writing the first draft . So I was like I don't have time to research self-publishing . I will get an agent , I'll get an editor , they will take care of everything for me . It's great . It's a whole different presentation on how very wrong I was , on how easy it would be to become traditionally published .
Speaker 4But I reached out to my friend who is traditionally published . Her name is Constance Sayers . She wrote A Witch in Time , ladies of the Secret Circus Star in the Strange Moon . So she's written three published ones now . Circus star in the strange moon . So she's written three published ones now . Um .
Speaker 4And she graciously gave me an hour of her time explaining how publishing works . I had no idea it was not in any way in industry I was familiar with . She talked , told me about query letters . Um , I had another friend who helped me craft a query letter who that she was ? That was kind of like her expertise .
Speaker 4And my friend , constance Sayers , who is traditionally published , was like let me introduce you to my agent . I love the sound of your book . I sent my materials to her agent . I know at this point like now , I know that that's very rare to be introduced to somebody's agent . We kind of hold those close to our chest and it's scary to like , be like . I support this person , but I she introduced me to her agent . Her agent read through my materials and sent me the kindest rejection I have ever received . It was very glowing and encouraging and she was like I don't represent YA , but you should keep sending this out . Someone's going to scoop it up in a hot second and that's all I needed to hear .
Speaker 4So I started querying , querying , querying . This was like , starting in September of 2020 until December of 2020 . In those three months , I amassed 60 rejections and , as I mentioned before , I don't deal well with rejection . I felt it was very because this story , I loved it so very much . Because this story . I loved it so very much . It felt very personal even though I know it's not and it was hard for me to take .
Speaker 4So in December I was sitting on the couch with my husband crying , as I was doing many times during those three months , and I was like I just cannot do this anymore . It's just too hard for me mentally and I don't like who I am . I don't like being in this space where I'm constantly anxious to check my email and I was like I'm done , I cannot do it anymore . And thankfully he was like please do not give up . He sat me down and was like you cannot give up on this story . I believe in the story . I believe in you . You know you love this story . Do not give up . My best friend next day we went for a six feet apart walk together . She said the same thing I love the story . Everyone who's read the story loves the story . Don't give up . And I was like , okay , I won't give up . But the definition of insanity is continue doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results . I cannot keep doing the same thing I'm doing and expecting to finally have an agent fall in love with me . I have to step back and stop for a while and figure out what I've done wrong here . Why isn't this story that I love so much resonating with the agents that I'm sending it to ?
Speaker 4So what I did from January until April was I joined the writing community . I didn't have a community of writers . I was a photographer . I have a great community of photographers . I didn't know , except for my friend Connie . I didn't have anyone that I knew in the publishing world . So I joined Twitter in the time like 2021 , that was kind of the thing to do . That was where writers went , that's where editors went , that's where agents went . Everyone in publishing was on Twitter . And that's where I found a community of writers and that's where I found my critique partners , and so I . There were three of us . We all read each other's manuscripts , we discussed them on calls , we pulled them apart , we tried to figure out what wasn't working , what can like , we strategized with each other . So that was wonderful . And then I joined two pitch groups on Facebook . One is now defunct . It was called the Pit Mad Hatters , because Pit Mad was a big event at the time on Twitter where you could pitch your book in like 180 characters or whatever it was , and if an agent or an editor liked it , that means they wanted to see your materials . So I joined the Pit Mad Hatters and we worked on pitches together . But I think one of the ones that was most helpful for me was joining Pitch to Publish , and that is still a working group right now on Facebook .
Speaker 4It's run by Kathy Ver Eek Kathy with a K , v-e-r , separate word E-E-C-K-E ,
Rebecca Dazenbaker's Publishing Journey
Speaker 4and she is like a marketing guru . She basically helps people figure out how to pitch their novel , because you probably all know you're all MFA people . Writing a novel and pitching a novel are completely different skill sets , but both are essentials to being a published author . No matter which publishing path you choose , you need to be able to convince people to read your book . So pitch to publish it was expensive . I think it's like $60 a month . That's not cheap . That's more than I pay for any other subscription service . But I learned so much in the three months that I was paying for that that it paid off in dividends and I continue to use those skills to this day in pitching book ideas to my editor in writing the back jacket copy for my books . So that skill will go on forever and ever with you . It's a community that works together and every week they tweak their pitches and their blurbs for their query letters . They also review first pages together , things like that . So that was really helpful .
Speaker 4And then the last thing that I did during that period where I wasn't querying was I stopped ignoring all of the cautionary advice that I had been ignoring , and I think we all think we're like a special person , like , oh , but my story is so good I can just ignore the fact that it's 20,000 words over the norm for YA . I was querying at 111,000 words and you get a little bit of allowance for fantasy or sci-fi , but not an extra 10 . So I was getting all these rejections probably very much just related to the word count . They maybe weren't even looking at my materials because they were like I can't sell a YA that's over 110,000 words . So I called back on the word count .
