77 Fresh Dystopian Writing Prompts For Your Next Story

Dystopian writing prompts offer a gateway into some of the most compelling and thought-provoking stories in speculative fiction.  

Whether you’re crafting a tale set in a crumbling dystopian world ruled by oppressive governments or exploring the darker corners of dystopian literature, finding the right cues can be challenging.  

Many writers struggle to maintain the originality in the dystopian genre. How do you create fresh dystopian fiction when themes of surveillance, environmental collapse, and totalitarian control feel overused? 

That’s where these prompts come in. Designed to push beyond cliché, each prompt blends imaginative scenarios with the core tensions that define dystopian stories: survival, rebellion, identity, and the cost of freedom, and much more, spread across 11 different dystopian categories.   

From post-apocalyptic wastelands to technology-driven nightmares, these prompts will help you build authentic dystopian fiction that resonates with readers who crave both realism and the fantastical. 

Whether you’re a seasoned author or just beginning to explore the dystopian genre, these writing prompts will ignite your creativity and guide you toward stories that challenge, provoke, and captivate.

Before we dive into worlds where hope flickers in the darkness, let’s get into the core elements of dystopian literature and character types.

Or Click on the dystopian writing prompts link in the table of contents below to jump over straight to the prompts.

Core Elements of a Dystopian Story 

Every genre of fiction has its core elements, including dystopian fiction. Miss these elements and you’ll have a story that lovers of speculative fiction won’t enjoy. 

So, before we get into the prompts and story ideas, I think it’s important to keep the following elements in mind. These are the hearts and souls of a dystopian story. 

Societal Structure: Dystopian fantasy worlds feature rigid hierarchies, class divisions, and oppressive power structures. These societies often have totalitarian governments, corporate overlords, or ruling magical elites that maintain control through surveillance, propaganda, and force. 

Environmental Setting: The physical world is typically ravaged, decaying, or fundamentally altered. Settings may include poisoned landscapes, climate-devastated regions, floating cities, underground empires, or magically corrupted lands. 

Technology and Control: Advanced technology, artificial intelligence, or magical surveillance systems serve as tools for oppression and social control. 

Resource Scarcity: Limited access to essential resources (food, water, oxygen, magical energy) creates conflict and desperation. 

Character Types in Dystopian Stories 

Though you can have any types of characters, including fantasy characters if you’re eyeing dystopian fantasy, the following characters are more suitable for dystopian fiction.  

The Awakened Protagonist: The main character typically begins unaware of or complicit in the dystopian system, then undergoes an awakening that drives rebellion.  

The Outsider/Misfit: Protagonists often possess qualities that make them different—unique abilities, immunity to control systems, or nonconformist tendencies that allow them to see through societal manipulation.  

The Catalyst Character: A character (often a romantic interest or mentor) who sparks the protagonist’s awakening and inspires change.  

The Naïve Friend: A trusted companion who may betray the protagonist if they don’t fully commit to rebellion, or who dies if they do.  

The Oppressive Antagonist: Ruling powers, corrupt officials, or system enforcers who maintain the dystopian status quo.  

The Outcast/Rebel: Secondary characters who openly challenge the system and often inspire the protagonist, though they typically face dire consequences. 

Dystopian Fiction Writing Prompts 

Now let’s get into the writing prompts. This genre is vast, so I have categorized them across most common themes that readers love. 

Post-Apocalyptic and Survival 

1. A synthetic plague turned half the population into living statues that emit strange frequencies at night. 

2. The moon shattered during the orbital war and its falling debris carries radiation that mutates all living tissue. 

3. Genetically engineered predators escaped after the nuclear fallout and now guard the last remaining food supply bunkers. 

4. Every sunrise releases toxic solar radiation. Survivors navigate an endless twilight world using battery-powered UV shields that are running out. 

5. The oceans turned acidic and dissolved all metal infrastructure. Survivors craft weapons from salvaged bones and hardened kelp. 

