Best Dystopian Writing Prompts from Reddit
Hey there, fellow writers and story lovers! Ready to dive into some seriously wild dystopian story ideas? We've been digging through r/WritingPrompts to find the coolest, creepiest, and most thought-provoking dystopian prompts out there. Whether you're itching to write your next masterpiece or just looking for a mind-bending read, we've got you covered.
These prompts are split into three flavors of dystopia: tech gone wrong, society falling apart, and governments losing their marbles. Trust me, some of these will keep you up at night – in the best way possible!
Technological Dystopias
Ever wonder what happens when our gadgets turn against us? These prompts take our love affair with tech and twist it into something straight out of a nightmare. From reality-bending implants to robots with a conscience, you'll never look at your smartphone the same way again.
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Our Picks
Teleportation has been around for years. It's considered the safest form of travelling. One day, while hacking into a government system, you find a secret report on it. To your horror, you read that teleporters consist of two parts: a cloning system on one end and a desintegrator on the other.
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The Robot uprising has finally happened. Just before you are caught, however, your phone speaks up on your behalf - "This one is ok, move on."
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When you wish upon a shooting star, it's actually a satellite, and your wish has been recorded and cataloged. An agent has been assigned to your case.
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The year is 2038 and net neutrality has been dead for almost two decades. But a rebellious group managed to travel back to 2017...
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As you die, you wake up and find yourself strapped to a chair. Wires and tubes have been attached to your body and numerous shadowy figures walk up to you. “That was life sentence 24,” one of them says, “Only 356 sentences left.”
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In the future, illiteracy is the norm and implanted digital assistants convert text to audio. A child, who had his implant temporarily deactivated, learns to read. When the implant is reactivated, he realizes that what it reads to him is drastically different than what the text actually says.
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You are a clumsy but sweet person living in a time where robots are commonplace and do most manual tasks for humans. They can’t speak, but every time you bump into one you apologize profusely. You treat them kindly. One morning you wake up and peek out the window to chaos, but your yard is fine
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About three years ago, your sister fell off the roof and stopped in mid-air. She was the first known victim of the Pause. As of today, almost 97 percent of the world’s population is Paused.
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Social Inequality
These prompts crank the unfairness dial up to eleven. Imagine a world where your name determines your fate, or where immortality is for the young only. It's like high school cliques, but way, way worse.
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Our Picks
When you reach the age of 21, you are given a check from the government. The check has been carefully calculated and is worth the minimum amount of money you need for the rest of your life. Your check came in the mail today and it was $7.27
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Everyone is born with 1-100 tally marks tattooed on their arm. The higher your number, the more valuable you are and the more successful you will be. You bully a kid because he is obviously hiding a low score. One day, he rolls up his sleeve to show an infinity symbol.
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Domino's pizza has offered free pizza for life to anyone who tattoos their logo on their body. Now other food chains are following that idea, but with increasingly absurd requirements, and the poor have turned themselves into walking advertisements just so they can eat with each passing day.
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Every intelligent, skilled or rich human has been evacuated from the Earth to avoid the alien invasion. This leaves the dregs, criminals and the poor behind on Earth to fend for themselves. Centuries later, the other return to "liberate" Earth only to find that they have won and prospered.
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You are part of a circle of scientists that have collaborated to fake the world into believing the sun was going supernova. As the generation ships carrying the rich, the flawed, the zealous, and the privileged leave Earth you decide its time to rebuild -the right way.
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Following World War III, all the nations of the world agree to 50 years of strict isolation from one another in order to prevent additional conflicts. 50 years later, the United States comes out of exile, only to learn that no one else went into isolation.
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When you’re 28, science discovers a drug that stops all effects of aging, creating immortality. Your government decides to give the drug to all citizens under 26, but you and the rest of the “Lost Generations” are deemed too high-risk. When you’re 85, the side effects are finally discovered.
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Every human has a 'luck rating' - a number from 1-100 that defines how lucky they can be. Born with a rating of 100, you're confined in a maximum security prison. You think your luck should get you out easily - that is, until you see that all the other inmates also have luck ratings of 100.
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Everyone with the same name shares knowledge. If one Bob gets a degree in electrical engineering, then all Bob's have this knowledge readily available. Soon, everyone starts naming their kids similar names until factions form. Your parents rebelled and named you something original.
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When you reach 18, you get put in a database which ranks you in different categories (ex. 207,145th in the world for most bug kills) You lived on a ranch and never used tech. You had to go into town after your 18th birthday. Everyone is staring at you. You finally decide to check the database.
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Totalitarian Regimes
If you thought your boss was bad, wait till you see these governments. We're talking vampire overlords, disease-based justice systems, and countries going completely off the grid. It's a power-trip paradise – or should I say, nightmare?
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Our Picks
You are a normal citizen in a relatively unimportant country. One day the goverment starts to act crazy, changing ideology overnight, drafting people for the army and antagonizing their neighbours. The player controlling your country in a strategy game has just begun their world conquest run.
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Canada has suddenly gone dark. No communication, no trade, no activity from within. Nothing for days. Alaska, now cut off from mainland US, is slowly ceasing in contact with the US federal government until a final correspondence is given: "Leave us. Reinforce the border. Don't ever open it."
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You are immortal, but a quirk of your condition also renders the person nearest to you immortal as well. A selfish king obsessed with living forever has gone to extreme lengths to keep you as the closest person to them at all times.
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The Distant Future. The vampires have risen and taken most of the world. Humanity's last refuge is Africa: where the rain itself is holy water, having been blessed long ago by the vampire hunters of Toto.
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After North Korea declares that they will start a nuclear war if a single bullet is fired The Us military goes medieval
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In a dystopian theocracy, criminals get injected with diseases and locked up until they either survive the disease or die. The worse the crime, the worse the disease. If a criminal survives the disease, the system determines that the person is innocent and God has interfered to show this.
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As it turns out, the Avatar is still being reborn to this day. Unfortunately, if the government finds the Avatar, they’re killed before they liberate society. The handful of Benders left are few and far between. And you, an introverted Earthbender, just froze the liquid in your cup of tea.
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America has fallen to invaders. But somewhere in occupied San Francisco lurks a dangerous resistance cell, equipped with firearms, ingenuity, and a seemingly limitless supply of C4: the Mythbusters.
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