Tips for Writing Rebellion in Fiction

We’re all waiting for a revolution. A great many folks, even as you read this, are actively working towards their revolution, for better or worse. I think we’re drawn to stories of rebellion on a large scale for that reason. Whether you’re trying to survive mass social injustice on a daily basis, or you’re suffering under the yolk of a tyrannical boss at work, most of us want to rise up and strike back against that Thing that holds unfair and, too often, abusive power over us. 

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Fictional rebellions, whether they’re firmly grounded in our everyday world or occurring in a fantastical setting that never existed, are a very particular and powerful brand of escapism for that reason. Rebellions in fiction can be a deeply cathartic and visceral experience for a reader. They can be purely wish fulfillment fare. They can be all of these things.

I wrote an epic fantasy trilogy of novels centered around the rise of a nationwide rebellion. That rebellion begins with conscripted soldiers, but it gradually transforms into something much bigger, much more all-encompassing. It exposes every seemingly disparate thread of an oppressive and manipulative system that presents an outward face of utopia. 

I took a lot of inspiration from the HBO series The Wire, which examined a bureaucratic system and a society from multiple angles through very different characters from very different walks of life whose only connection was that they were all caught in various parts of that same system. That show studied a real American city that desperately needed a revolution.

Throughout the course of the series, that revolution never really comes. Because it was set in the real world. In my novels, the rebellion not only rises, it brings about great change. That’s part of what makes it fantasy. That’s not to say rebellions don’t or haven’t worked, of course. 

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However, I’m an American in 2023, and it feels very much like every system around me was set up to grind the lower 99% in its wheels and that the bureaucracy always wins. I think that’s why writing about a rebellion that has a chance was so important to me. I needed to escape into that world as much as I wanted readers to come along for the ride.

Over the course of three fairly thick novels, I learned a few things. I certainly didn’t become an expert on writing rebellion, or on revolutions in general, but I had to arrive at a few discoveries that, at least for myself, helped me reach the end of the story in a way that satisfied me. And if you can’t satisfy yourself as the author of the story, your shot at satisfying the reader seems kind of slim.

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Rebellions can be strange and unexpected things. As much as any military revolution is about mustering resources and gathering forces and winning popular support, it’s also about the individuals organizing and leading the charge. Those individuals, whoever they are and wherever they come from, are just people. Even if there is a shared enemy, there are not always shared goals or ideals among those people. 

Not everybody involved on the same side of a rebellion has the same idea about what should happen after the rebels win. That can and should be an important source of conflict and drama all on its own. Those internal conflicts have brought down more than a few historical and needed revolutions before they could be defeated by the oppressive system against which they were fighting.

Those personal relationships that exist at the heart of a rebellion, and the bonds and turmoil that spring from them, are as interesting and important to me as the flashy action and bloody bits of the story. Revolutions really are about people, and if you’re not exploring that part of the story it feels like an empty affair to me, however interesting the building of your world might be.

I love big fictional battles, but rebellions aren’t only fought and decided on battlefields, and they certainly aren’t ratified on a battlefield. There’s a lot more that can and should go on, at least for my money. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a rebellion story that’s about winning the big battle, or toppling the big boss. I love a good boss fight as much as anyone. I do feel at this point, with all the rebellion tales that have gone before, that we should be striving to look for a little more than that. 

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Systems built by people are complicated, with many facets, and military might is only one of them, however vital and important a tool of both oppression and resistance it may be. Oppressive systems utilize so many different methods of suppressing, manipulating, and maintaining the status quo, from propaganda and media czars to everyday law enforcement to legislative authority. Examining how all of that works, and how your rebels go about combating and dismantling those machines, grips me every bit as tightly as a well-drawn battle.

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself what your rebellion is about. You have to ask yourself what and who it’s all supposed to be for. If you’re going to write about rebellion, I don’t believe it should be simply a plot or story device. I think the story should spring from the throes of the revolution you choose, not the other way around. Your characters have to make choices. They can’t simply be reacting to circumstance. Gil Scott-Heron famously told us, “The revolution will not be televised.” 

Revolutionaries are not passive observers, and revolutions don’t happen by watching. There has to be that moment in which your characters choose to become rebels. We have to care why and how they make that choice.

If you don’t have that, you don’t have a rebellion worth giving a damn about.