With life on hold, I have had endless hours to catch up on my To Be Read pile. Quite a few of the Fantasy YA novels are about dystopian societies. As I read and listened to the daily news, a few things came to mind about story building a dystopian novel. 1. Dystopian novels often minimize or ignore the range of responses from people. As I watch the arguments over quarantine, masks, and social distancing play out, it is obvious there are more than two sides to the characters dealing with the overall story problem. There are bands of resistance that want different things. 2. I am not certain that the level of dread and panic is presented enough in books. There is a lemming effect too, where people herd and move in different directions as a pod. How do your characters deal with their panic? What soothes them? What traumatizes them? 3. Stakes are crucial to every story, but should be the highest alert level in a dystopian thriller. 4. There are shades of gray. Even well-meaning b...