I need help with a story criticizing society

I'm thinking something about the truth is nonexisting or privacy is dead.
The thing is I need to implement it in a story, and I need help with what the story is going to be about.

 

The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together. The well water is very nice. The Truth, still suspicious, tested the water and found out it really was nice. So they got naked and bathed. But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.
The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well to get her clothes back. But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away with anger and contempt. Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared forever, hiding her shame. Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy...
Because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth.....
Jean-Léon Gérome

 

That's usually not how it works. You need to come up with the story yourself. What I would do, is think of some event or conflict that shows how bad or absurd society has become.

 

I have been sitting here for 7 hours, not coming up with a single damm thing, so I can't come up with it myself, I need help. pls

 

Thanks for the inspiration but I still need something the story could be about, any ideas?

 

you kind of need to do it by yourself. This subforum is for help with a plot that you've already developed by yourself on some level, not for writing whole new ones by committee.

 

Boy meets girl. Boy just wants to be friends, but girl wants more.

Will that be enough to get you started?

 

All I need is ideas like:

A boy that... something something... and then something with privacy
or
A poor boy in a big city that... something something... and then something with privacy

u know

 

He forgets to use Incognito mode. His girlfriend snoops and sees his browsing history. Or vice versa.

 

Usually the germ of a story is something that you've noticed or run across that fascinates you, or that keeps bugging you, enough that you want to tease it out and dig into it by writing.

None of us can do that for you. You're the one who's going to be spending a huge amount of time working on the story, and it needs to be something that holds a very personal appeal to you in some way.

You don't start by thinking in a very general way "I want to do a story that criticizes society."—there needs to be something there, something very specific, that irritates you about society. Only them do you have a personal enough connection to it, a specific enough idea, to write about. You can't write powerfully and deeply about something that somebody else thought of for you.

Another way to say it—if you want to write an activist story you need to actually be an activist, not just pretend to be. That kernel of raw emotion is the center from which the story must grow, it needs to be authentic. You can't do it from somebody else's idea. If you're trying to write an emotional story about an idea somebody else came up with that you don't have any strong emotions about, you're faking and it will show.

 

You're approaching it backwards. Start from something that really invokes powerful emotion or a great idea in you, and develop that into a story idea.

 

It's the future and clothes have become optional so everyone is naked and so the dick measuring is even worse than now. Wearing clothes to hide your penis is a radical new power strategy amongst men. Privacy had made a come back! And privates have gone away...

Edit: thought a funny weird little writing may help with inspiration.

 

There are plenty of free websites that are so-named "plot generators" that will do this for you, OP. You enter the keywords and it scrambles them up for you with a list it already has. It's the same principle used in the old days as writing on index cards and shuffling them on the table top. I find they generate ridiculous text but it is moderately amusing to read them.

 

I usually never get a theme before a plot but if you're interested in the idea of truth is nonexisting or privacy is dead maybe think about what those concepts mean to you personally.

Think about a genre - dystopian works well with ideas like these.
Think about the ages of your characters. Do you want someone young or old.
Think about how you want to enter the story - that privacy is slowly being erased and people are watching it slip through their fingers or they're in already.
Think of a place, a scenario and or a problem conflict.
For me one of the perfect scenarios for this is like Kafka - a trial. Being thrust into the public eye with no privacy, the truth unimportant to narratives or goals.

 

You've been sitting in one place for seven hours waiting for inspiration to arrive? Truthfully? No time out to play a video game or visit the refrigerator to see if anything new has appeared since the last time you checked? Just sitting searching for inspiration? Might be time to change tactics.

Go for a walk, look at the world, and think about how private your walk actually is: who might be videotaping your perambulation, what cameras are mounted at each intersection, who is watching you from third floor windows or cars with darkly tinted windows. That oughta start a nice little tale of paranoia.

 

Basically, you're looking for 1984, updated. See also Brave New World, and maybe From Carthage Then I Came by Douglas R. Mason.

In reality, just look around. In the age of the Internet, there is virtually no privacy -- as many a political candidate has found when something they wrote or posted 20 years ago suddenly surfaces right at a crucial moment during their campaign. Truth? In the U.S., the mainstream media have become worse than Cold War Pravda as one-sided propagandists for their preferred world view.

 

How about this: Everyone lives an isolated life, except for social media where each person tells all they think and feel about every issue which interests them. There is no privacy as all is exposed for the world to see. Everyone is subject to targeted content to persuade them to buy particular products and vote in a particular way. The system is stuffed full of lies and it's impossible to checkup on anything because the 'check the facts' sites are also full of lies. Election results can be arranged for those who pay the right tech firms. The MC realises this but his views are dismissed as fake news and he's blacklisted as a dangerous conspiracy theorist. He expects his endeavours to end with a big fight where he gets the girl, just like in all those action movies. But everyone dismisses what he says by claiming 'everybody lies' and 'don't take things too seriously'. No one cares that politicians and journalists lost interest in honesty and integrity years ago and all they want now is to entertain for public praise. Elections are a game show, manipulated by the media, where you vote for your favorite liar.

 

*ROTFL!*

 

I think you need to come up with your own ideas. No body can do that for you.

Anyway, I think you need to spend a lot more time developing your themes to deeper a level. Truth is dead is a really nihilistic theme and a sweeping judgement. 1984 can be interpreted as saying the media in totalitarian societies is often full of lies because of heavy government censorship. That's a better developed theme than what you've got. Think about the role privacy plays in real life.

 

I 100% Agree. Look out your window and think about what's wrong with the world in your opinion and write about that. Also, if you're gonna do that, don't shy away. No matter what you do or say, someone somewhere will be mad!