Dystopia Now! Unpacking the Enduring Power of Misery OnDemand Webinar
Learn why dystopias work so well in science fiction and how to make your dystopia grimly believable without straying into cartoonish overkill. Broken into three parts with time for Q&A, author Jeff Somers first examines why dystopias work so well in science fiction. Then, he jumps into two weird dystopian world-building tricks: shock value and self-policing. And finally, Jeff covers how to avoid overselling your dystopia (aka, the curse of "1984"). All in all, writers find that doom and gloom is fun and that not everything has to be broken for a dystopian fiction to work.
INSTRUCTOR BIO:
Jeff Somers began writing by court order as an attempt to steer his creative impulses away from engineering genetic grotesqueries. His feeble memory makes every day a joyous adventure of discovery and adventure even as it destroys personal relationships, and his weakness for adorable furry creatures leaves him with many cats. He has published nine novels, including the Avery Cates series of noir-science fiction novels from Orbit Books (www.avery-cates.com), the darkly hilarious crime novel Chum from Tyrus Books, and most recently tales of blood magic and short cons in the Ustari Cycle, including the novel We Are Not Good People and the novellas Fixer, The Stringer, Last Best Day, and The Boom Bands from Pocket Gallery (www.wearenotgoodpeople.com). He has published over 30 short stories, including "Ringing the Changes", which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, "Sift, Almost Invisible, Through", which appeared in the anthology Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris, and "Three Cups of Tea", which appeared in the anthology Hanzai Japan. He also writes about books for Barnes and Noble and About.com and about the craft of writing for Writer's Digest, which also published his book on the craft of writing Writing Without Rules in 2018. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.