Speaker 4I also removed the prologue . Everyone had been telling me agents don't like prologues , agents don't like prologues . And I was like , no , but mine's not an info dump , it's really important . And you guys , it wasn't . And not only that I write YA and in the prologue she was eight years old . And how are you going to draw on a teen audience with an eight-year-old girl ? You're really not . And so I was able to incorporate whatever message that I felt like was essential in that prologue into later chapters , and it was easy , like a few sentences here and there . Fine , prologue's gone , we start in the heart of what's happening .
Speaker 4And then the last thing that I was doing was genre blending . So I , like I said , I love dystopian , I love romance . I had lots of dystopian stuff and then a huge chunk of romance where nothing dystopian . I love romance . I had lots of dystopian stuff and then a huge chunk of romance where nothing dystopian was happening . We have this , like you know , slow burn angsty thing going on with the bodyguard here and it doesn't feel like we're in a dystopian world anymore , and then back at the end we're back in dystopia , and so that was something that we had to address too .
Speaker 4Um , so I went through all these revisions . I started querying again in April . I got my agent in May . So after I had done all those changes , like it paid off pretty quickly , and then my agent was like hey , I know you plan this to be a two book series . Can you please combine it all into one and not increase your word count at all . So that took another six months of revisions and then we went on submission in January of 2022 . And I was on submission for 20 months before I got a two book deal with Simon and Schuster . So very show us your cover .
Speaker 4Can you show us your cover ? Yeah , yeah . So I have the same cover . Designer as Chloe Gong and Jennifer Lynn Barnes . It's cat fact . Um , he did a beautiful job here with creating this beautiful dystopian esque . Um , she has all the wires coming out and stuff . So , um , there's my cover .
Speaker 2This is an art yeah , did they ask you for a cover concept and did they do it close to the concept , In fact .
Speaker 4I hadn't even received like developmental notes on my novel when my editor was like here you go , this is going to be your cover . We're probably going to change the font , what do you think ? And I was like oh , like I had actually . You know , I had in my head I was thinking like Hunger Games , like gosh , what are some of the other ones ? I'm going to blank on them now . Marie Lu writes some really great YA dystopia too , but it's kind of like a symbol on the front .
Speaker 4And I thought they would use the symbol . Now I did get them . Oh , it's not in this . I did get them to put the symbol that I envisioned on the chapter headers , so that was nice . And then they had they added like my main character's necklace , which has like a big like role in the story . So they added that for me , things like that . They changed , but I didn't have that much input into the cover . I was annoyed at the time but I'm like it's okay . Everyone seems to love it . I'm good . I'm good with it . It's fine .
Speaker 2That's exciting . So you've told us about your journey . Now can you go ahead and take things over and dive in and tell us about dystopian worlds ?
Speaker 4Absolutely Okay . So let me start my presentation here , okay . So I think all of that lead up will just go to show . Well , first off , I don't want all right here . I'm going to go back again .
Speaker 4When I started to make this presentation . I made this in Canva . I searched in Canva dystopian fiction presentation and there is a fully formed dystopian fiction presentation in Canva . If you want to know the craft of like the idiosyncrasy , like all the nitty gritty of how to craft a great dystopian novel , it's already there . What I would really love for you to come away with tonight is to have a dystopian story or idea that you , or a way of crafting a dystopian story or idea that you are , a way of crafting a dystopian idea that will see you through the inevitable of rejection that will come and that you will believe in so fully that when your agent comes to you 18 months or 17 with whatever it was into sub and was like , do you want to move on to the next book that you're like , can we just try one more time ? Because that one more time might be , that one more time might be the one that lands , and it did for me . So that's what I'm hoping to get out of tonight's presentation , so let's go in . All right , this is my very short outline . I want to help you create dystopia that resonates with both you and your audience .
Speaker 4Who is a dystopian author ? How does your background affect what you're writing , how you find inspiration for your stories ? And then I'm going to fast forward into what the market is like these days for dystopian literature . This is pulled just a fragment of a definition from Oxford Dictionary of what dystopian fiction is . It's an imagined state or a society where there is great suffering or injustice , and what I found so interesting about this is that there has been no time in history where there hasn't been great suffering and injustice . So we are already experiencing this at all times , and the lovely thing about dystopian fiction is that it allows us to take the suffering that we already know about and we're already feeling and we're already experiencing in some ways for ourselves , and applying it in a way that moves people , hopefully , into action , or at least inspires them or helps them to see an alternative point of view that they may not have considered before . So let me see . Ok , so I'm going to move on .
Speaker 4How do we find that story ? How do we craft it ? So , if you are familiar with the DC region , there are two radio stations that share the news . One is WTOP and one is NPR , national Public Radio . Wtop gives news , traffic and weather every 15 minutes . Npr gives you the context for the news and they do a deep dive and they go to the front lines and they find somebody who has a story to tell and everyone at the hands of the fentanyl crisis or fighting for their family across the world in some war that we don't know anything about because that's so far removed from our lives here , or they are trying to get over the border to save their family from some sort of travesty that's going on in their home country .
