Dystopia: An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

Make a decision of what aspect of todays society I will project into my fictional dystopian future

The concept of global warming. We didn’t care about the environment enough now, that all the ice caps melted and we all have to live on boats. Very little land mass. Farms on ships. If you rebel you are either thrown off board or sent to abandoned building. Abandoned cities.

Source key materials including photographs, newspaper articles, personal accounts and facts that surround this concern

Explore features of dystopia genre: viewpoint, grammatical formulations, use of neologism, establishment of setting, creation of a single rebellious character.

Third person. New words/new language. Longer sentences. Detail of setting: objects, smell, taste etc. Main character – name is Ethan.

Underwater – my dystopia

Tonnes of ancient rusting metal sit on the water as its paint peels, blistering like a bad sunburn. The sea rises like great mountains and the sun is barely reaching over the horizon, yet he is still up. The buildings are sunken and submerged in the royal blue waves. As the heat hits, mist rises into the air. Ethan stands at the bow of the ship. He can smell the seaweed and salt, one of the only smells he knows anymore.

Ethan had been told that before he was born, people used to live on land. That was until global warming. They said there was a lot less water before the ice caps melted. It happened over time, but one blazing and bright day in Antarctica, the remains of the ice vanished into water, disappearing into a massive liquid mass called the ocean. When it happened, the sea rose by meters and waves bigger than the tallest trees crashed down onto every town and every city. Some places were hit by these waves within a few hours, but others had more time. Ethan’s family was not one of these families with the luxury of time. Ethan and his sister were lucky enough to be saved, although they only reunited in recent years.

Ethan is a typical guy. Greasy brown hair and brown eyes. Sculpted but scrappy. At just 24 years of age he knew nothing but the sea. All his life he was stuck on this boat. At this moment, the ship was docked to one of the tallest standing buildings in the city of New York. All around, small glints of light reflect off translucent panes of glass. Some structures towering over the tide, while others just under the surface. The architecture completely abandoned and rusted.

He looks over to his left, and a seagull is perched on the railing. He hadn’t seen one of those creatures for years. The bird looks about harmlessly, pecking at its feathers, until it is scared off suddenly. It was his sister, running toward him in a hurry, with a distressed look on her face. She says the livestock on the ship is dying and nobody has a clue why. Since there was no land, a few animals were saved from the flood and allocated to different ships. Crops were grown on the ships too, to keep the remainder population of humans on the Earth fed and alive. In a panic, Ethan makes his way through the cold metal door, he feels the temperature drop. The inside of the boat was never warm. He manoeuvres between bland, colourless tables and scattered miserable faces around the room. They get to the farm.

All around, the cows were wide eyed. They were collapsing to the lifeless weeds surrounding the dirt which was supposed to be grass. One of their main food sources is now dying and becoming obsolete. What are they to do now?

Join the conversation! 3 Comments

  1. As we discussed, this has started with some pretty powerful descriptive language. It’s a great start. Get your draft formed as well as you can so that you can use the final formal stages of the assessment to critique and refine the piece.

    CW

    Reply
  2. To develop this for submission, should you wish to, you would need to explore how a lot of the facts that you’re communicating in this piece could be shown as opposed to told to the reader. There are moments of strong description, but then it lapses too much into plot summary to be seen as a fully crafted piece.

    CW

    Reply
  3. Not Achieved

    Achievement Achievement with Merit Achievement with Excellence
    Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas. Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and is convincing. Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and commands attention.
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