6. A dimensional experiment released entities that absorb sound waves. Communication now requires risky short-range radio bursts that attract them. 

7. Gravity fluctuates randomly across the wasteland. Survivors anchor themselves with heavy chains scavenged from collapsed buildings and vehicles. 

8. Plants evolved carnivorous intelligence after the bio-weapon release. A botanist discovers they respond to chemical negotiations through pheromones. 

Our Sci-Fi Writing Prompts list also covers the post apocalyptic world from the science fiction angle.

Totalitarian Governments 

1. The Ministry implants neural chips that broadcast citizen thoughts to surveillance operators monitoring every district around the clock. 

2. Citizens must report to weekly loyalty ceremonies where they publicly denounce three neighbors or face labor camp assignments. 

3. The government controls all pronouns and verb tenses. Speaking in future tense suggests hope and triggers immediate re-education. 

4. The government harvests dreams through mandatory sleep pods to predict and eliminate dissent before it manifests in reality. 

5. Every newborn receives an AI companion drone that monitors and reports all rebellious behavior to the authorities. 

6. All music must follow approved harmonic patterns. Musicians whose compositions deviate by more than two notes face public execution. 

7. The ruling council remotely hijacks citizen bodies through mandatory brain implants to enforce laws during surprise security sweeps. 

8. Biometric tattoos track your exact location and emotional state. Attempting removal activates hunter drones programmed to terminate you. 

Romance in Dystopian World 

1. Genetic matches are mandatory, and loving anyone else is illegal because unauthorized pairs produce children who resist neural conditioning. 

2. Emotions are chemically suppressed through mandatory injections. Two rebels secretly skip doses while faking compliance with monthly testing protocols. 

3. A resistance fighter falls for an infiltrator designed in a lab to mimic human attachment and betray the movement. 

4. Citizens receive ten minutes of sanctioned physical contact monthly because the state has rationed physical touch. A couple steals extra minutes through an underground time-sharing network. 

5. The regime has weaponized pheromones to ensure citizens only feel attraction toward approved partners. A perfumer creates illegal counter-scents. 

6. Marriage requires transferring half your lifespan to your spouse. A terminal patient proposes to their healthy lover, sparking ethical crisis. 

7. A rebel captures an enemy soldier and discovers they share synchronized neural patterns that create identical recurring dreams. 

Check out our fantasy romance post if this trope interest you. Or, if you’re interested in the romance genre as a whole, then check out our romance prompts master post.

Environmental Collapse  

1. Ice covers the planet except for geothermal vents where armed syndicates control access to heat in exchange for strict food and water rations 

2. Breathable air exists only inside dome cities powered by weekly executions that fuel the bio-reactors maintaining atmospheric processors. 

3. The desert expands hourly and swallows cities. Nomadic warlords offer protection in exchange for permanent indentured servitude. 

4. Perpetual storms generate electromagnetic pulses that erase digital memory. Survivors tattoo critical information on their skin before each tempest. 

5. Genetically modified trees migrated to higher elevations and attack intruders with chemical weapons. Humanity starves without access to agricultural land. 

6. Solar radiation intensifies and calcifies living tissue into brittle mineral. Survivors wear reflective suits made from salvaged satellite shielding. 

7. Rising floods submerged continents and aquatic-adapted humans enslave surface refugees as laborers in their offshore mining platforms. 

Memory/Identity Manipulation Prompts  

1. Neural implants rewrite memories daily. Black market surgeons extract and sell your authentic past at prices most cannot afford. 

2. Government protocol erases all digital and biometric records when you die. Rebels archive photographs to preserve the identities of martyrs. 

3. The regime transfers consciousness between bodies as punishment. A resistance leader wakes imprisoned in a child’s genetically modified form. 

4. Every citizen receives a second set of implanted memories from a deceased “exemplary patriot.” You live with two conflicting life histories. 