Speaker 4What NPR does is they don't try to just say here's what's happening in the world . They take us and they find one person to share their story . Because when we hear stories , that's when we feel something . If somebody tells me , oh , a woman was murdered in Ashburn today , I'm going to be like , oh my gosh , that's absolutely horrible . But if I know her story , I can be moved to tears , I can show up at her funeral , I can organize drives to try to help her family , because I know this person now . So we need to become NPR reporters . In the dystopian world , we can't just say here's what's going on . I mean , this is really show versus tell , which you've heard about so much . But we need to find ways to become NPR reporters to tell our stories , to have our voices be heard . So I'm going to move on to my thing , so I'm still referencing my notes so I don't get sidetracked .
Speaker 4So everything comes down to the person you choose to interview in your story . Who is your character and how do we make somebody relatable that we know nothing about ? So , if somebody is on the other side of the world fighting in a war again , like , that means nothing to me , as a 49 year old woman in Northern Virginia , how do I feel for that person ? Well , first off , we have to make them relatable , and the great thing is that we , as humans , are so we have so much more in common than we ever realized . Like , first of all , we all love something or somebody . Like we all want to be loved and returned , and so that desire to like , feel love , to be loved , to protect the ones we care about , the need for food and shelter , shared talents , like , oh , this person over here is an opera singer , now they're fighting . If I sang opera , like I would feel over here is an opera singer , now they're fighting . If I sing opera , like I would feel a lot more for that person .
Speaker 4Also , if you wonder why authors make so many of their main characters book lovers , it's because they know their audience and they know that's going to be relatable . So we find these shared connections and that's how we craft a story . And we we were like okay , you love this person , this person loves this person . We are all the same , so we latch onto those things . And sense of humor is another great one . Intelligence is another great one . Like there's all these ways to make your characters relatable .
Speaker 4And then , when you put it onto the page , that's where you have to , like , focus on creating the emotion of what's happening . And this was my biggest thing I had to do during developmental edits because over you know the years that I've been going on submission and working with my agent , what I had to do was claw out as many words as I could out of the manuscript to get it under a hundred thousand dollars , or as short as I could to make it like I'm a debut author . They're just not going to publish a big novel for me Then . So I had taken out a lot of these like descriptors of how my main character was feeling and I was allowing the dialogue to tell all of that . And then , as soon as I got my editor , she was like we need to put emotion , we need to sink emotion into this . I want it dripping with emotion and internal dialogue . I want to know why your character is making these decisions . So we need to get into her head more . So if you don't already have a copy of the Emotion Thesaurus , or if you aren't subscribed to One Stop for Writers , which is the people who create the Emotion Thesaurus , or if you aren't subscribed to one stop for writers , which is the people who create the emotion thesaurus , they have a website that you can subscribe to where you can just search what you want .
Speaker 4I leaned on that so much during developmental edits to create this emotion and , yes , my story is so much better now because you feel the reader feels exactly how my main character feels and you , I want to like , I want my main , I want people to like you know , clinch their jaw when someone else clinches their jaw , and I , like , I do that when I'm reading too . So hopefully that'll be , that'll be a shared experience across my readers . But also , and then finally on this slide here is you know you need to remember , while you're writing this story and as being an NPR reporter , that what you're writing , the reason you chose this topic , this dystopian future , is that you want to make a difference and you have something to say about what you're writing . So you need to convey that message throughout the story . So don't lose track as you go on and you're writing different scenes , like each scene should pull you back to the why of the reason you started writing this . So I think the why is shaped by our individual lived experiences . So I thought it would be fun to look at my lived experiences and see how I evolved into a dystopian author , and I think the great part about this is that there's nothing in my past that specifically calls out like , oh yes , she's going to be a dystopian author someday .
Speaker 4Here's my childhood . I was a middle child . I was the middle of three sisters . We were 18 months apart on either side . Middle child I was the middle of three sisters . We were 18 months apart on either side . So I'm directly in the middle and I was an honor student growing up and I had a strict Catholic upbringing . And then here's my career history . Nothing about this screams well , she's going to be a dystopian author . But if we look at it differently , let's look at it this way as a middle child who my older sisters did not get along they still do not they were constantly fighting with one another I read as an escape from the calamity of my life . They were always shouting at each other , always fighting . They were also both cheerleaders , so it was just a very loud house . They would always bring in friends . They were extroverts . I was an introvert , so I would read as an escape .
Speaker 4And those skills that I learned from reading story structure , the genres I liked and gravitated toward and my voice and style all of that came from my childhood of reading as an honors student and I think this is dystopian as it is 75% of students that are going through American schools and I'm making up that figure , but I'm assuming that's what it is based off like the geographical breakdown of my own kids' high school . 75% of students are learning US history in the form of WTOP . Here's what happened . And then the honor students are getting the NPR side of it . Let's apply context to this . Let's dive deep into these historical events and understand why this was such a pivotal moment in history and who were the big players and why were they big players and why did they have the effect that they did . So you're learning this analytical thinking that then goes on to make you a bigger , better author , and I'm not going to focus on my religious upbringing too much , but if you know the history of the Catholic church , you'll know that sometimes the Catholic church has not always and does not always practice what it preaches , and I feel like that's very dystopian as well . If you have somebody who is claiming to be doing good maybe not doing so much good that is dystopian . If you have somebody who is claiming to be doing good , maybe not doing so much good , that is dystopian . If you can look at it from that lens , that's good fodder for dystopian fiction .
