Greetings, ladies, gentlemen, and those who hate the phrase ladies and gentlemen! Happy very end of pride month because I put this chapter off to the last minute! In my defense, I had finals.
I'm in an optimistic mood this week, since everything in the news is fantastic, so we'll be talking about… dystopian government!
(Everyone cheers)
The first step is creating a system of government that gives any one individual too much power, and then you make that individual a terrible person. This is very, very easy to do, since any system of government can become corrupt if you try hard enough. Theocracy? Religion should not control laws. Monarchy? Ew. Democracy? Easy enough to tweak it so the government doesn't actually represent the people. Dictatorship? Self explanatory. Oligarchy? Same as a dictatorship but now you have more people.
So, pick a system and take the few necessary steps to make it corrupt.
Now, create a person or people to hold this leadership position. Last chapter discussed names, and if you want to name them after a real life person, I get it. What you name them doesn't matter much. Just give them a whole lot of terrible traits. Selfish, arrogant, bigoted, whatever you need to make your point.
Next, what do you want your government to do that makes it dystopian? Hoarding money? Constant surveillance? Censorship? Collecting a group of children to fight to the death? Taking away bodily autonomy? Whatever works.
Then you need a way to show the audience what the dystopia is like, not tell. It's one thing to say "Our brave protagonist lives in a world where the government is evil," and another thing to show that through a starving village, or a raffle to see who will participate in a death match.
So, now you've got a dystopia! Happy writing, and may the odds be ever in your favor.