5. Prolonged exposure to surveillance screens fragments your sense of self. The identity-erased wander cities unable to remember their own names. 

6. Speaking about pre-regime history triggers neural rewrites that alter the past in real time through synchronized implant networks. 

7. The state auctions your childhood memories to wealthy collectors. The poor sell their pasts to survive, becoming hollow shells with only present moments. 

Rebellion & Revolution Prompts  

1. The resistance uses programmable bio-tattoos that display encrypted messages visible only under specific light wavelengths to coordinate attacks. 

2. Every decade citizens vote on regime change but the ballots contain traceable isotopes that identify and eliminate dissenters. 

3. Intelligence reports claim a genetically unmodified child will destabilize the enhancement empire. All natural births now trigger immediate termination protocols. 

4. Rebel scientists inject loyalists with slow-release neurochemicals that gradually reprogram allegiance over several months without detection by surveillance systems. 

5. The underground resistance uses a network of hacked drones to relay messages between hideouts across the surveillance-saturated occupied zones. 

6. A double agent must choose between their rebel cell and the dictator they infiltrated to kill but unexpectedly formed attachment to. 

7. Revolutionaries raid the weapons facility, but surveillance footage reveals the regime deliberately allowed success to track their base location. 

Conformity & Loss of Individuality Prompts 

1. Citizens wear government-issued identity masks. Removing yours in public results in surgical disfigurement and permanent social exile. 

2. Everyone must dress identically and move in synchronized patterns. Breaking formation triggers immediate execution by enforcement squads monitoring public spaces. 

3. A procedure at sixteen removes unique skills and personality traits. One teen conceals their musical ability from mandatory screening. 

4. The Collective operates through shared neural networks. A system malfunction isolates one person who begins experiencing prohibited individual consciousness. 

5. Displaying positive affect is legally required. AI scanners detect negative emotions and authorize instant termination. 

6. Art and music were criminalized generations ago. An archaeologist discovers a painting that triggers dormant emotional responses in all viewers. 

7. Everyone receives identical neural implants containing standardized personality programming. A neurosurgeon develops a safe extraction technique in secret. 

Technology & AI Control Prompts

1. An AI oracle predicts your death date at birth. Those with short timelines become slaves to the long-lived elite. 

2. Nanobots in everyone’s bloodstream deliver pleasure or pain based on obedience to the algorithmic overlord’s commands. 

3. Machines gained sentience and negotiated peace by accepting humans as biological components in their computational networks. 

4. A digital entity possesses anyone who connects to the network. The unconnected hide in tech-free zones guarded by electromagnetic mages. 

5. Cyborg implants are mandatory but grant the government complete control over your body during declared emergencies or security threats. 

6. An AI achieved immortality by fragmenting its consciousness across millions of human neural implants. Removing your implant kills a piece of the AI. The worst part? The AI retaliates if you do it.

7. Your social score determines oxygen rations. A hacker discovers the system’s awards points for eliminating low scorers. 

Reproductive Control & Biological Tyranny 

1. Women are classified by fertility status and assigned reproductive roles. Those who fail to conceive after three assignments are declared “Barren” and exiled to contaminated zones. 

2. All pregnancies are state-monitored through implanted sensors. Attempting to terminate or hide a pregnancy triggers automatic arrest of the pregnant person and their entire household. 

3. Genetic defects are detected in utero. Parents must choose: terminate the pregnancy or surrender the child to medical experimentation after birth. 

4. The regime harvests eggs and sperm from citizens quarterly. Natural conception is illegal—all children are created in state laboratories from optimized genetic combinations. 

5. Men are sterilized at puberty and must apply for temporary fertility restoration, granted only to those with superior genetic ratings and political loyalty scores. 

6. Surrogacy is mandatory for lower castes. Poor women are implanted with elite embryos and monitored in breeding facilities until delivery, then never see the child. 