Speaker 4As a music educator , I was teaching children how to convey their big feelings in healthy ways and giving them a way to express themselves that allows them to generate something outside of themselves , and I think this applies across art as a whole . If you're creating a dance , a song with lyrics , a book , a painting to express how you feel , that is so healthy and it not only keeps you from internalizing all those negative feelings , but you're allowed to then push it out so that you can visualize it . It helps in such a beautiful way to show how you care about things and to allow others to care about the same things . So that was what I did in music educator , but I also I was also roped into the leadership , a leadership role in Fairfax County , um , in the music educators , and we had to fight every year to keep our programs running and fight for the funding for those programs , and so that's really disenfranchising , like we just are , like this is so healthy for our kids . They need to be able to be well-rounded humans and have music in their lives . And we would be told no , no , no , cut , cut , cut . And it was just like we're not just the babysitters while the main teachers are on break .
Crafting Character-Driven Dystopian Stories
Speaker 4So that was very dystopian .
Speaker 4And then the biggest one , I have to say , this one working at CQ Roll Call . Cq , roll Call is a news agency . If you're not involved in congressional politics , you have no idea what CQ Roll Call is . Cq stands for Congressional Quarterly . Roll Call is a news agency that they merged with while I was there . Roll Call is a news agency that they merged with . While I was there , I came on board as an account manager with them and I had to get a whole new deep dive into how Congress works . And I had to learn that because our website , cqcom , was so complicated and intricate and the information that we were collecting for our subscribers was so minute and nuanced that I had to be able to speak coherently about the legislative process and the inner workings of Congress to the people that I was going to meet at Fox News or Boeing or NIH and teach them about the value of the service that we were providing . Because we were the only news agency in DC that went to all of the committee markups and saw the amendments that are being introduced and how people were voting on those amendments , which is really powerful information if you are in lobbying or anything like that Learning how government really works , especially in back rooms , and things like that .
Speaker 4Even though I don't just write dystopian now I've written a couple of YA romances as well that knowledge , that political background , has helped me so much in creating dystopian fiction . And then , finally , as a professional photographer since 2008, . I don't photograph weddings , I don't do many sessions , I only do portraiture and I do full length sessions for families , so a full length session is like an hour and a half . So I have time and I walk around with my clients and I have fun with them and I get to know them and I ask them questions about themselves .
Speaker 4And what I've learned through all that time is that , um , we all have our own struggles , um , and some , and often they're silent and they're they're . They're not something we make public , um , but I feel like everybody has their own struggles , like infertility , their marriage could be on the rocks , their children are struggling with health concerns or they are , or there's a job situation going on , their family life is not great , like their parents aren't doing well . So the more that I get involved with these families , the more I've learned that one there is no normal but to like , we're all struggling and we all just want to be seen . And photography is a great , great way for me to show my clients like I see you , like I have been with you , I've learned who your family is . And look how beautiful you are , look how perfect you are . Like , do not change a thing , as is , you're good , even though they will come to me and be like can you just nudge in that little lump right there ?
Speaker 4I'm like all right , I'll do that for you . But you're perfect , as is Like you're so beautiful . I think the way I see people has changed so much from photography , because I really do fall in love in some ways with my clients , because I just find there's so much beauty in the world and I wish people saw it the way I did . But let's go back to dystopian fiction . If you know that everyone is struggling , how do you and people want to be seen like , how do you convey that ? And how do you let your own message get out there ? How do you put all of this background because we all have our own thing into a story that you want to be , that you want to tell , that will allow people to see you or allow allow you to convey someone else's story , allow you to convey someone else's story . So I want to talk about inspiration for a second . So both of my story ideas that are under contract right now came from a flight like just out of the blue , not something that I've I sat and crafted , so they came from the moments of what , if so much already talked about .
Speaker 4I was going by the grave site . Predictable is my next contracted novel the way , the one that I just submitted to my editor a couple last month and this one . The story idea came while I was scrolling through Netflix one day and trying to find my next show , and it was giving me suggestions based off of what it knows I like to read or to watch , and each of my family members has their own profiles and their suggestions are completely different from mine . But I realized Netflix knows me . They know who I am and if I go on Goodreads the books that pop up for me as suggested reads or on Audible , they know me too . I have given a part of myself to that technology . Um , so it's learned who I am .
Speaker 4And wouldn't it be wild if , in the future again , this is a what if ? Wouldn't it be wild if , in the near future , because we feed so much of ourselves into our shopping , online shopping , and our schedules , and even our health , our prescriptions , things like that , like AI at some point will be able to analyze all of the aspects about ourselves , as well as the people around us , to reasonably be able to predict the future ? And if we are more predictable , for if we make it like corporate , like so for Netflix , if we make the choices that they find predictable , we get rewarded . That's great . It helps them make better purchasing decisions and investments . It would help the clothing companies know which clothes to order next year and they won't have to waste money on styles that they know one will order because we're going to be so predictable .
