I'm writing a dystopian story, and the world was created after a post-apocalyptic event (which is how a lot of dystopian worlds seem to be created). The problem is that some of the aspects mentioned are happening right now like the pandemic and rioting. If I publish this book, I'm afraid people will think I added those parts in because of what's happening now. I pride myself on developing a plot out of "thin air", and not based on elements in my life. I do, however, recognize that many authors write based on their own experiences, and their fictional works are still accepted and adored. And the idea of real-life events and characters similar to real people being a simple coincidence is coined in that phrase that accompanies most works of fiction. That being said, is this even something I should worry about then? Should I remove these elements if I don't want people thinking I was inspired by real-life events?
I wouldn't, personally, care so much about whether people thought the story drew inspiration from life. If you're going to submit it to an agent or editor to try to get it published, it may be more problematic that there are likely going to be lots of people submitting pandemic manuscripts in the next few years.
I would only be concerned if the 'real' events you mention have to do with particular people. If your fictional story has a character whom people might think is Ghislane Maxwell, or something like that. If it's just an event or some overall world situation, you'll be okay.
I wouldn't care all that much. My story involves a societal collapse and part of it is a plague sweeping through the lands, forcing closed borders and quarantines. I wrote that outline 9 years before Covid19; I don't intend to change much.
Reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wreck_of_the_Titan:_Or,_Futility#Similarities_to_the_Titanic
I'm in a similar situation with my WIP. I just finished the first draft in the middle of the pandemic, but I wrote the virus related stuff before there was a Covid-19. There's nothing to be done about it unless I scrap the entire project. I wouldn't worry about the coincidence at all if it weren't for what @Steerpike said. I don't want to be one of the thousands submitting stories involving a pandemic, and there will be thousands. Thankfully, it's not the focus of the story. It's just a past event. Still...
These days I have been meditating on the fact that while in fiction we look for a fair amount of "originality" within a story that also contains elements we can connect to, in real life, it is fairly easy to predict the dynamics of what will happen (given a certain situation) because most people think and act in surprisingly similar ways. This is true if we look at large contexts. (By "originality", I mean when we can't really predict what the characters will do or what will happen at all times within a story). How many conversations did you have with people where you reach the same conclusions or readily agree on what is important or what's to be done? We don't go all in disparate directions, but that is what makes literature interesting. Moreover, readers/audience often like to think the author knew it all along, because a story where an author was able to predict reality is a lot more fun than one where it was just a coincidence. What I mean with these considerations is that you shouldn't worry, unless you are referring to someone you know specifically and mentions something very personal and recognizable about them without their permission. Although I have to say that although I might include an episode of someone's life into a character, that character is defined by a million different things, including my experience, what I watched on TV, a post I read online, an image, a mood, a line of poetry, etc. It is hard for me to imagine someone could see themselves fully in a character just from what it is a detail. That is my take, anyway.
You do realise that if you happen to publish a book that has relevance to current events, that tends to mean bigger sales and a higher likelihood of your book being a hit, right? Contagion was the most streamed horror movie during the lockdown, as an example.
I personally don't think there's anything wrong with using real world/real life situations as inspiration, implied or direct, in fiction. Life can make for great art, after all, and the current state of the world is scary and unpredictable enough to translate to good fiction Reading history (in any subject -- military, sports, music, etc.) can be a really good way to jumpstart that in fact. In my current WIP, two of the chapters involve real life (long dead obviously) historical figures that I dropped into fictional worlds around them. Those can be fun to write because you already have established character traits and histories and then ask the "what if?" about them in a radically different situation/universe.
I think you'd almost have more problems if your near-term future was too divorced from current events. One thing that I think @Wreybies mentioned a while ago was how poorly "dated" science fiction has held up. Like Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't look at all like the world of 2001. Plus, pandemic themes have been around since probably the book of Exodus and the earliest riots I know of off the top of my head were the Nika Riots in 532 C.E. in Istanbul. Not saying there weren't earlier ones, of course, but neither of those themes screams "mining recent events" in and of themselves. Spoiler You could even argue that Elon Musk ripped his whole spiel off of D.D. Harriman and S.R. Hadden...
Sounds like me. Had I uttered that statement, it would have been in a conversation about how/why expecting or wanting Science Fiction to be predictive is the very definition of a faff. To paraphrase William Gibson, Science Fiction is never actually about the future. Ever. It's about the concerns and sentiments present in the writer's present timeline, wrapped in shiny mylar. Science Fiction from the Golden Age of the 50's and 60's is about the lives, concerns, sentiments, wishes, needs and wants of 1950's and 1960's people, not about us, though the stories may state that they are set in our present year. ETA: Or I was kvetching about near future Science Fiction that paints the idea that a setting like Coruscant from Star Wars is "just a couple of decades away!" I've been hearing that since I was a kid in the 1970's and no, it's not. Spoiler
I think you were complaining about space oddyssey 2001... saying it should have been like 3001 to be more realistic although busted did tell us that they'd been to the year 3000, not much had changed but they live under water... and your great great great grand daughter.. shes pretty fine Random aside when that first came out I complained to my then girl friend that four or five generations isn't enough to cover 1000 years... she dumped me saying i was always so pedantic (so naturally i said "not always..." )
Plagues and riots have happened throughout human history, that never was 'unique'. Just make the plague more severe, the riots worse(though the riots and protests are not related to the pandemic).
All my books have elements of what's happened in my life. It's not the events that are important. It's what the character does about them and how they react.