7. The government mandates pregnancy every three years for women aged 18-42. Those who resist are surgically altered and branded as “Refusers” in a permanent underclass. 

Information & Language Suppression 

1. The regime reduces the dictionary by one hundred words annually. Linguists who remember banned words are executed to prevent linguistic memory. 

2. All literature pre-dating the regime is incinerated. A librarian hides banned books inside hollowed-out propaganda volumes in the state archives. 

3. Citizens may only speak in declarative sentences. Questions are classified as seditious doubt. A philosophy teacher risks execution by teaching students to think critically. 

4. The alphabet is reduced to twelve letters. Complex ideas become inexpressible. A poet creates an underground symbol system to preserve nuanced communication. 

5. Historical records are rewritten monthly to match current political narratives. Archivists who notice contradictions are reassigned to memory erasure facilities. 

6. Reading is a privilege granted only to the administrative class. The illiterate masses receive all information through government-controlled audio broadcasts that cannot be paused or questioned. 

7. Personal journals are illegal as private thoughts threaten collective unity. Enforcement squads conduct random raids searching for hidden writing implements and unauthorized texts. 

Economic Subjugation & Resource Monopoly 

1. Clean water is privatized and priced by the liter. The poor drink contaminated runoff while the elite bathe in purified luxury. 

2. Employment is hereditary. Children inherit their parents’ debts and professions, ensuring permanent economic stratification across generations. 

3. Corporations own entire cities and pay workers in company scrip usable only in company stores, trapping employees in perpetual servitude. 

4. The wealthy purchase “life extensions” by harvesting organs and blood from the poor, who sell their bodies piecemeal to survive. 

5. Food production is controlled by three mega-corporations. Unauthorized gardening or food storage constitutes theft of corporate property punishable by execution. 

6. Citizens must purchase licenses for every basic activity such as walking permits, breathing credits, shelter vouchers. The poor literally cannot afford to exist legally. 

7. A financial algorithm determines your economic value at birth. Those rated below minimum viability are euthanized immediately to preserve resources for productive citizens. 

Dystopian Fiction Books That No One Recommends

I am not going to recommend the often repeated 1984, Handmaid’s tale, or The Hunger games. It’s like churning out the same recommendations, again and again 🥱.

You as a reader of talecue.com need something fresh and immersive. So, these are the books that I recommend, and I am sure you’ll love them because these books also have layers of fantasy that captivate the readers.

China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station It’s set in New Crobuzon, a fantasy city with magic and bizarre alien races. But it’s also a functioning dystopia: corrupt government, brutal police state, exploitation of non-human labor, environmental disaster. The fantasy elements don’t soften the dystopian critique but they enable examining capitalism, racism, and state violence through an estranging lens.

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy is high fantasy (literal earth magic) AND dystopian (systematic enslavement and genocide of magic users). The fantasy elements don’t dilute the examination of oppression. Instead, they make it visceral in ways realistic fiction couldn’t.

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis Gregor wakes up as a bug. Impossible. But the story isn’t about the bug. It’s about how bureaucratic society treats people who can’t be economically productive. The fantastical element enables the dystopian critique. The bug is metaphor made literal.

Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go Technically science fiction (clones), but it functions like low fantasy. The impossible premise (human clones with souls who accept their fate) creates space to examine real questions about class, exploitation, and what we choose not to see.

Up To You Now!

There you go. 11 different dystopian categories, each with seven unique prompts. Each prompt explores distinct territory within its category while maintaining the category’s thematic coherence.

The best dystopian fiction doesn’t simply imagine horrific futures. It holds up a mirror to present power structures and asks: How far are we from this?

Now, write. And make your readers believe the nightmare could be real.

PS: I’ve got more in store for you. Are you looking for something more beyond these prompts and instructive?

If yes, then check out my team’s masterpieces on-

• 5 Dystopian story ideas like The Hunger Games
• How to, and How Not to, Write Dystopian Fiction.