Speaker 4So you get a predictability rating and then you're rewarded if you are more predictable , and then you're punished in other ways if you aren't . So for both of these stories , my characters are very invested in the system , and I think this goes back to my Catholic upbringing . You just feel like , yeah , I believe in this , this is so true . And then after a while , it kind of like all kind of crumbles around you and you see that the world isn't shiny , as beautiful as you imagined it to be . So then how do you find your way forward from that ?
Speaker 4And my story is always having a happy ending , so that's always a little bit tricky . But what if you don't get ? What if you're not the type of person that's like driving down the road and suddenly gets a story idea ? How do you craft a story that you're gonna feel something about and that others are gonna feel something about ? What are your own deadline ? So today , this morning , for 10 minutes , I was like okay , I'm gonna figure out a story idea right now by using this method , which is problem and solution .
Speaker 4First , think of a problem that really you care about right now . And for me , the first thing that came to my mind is cancer , because I have a friend going through cancer . I just made her a meal this week . Um , I have another friend who lives , lived , two doors down from her , who passed away from cancer a year ago , um , and they both live on my street and there have been five people on my street now that have had cancer , and that's really concerning too . My street , and there have been five people on my street now that have had cancer , and that's really concerning too . So cancer has affected my life , um , in that my friends are dealing with it . My , my family members have as well . I know people who've lost people to cancer . So let's say our problem is cancer .
Speaker 4And then , in our dystopian world cause I love to create a fake utopia let's say there's a cure for cancer . Let's invent a cure for cancer . Sure , but any cure you invent has to have good and bad ramifications . That's what makes it dystopian . It has to have enough good come out of it that people will be like no , we need to do this . This is great , but then there's got to be people who suffer the consequences as well . And what I love to do during my writing of the dystopian fiction is it seems like the negatives aren't as bad at first , but as the story goes on , the scale tips and the negatives start to far outweigh the positives . But we're so entrenched into the system at this point that it's hard to pull back from it . So if we keep using cancer and this cure for cancer here's the storyline that I came up with .
Speaker 4Okay , so let's say our cure for cancer comes from a rare mineral that you have to mine for , but there's only so much of it . So not everyone who has cancer can get the cure . So that's one dystopian thing . That's one little stake that you could create for your characters . Maybe they create some sort of lottery system , and any lottery system can become corrupt . Or maybe they have to prove their worth . Maybe the government decides well , this is how we're going to determine who gets the cure .
Speaker 4Let's add more stakes onto that . What if this cure cures cancer , but anyone else who comes into contact with it dies ? So if you get the cure , you can no longer be with anyone you love . So that's another stake . What are we going to do with the people who get the cure ? Let's form a separate society for them , and maybe you can FaceTime with them . But you love them so much . You'd rather them be alive and separate than suffering or dying at the hands of cancer . So great , there's another stakes for you .
Speaker 4Let's say , then , the people who are mining for it , because in this dystopian world , of course it has to be mined by human hands . They're going to die because they're coming into contact with this rare mineral that's going to kill them . So the government's like , okay , well , we'll just send the people on death row . They're going to die anyway . They're going to be the ones who mine it for us . Well , of course , they're going to die . So then what happens ? And what if the people on death row were wrongfully accused and were sending people to mine that shouldn't be there ? What if ? So , again , this is like me , just like in 10 minutes , like brainstorming . What if you could volunteer to go , and mine specifically for your person that you love , give up your own life for somebody else's to make sure they got the cure ? Would you have people do that ?
Speaker 4So now you have this great NPR story or no , sorry , you have a WTOP story . You have the outlines of a world , which is what I started with when I wrote Soul Match . I had a world , but where's the story in that ? So you have to choose which of those angles you want to come at it . From which one means the most to you ? Are you going to write from the viewpoint of the cancer person whose love is going to go into the minds and sacrifice themselves ? Are you going to the love of the person who is dying from cancer and
The Current Market for Dystopian Fiction
Speaker 4you maybe report your neighbor for something they didn't do , and then they have to go mine for you , because that person also loves the person with cancer ? So now I have a love triangle .
Speaker 4So there's all these ways to like create a story . Idea is basically what I'm at the crux of here . And if you start with an issue that you really care about , then you can ingrain all of that into your dystopian story so that , when it comes down to your long journey into publishing , you still believe in it fully and others will as well . They'll be like I have felt this also , and it doesn't have to be cancer . It could be you invent another virus , but it feels like cancer to you because you've lived through that . It could be some other problem that's , you know , in tangent to . Is that the right word In line with an issue that you care about ? But we've created a dystopian version of it , um , where people can see the similarities without um , without being told it's the same thing , um . So that's as far as like inspiration goes . So now that you have your story and you're trying to go out with it , I know um , my son was just in Hadestown last weekend . He does musical theater at his high school , so he , he was in Hadestown .
Speaker 4You know familiar with the , the story , but it's a tragedy and it it um , orpheus goes down to hell and tries to save Eurydice and he doesn't do it Like . He makes it to the very end and he , he turns around . He's not supposed to turn around . If he turns around and he sees her , she goes back to hell . She goes back to hell . But the story doesn't end there . The story ends with Hermes , the messenger , god , saying hey , I told you from the beginning .
