Scythe

Use these activities to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.  

Write Your Own Dystopian Story 

Dystopian stories like Scythe often identify an issue in the world and imagine a future in which this issue has spiraled out of control. Follow the below steps to brainstorm current issues, connect them to dystopian traits, and proceed through the writing process to create an outline for your own short dystopian tale. 

• Brainstorm current issues using an idea web, a T-chart, a list, or some other graphic organizer.
• Once you have a list of issues, add to your brainstorm what the world might be like if those issues went to the extreme.
• Refresh yourself on the dystopian elements that were covered at the beginning of this one-pager from ReadWriteThink that you might include in your story.
• Take time to consider plot arc, and outline your plot in order to move from a brainstorm to a story outline.

Teaching Suggestion: This activity can last for a little as one or two classes, but can also be expanded in order to go through the entire writing process. Consider providing a model for your students. For example, model a brainstorm web that includes the following issues: 

• climate change
• surveillance through social media
• societal pressure around beauty and body image

Then you can model brainstorming a future in which several of those issues get out of control. For example: 

• climate change
• a world where coastal cities are flooded
• a world where there are constant extreme weather events like tornados and hurricanes

• surveillance through social media
• similar to China’s social credit score, a world in which people are rewarded with opportunity for following social norms like making purchases and getting married, and punished for breaking social norms

• As an extension activity, consider the following: 
• Have students include one of the thematic motifs from Scythe in their story.
• Have students draw a scene from their story or complete this assignment as a graphic novel.
• Students can adapt their stories into short skits to be performed in front of the class.

Paired Text Extension:

Students could find their own nonfiction text, such as a news or journal article, that examines the issue they wrote about. They could then write about, present orally, or make a visual piece such as a poster about the connections between their story and the article they found.