When I started writing My Soul to Keep in 2013, it felt safely fictional… Initially; it was to be a standalone book. By the time I published the book in 2019, I knew Miranda’s story wasn’t over. I created an outline of a three-book development arc that allowed me to explore themes in my stories.
In the Beginning
Writing was fun. Miranda’s journey was slightly uncomfortable because of parallels to my personal emotional journey. But the world was an imaginary extension of a what-if question.
What if America had succumbed to the religious fervor of the Third Great Awakening (1855-1930)? What if America had chosen isolation rather than becoming a fighting ally with Europe during WWII? I thought I had pushed the Fellowship society to extremes.
Unanticipated Difficulties
I never imagined that my fictional world would become increasingly difficult to write as current events in America unfolded. The difficulty isn’t just mine, either. I see and hear it at book fairs. Some people listen to me describe my book, and their expressions change. “You mean like today in America?” they ask. They tell me that living in our reality makes them want to avoid dystopian fiction.
I understand. Some days the news is so gut-wrenching I want to retreat under the covers and hide. But I don’t. I believe that because of reality, it’s crucial that I finish the story and share its messages.
Creating in turbulent times isn’t easy. There are challenges, emotional costs, pitfalls to avoid, and a dose of author responsibility to navigate. It can feel like walking a tightrope, but like the acrobat walking the wire, there are tools to help the author keep moving. The first challenge I’ll discuss—and the one that caught me completely off guard—was how quickly my fictional world and the real world converged.
The Challenge of Staying Ahead of Reality
The difficulty of staying ahead of reality is one that can plague authors of science fiction in particular. Since I was writing an alternate history dystopian, I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with this. Right.
In 2013, I based the Azrael on the infamous disappearing of citizens in other countries. I speculated that my tyrannical American government, the Fellowship, would create a secret assassin who would Take (aka assassinate) enemies of the state under cover of darkness. They would be part myth, part reality, part science-fictional extrapolation.
Imagine my face when, in reality, masked ICE agents began their public arrests on the streets of America. At that point, I had two books already published with the Azrael as part of the antagonistic force. Plus, I was better than halfway through the first draft of book three. Halfway through writing a side plot involving one of the Azrael. The theme of that side plot is one that resonates with the book’s main theme. There I was, at a crossroads every science fiction or dystopian writer dreads:
When Fiction Becomes Too Close to Reality
So what did I do? First, I had to look at my work as objectively as possible and ask myself some hard questions:
Were the Azrael in this book a continuation of the previous book?
Was I continuing to follow alternate history paths?
Was the story coming off as preachy?
Could I continue writing the darkness of these characters without making it about events or people from today?
I answered those questions as honestly as could. Yes, the Azrael in book three were obviously from the previous book. Yes, there was an alternate history path the story continued to follow.
The way I keep this story from being preachy or about today’s events is by telling it from deep character viewpoints. Knowing how each of my viewpoint characters think and making certain their actions are consistent with their ways of thinking, makes the story about their journey instead of what I believe. Do my beliefs influence my stories? Yes, but if there’s a lesson in my stories, it comes from my characters. Of course, creating believable characters in a believable dystopian world requires research. And research presents its own unique challenges.
Research in the Age of Information Overload
Self-Imposed Limits
It’s easy to research too much thanks to the internet. Using the internet and the AI options available is fraught with potholes of misinformation. Even printed books can get things wrong. Be wary. Find original sources or reliable sites. Also, double- or triple-check the information.
One way I limit and focus my research is to check out the juvenile section of the library. Books for middle-grades are fast reads that give more of an overview. Most of those books also have a reference list I can refer to for a deeper dive into the topic. Also invaluable to me were the books The Timetables of History and The Timetables of American History.
What I Researched for the Fellowship
Fortunately or unfortunately, I had done most of my historical research long ago. I based my research on the Third Great Awakening, a religious revival in American Christian history (1855-1930) and American Isolationism of the 1930s to set up the socio-political climate I had envisioned.
Of course, I also studied Hitler and the Third Reich. But I also studied the Soviet Union, Italy, Spain, and a little of Japan’s totalitarian governments. Why did I study so many? So I wouldn’t “copy” one totalitarian government, and I could create a government with similarities to all of them.
I studied the tenents of multiple religions and chose those bits and pieces that would allow me to create believable conflicts.
My memory supplied some details. For example, I remembered gospel music, and drive-in theaters, and other bits and pieces. The finished novels have a sprinkle of the information I remembered and the ones I discovered.
Creating Believable Alternative Timelines
Since I wanted America to be isolated, to not take part in WWII, I chose the assassination attempt on FDR as the point of divergence for my world. Once I had my point of divergence, I gave a lot of thought to what that change could mean. If America had seen WWII as “other people’s problems,” there would not have been a need to convert many factories to wartime supplies. Women wouldn’t have had to go to work because the men had gone overseas. Without the increase in factories, the constant inflow of money for wartime supplies and weapons, recovery from the Great Depression would have slowed. I tried to consider the nation’s emotions, politics, economics, and social structures that may have changed. Then, I found real-historical events that supported my theories.
Using History
One of the real historical events I came across happened by planned happenstance. During the time I created the first outline, I planned a trip to the Eastern Seaboard. I visited some locations along the East Coast and in Kansas City that I hoped to use in the books. But during the trip to the east coast, I happened across a historical marker that truly clicked for My Soul to Keep. I wrote about that discovery in Inspiration on Location.
Discovering the Central Virginia Training Center and its history isn’t something you can count on. Keep an open mind during your research phase, follow threads that interest you, and you’ll discover historical gems that make fictional worlds feel authentic. These research strategies proved essential to the final book in Miranda’s journey.
More Than Writing Skills
Completing And When I Wake meant confronting not just Miranda’s fate, but my own fears about the dark events happening in reality. Every research technique, every method for staying ahead of reality, every strategy for maintaining objectivity came together in this conclusion to The Fellowship Dystopia series. For readers who have been waiting to see how Miranda’s story ends, the ebook is available for preorder now.
But finishing a dystopian trilogy while living in turbulent times taught me something crucial: the craft techniques are only part of what a writer needs. In part two, I’ll show how to survive the emotional journey of writing dark fiction and why creating connections and hope for your readers isn’t just nice to have in dystopian stories—it’s essential.
Featured Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
Second image purchased from DepositPhotos