Speaker 4It's a sad story , but I'm going to tell it anyway because it inspires hope and I feel like , even if your dystopian fiction ends in tragedy , because you've told this story to make you feel for these people , you've inspired hope in the audience . Orpheus has no hope . He will never be with Eurydice again , but who has the hope ? The audience that was in the . You know they we have . We have heard this story and we are inspired because we've seen the injustices and we've known , we know the suffering and we're like gosh , this is horrible . No one should go through this , no one should have to sacrifice that much . So even if your dystopian fiction ends in tragedy , write it anyway , because people need to feel that . So that's important too , like it doesn't have to have a happy ending . Yeah , okay , let's look at the market . The market has a happy ending for you guys .
Speaker 4If you are writing YA dystopian fiction , this is the time to be writing YA dystopia fiction . Because when I started writing I was told do not say the word dystopia when you query . Absolutely leave that out . And when I searched in manuscript wishlists for agents to query , no one was looking for dystopian fiction . These were the terms over here that people were using . So put these in your wheelhouse , because you might still be looking for agents to query and they might still be using these terms in their manuscript wishlist and then you can use those similarly in your query letter . That's what I would do .
Speaker 4My dystopian fiction is set in Washington DC . It's grounded sci-fi . There is science fiction technology in it . It's set in the future . It's grounded , which means it takes place on earth , and so you will see elements of earth . Another example of grounded sci-fi is like Andy Weir's the Martian , because it's a real world , it feels real , it feels like it could happen here . That's grounded sci-fi . Light sci-fi is similar . It's just a little bit like my soul match doesn't feel too science Like it . It I do describe kind of a little bit the technology behind what's happening , but all of the technology that you're seeing feels fantastical .
Speaker 4So my publisher though they call it dystopian , they've also categorize it as romantic in some places because it feels like fantasy , utopian . Um , so much is in a utopian world . I told people I'm like it's not like Divergent , where the cities are all crumbling . It's like we live in Canada now . There's a prime minister , there's provinces . We use the metric system in the United States of America and it's not called the United States anymore , it's called the North American government . So I used it . I called it utopian in some of my query letters .
Speaker 4Speculative is the broad category for dystopian fiction or yeah , so it's like you take it wider , you'll see speculative a lot . That is how you will see my book in Publisher's Marketplace . It's described as speculative YA romance or something like that . And then other one you'll hear is Five Minutes in the Future . This one I still used it because it feels , I feel , I feel , I think . Even though it's set 200 years in the future , I think it feels still real . Um , then it doesn't feel too far fetched , um , but predictable , definitely five minutes in the future , like it feels like it's about to happen . Um , and that's what I wanted it to feel like . I feel like we're really on the cusp of that technology .
Speaker 4Um , so that was my querying journey and then , and even the beginning of a submission and then in March of 2023 , my agent did turn to me and was like hey , can you make this romantic ? Because people loving this story , we were getting so much great feedback . She was forwarding me emails like loved it so much but no one wanted to take it because no one was buying dystopian fiction . My agent was like is there anything you do to make it romantic ? I was like I'll try and I stepped back from it and I was like honestly , no , I can't .
Speaker 4I thought I did think it through , but the story that I wanted to tell involves corruption in this soul identification system . So I can't have corruption in a system with that being magical , like I just was like it can't be magical , it has to be real tech . But when I went back to her , I didn't want to go back with a no . So I was like it's a no , but Joy Revolution , which is an imprint of Penguin , random House had just acquired or at least I saw it in Publisher's Marketplace Jill Tooth's the Dividing Sky , and when I read it it was hers is in there , not as YA , as a dystopian , as YA sci-fi romance , but I know as soon as I read it I was like oh yeah , that's dystopian because it said it was set in a futuristic Boston and the main character can record her memories and feelings into a device like on her head , and then she can sell those emotions and feelings to other people in like a black market and I was like that is dystopian .
Speaker 4So I sent that to my agent and I was like let's keep going , let's try . So in March she was like what do you want to do ? Do you want to go into your next book ? And I was like I want to try one more time . Let's give it over the summer , but give me a few months . I'm going to revise it one more time . This is again where I took out more words and then she took it on sub in July to a very small round of five editors and we had a book deal by the end of August . And I honestly credit Jill too , so much for that and I've told her that many times and I will continue to praise her and I love her book too .
Speaker 4It just came out in October , but that's where things started snowballing with dystopia . In November , ballad of Songbirds and Sake the movie came out , and then I'm going to go on like this is what's coming out this year , or has just First . Of course there's Jill's book . Please go read it has just first . Of course there's a deals book . Please go read it . Um , the last bookstore on earth is a climate dystopian book . That was Barnes and Noble's YA book club pick of the month in January , so that was a dystopian book that made it to book club pick of the month . Neil Schusterman , who's known for his YA fiction just or sorry dystopian fiction just came out with a new one , so that's amazing . He's a really big YA dystopian author .
Speaker 4Ava Reid writes fantasy . She has YA dystopian coming out . Of course , suzanne Collins is releasing her next Hunger Games book this month . The Shatter Me series has a new version coming out . These are big names , guys Like Tahereh Mafi has a new YA dystopian coming out .
Speaker 4This is another debut author . The Ground that Devours . This is Vampires in the Future Dystopia World , which I'm excited to read . There's mine and then I have more here , but there's two I want to call out . Chloe Gong , ya bestselling fantasy author , has her first dystopian series coming out in October called Coldwire , and then this one I'm most excited about because I freaking love her fantasy or , sorry , romanticity
Q&A on World-Building and Editing Process
Speaker 4. Nisha Tuli , who writes the Trial of the Sun Queen series . She writes adult romanticity . She is working on YA dystopian . If people writing adult romanticist , which is selling like wildfire right now , are writing YA dystopian , that tells you a lot about the market and what is about to come and what is about to hit .
Speaker 4So polish up your YA dystopian , believe in it , believe in yourself . Do not give up , and you will be able to see this through . And if there's anything I can do to help you , please let me know . Please keep in contact with me , because I want to help you get there . People told me not to give up . That's the only reason I made it to this place , so I am that person for you . I will tell you do not give up . Believe in yourself , believe in your story , make up , believe in yourself , believe in your story , make sure that it has those , those parts of it that you really care about . And you've got this . That's it . Love it , love it , love it .
Speaker 4All of my socials as my like avatar . Um , I am Rebecca Danson Baker across all of these . I'm no longer on um Twitter , but you will find me pretty much everywhere else . Um , on YouTube , you just have to add books to the end , so it's Rebecca Danzenbaker books , and that's what you find me there . Oh , I forgot to put sorry , I forgot to put Facebook on here . I'm also on Facebook , so I'll . Well , it's too late to edit this slide , but yes , you'll find me as Rebecca Danzenbaker books on Facebook too . So please , did you guys have any questions ?
Speaker 2for Rebecca . You can just say if you have questions .
Speaker 3I had one quick question . Well , I feel like it's maybe a longer question , but if you had a quick answer , yeah , one of the challenges I have is like world setting in the dystopian Do you pepper in the rules or do you really try to consolidate the rules of the world in the first few chapters so that people can go through the rest ?
Speaker 4It's all like I mean you learn stuff all the way throughout and kind of like how the world works . So in my first chapter , as we come in , you know she's about to find out who she was in her past lives . So that's what she's going for . She's packing in her room . You know her mom , like her mom comes in she says oh , it's happy . You know she's singing happy birthday to her . Are you excited ? You nervous ? And she's like I'm so nervous . And her mom's like , oh , you know her mom talks about when she went . So you know this has been going on for a while .
Speaker 4So there are little things like that , like little hints that I throw in . And then here's what I've gotten a lot of praise for is that they do go to this government institute and I was like I do have a lot of information to share about this world , but how do I do it ? In a way that's like fun . So I thought these characters are going into this government institute where they're going to be given life-changing information . So how would the government handle this ? And there are also laws against committing suicide . So you can imagine if you go in and you find out you were a criminal in your past life and instead of inheriting money , you inherit a prison sentence like a life sentence that you never finished serving . How that could affect people . So they have put laws into place to keep you from committing suicide , meaning you lose all your money . You have to go to jail for five years next life . So you're basically telling your next life like you're going to go to jail and things like that . So they go to these therapy workshops and they're really only five minutes long , even though they say in the book they're an hour . They're really short . The conversations are short and I spread them out over three different classes and in between I have other things going on where you're learning about the characters and romances and stuff . You're getting all of that . But you're learning about the characters and romances and stuff like that . You're getting all of that .
Speaker 4But you're kind of being fed the information about the world because I have created a magic system if you could say that around this soul , like the way reincarnation works . So in my world you can be reincarnated the day after you die . You get born the day after you die . That's probably going to infuriate some people , but it just helped out because I actually have a spreadsheet of everyone's lives and I didn't want to calculate the time they were gone plus the 10 months that they were in their mom's belly , so it was just either easier math to say you could be reborn the next day . I also have a rule where you interact with the same souls in every life , so that's a magic rule that I created in my system . So that's something they talk about , but I , yeah , I had to find a way to like allow people to digest this information without like here's , here's all the rules that I've created for this world .
Speaker 4Some they're being told in the classes and others are conversations they have with friends . So , like there's a flashback to where her best friends went through their soul identification two months ago and they had the best possible experience at the Institute and everything went exactly as they wanted . And so they're telling her all about it and how it was so wonderful . And oh my gosh , can you believe this wanted ? And so they're telling her all about it and how it was so wonderful . And oh my gosh , can you believe this ? Can you believe that ? And it's such a joyful experience and it's kind of a shift from all the anxiety that my character is . But her best friends play a huge role in kind of discovering all of the hidden facets of what's going on in this world . So I needed to bring them in earlier anyway . So that gave me a way to introduce information .
Speaker 4This book resembles very little what I first drafted . I knew she was going like some of the scenes are the same , but I would say after the first quarter of the book I've pretty much rewritten the entire plot . So some of what happens at the Institute is still the same , but there's a lot of new stuff there that wasn't there before . Um , she , at one point she went to college . That's gone . My , my editor took through that out . She was the last one .
Speaker 4That was like Becky , why is she going to college ? Like I was like well , she's trying to hide . Like she's , she's hiding from who she is . She doesn't want to believe it and so she does . She like dons , this persona , and she went to college and like a lot of like romance-y things happen there . And I just she was like no , no , no , that can't happen . She needs to go work for the prime minister . You know , let's not delay that . That's where our dystopian world continues , instead of like going off into college , which is not . It's not dystopian and it is . It's better now , like there's a lot more dystopian stuff that happens in the middle that wasn't there before . And then I turned in that revision and my editor was like , well , let's now talk about the ending . So I had to rewrite the ending . So I feel like I've rewritten a ton of it , but it is better and I know more about the dystopian genre now because I follow the dystopian beats instead of my this dystopian romance like mashup that I had written before .
Speaker 2Did you get any edits that you didn't agree with or that were ?
Speaker 4Only a few . So in my story this is one example and for the most part , like by the way , I did not have an editor call before I was given a book deal . So a lot of people do they get a call from an editor , they discuss the changes they want to make , um , and then you get the offer . I didn't have that . The offer just showed up in my agent's inbox like a week after . The editor said she was enjoying it . So that's all we knew . Um , we'd heard we we'd heard enjoying it before . So I didn't think anything of it . So it was a real big shock . But the the editor hadn't suggested I make any revisions . So then when I got this like eight page revision letter , my agent got on the phone call with me and she's like you really don't have to do any of this because they didn't predicate your book deal on you making any changes , that you can do whatever you want . And I was like , well , I've never met and this is true , I've never met a revision I haven't loved and I believed in what she was saying , with some caveats . So there were a couple of things that I pushed back on , and here was one Um , my main character , um , hopes for a soulmate .
Speaker 4She doesn't get one . She's given a bodyguard . Her bodyguard does have a soulmate , but his soulmate hasn't been identified . So he knows he has a soulmate from his last life but she has not come about yet . So she hasn't gotten to her soul identification for this , this life . So he's still waiting for her to show up . Could be any minute now .
Speaker 4Like , we know she's coming and they talk about her a lot , and so she's there . And she's one of the reasons that my main character will not , she will not let herself feel for anything for him . There's all this tension because he knows his soulmate is coming and she knows his soulmate is coming and as soon as the soulmate arrives she will be second fiddle , he will be fully invested in her and there is a history that she has with all of that too . And she's like I do not want to feel that . I don't want to feel that pain of like giving my heart to somebody and then being told , no , thank you , um . But of course , as they would be , the soulmate arrives and then she's gone . After a while she dies . So after you know I'm giving away a lot , but she dies like a few days after she's introduced in a very dramatic fashion . Um , that , you know , is kind of like a tug of war almost between who is he gonna save ? He's the bodyguard , right , is he gonna save the real soulmate , or is he gonna to save my main character ? And so , you know , she dies , is not by his fault .
Speaker 4But , like , my editor was like , why are we introducing this character and then killing her off a few days , a few pages later ? And I was like , well , she actually plays a huge role . First of all , she keeps them from falling in love to start with . So that's why we have our nice slow burn . And so , anyway , like I , I came up with a list of like seven reasons why I wanted to keep that character in , and my editor didn't fight me off .
Speaker 4She's like , I am not going to fight you in any . And she said that she was like I'm not here to try to convince you to do anything . If you like , believe passionately in something like that's fine . Um , but she also would , just she wouldn't say this needs to happen . She would be like , uh , maybe she would offer a suggestion . She never , um , she never told me like you should do this , you should do that . It would be like have you thought about X , you know ? Have you thought about maybe what , if something like ? And then we would talk through those ideas and then that would inspire me to go make that change , cause I would be like that would be so cool , I love that idea , you know . And then I'm like , all right , I'm going to go write that . And I was like energized to write that new version because I could see how it would make for a better story .
Speaker 2Any more questions ? You guys , any more questions , you guys . Okay , well , you did a thorough and wonderful job . Oh wait , somebody has a question . Okay , chat , let's see . Oh , let's see . Oh , there's a lot of comments . They're comments , they're not questions . Okay , let me scroll down . Let me scroll down . Maybe there's a question .
Speaker 4Oh , thank you , Akisha . Yeah , story Genius is so great , so that's what I followed for Soulmatch . So , yeah , you're going to be great , you're going to nail it . Oh , thank you , mo , thank you Mo . Thank you . Rebecca , you did a fabulous job .
Speaker 2You were inspiring , as they're saying in the chat . It was a great presentation .
Speaker 5That wraps up today's Crab Chat Chronicles with JD Mayer . Thanks for joining us . If you liked the episode , please comment , subscribe and share . For show notes , writing workshops and tips , head to jdmayercom . That's jdeyercom . That's JDMeyercom . While you're there , join JD's mailing list for updates , giveaways and more .