On Writing Politics

So, I’m working on multiple dystopian fiction pieces right now. And one of the things I struggle with is political worldbuilding. I’m not the only one. Looking around Reddit and the writing community online, I’ve found that a lot of writers are kind of terrified of political worldbuilding. One camp, understandably, finds it to be a dry and tedious chore. The other camp’s scared because…well, if you mess it up, there’s a chance you’re gonna end up being made fun of on BookTok.

That’s the worst case scenario and one I’m low-key terrified of as well.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. When done right, politics can be an absolute gold mine for your story.

When I was setting up the political environment in my dystopian manuscript, I realized something: the best political conflicts aren’t about good versus evil. They’re about competing narrative, clashing visions, and the impossible choices characters have to make when power is on the line.

And it’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel here. Politics has been done in fiction before. Think The Hunger Games,  A Song of Ice and Fire, Divergent, Six of Crows, as well as masterpieces like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale. Politics in fiction works across all genres: dystopian, fantasy, sci-fi, historical—heck, it could even work in romances like in Red, White and Royal Blue, though it’s definitely not center stage.

So, in this blog post, we’re taking a closer look at writing politics in fiction. We’ll explore topics like building political systems that feel real, look at developing urgent conflicts and how to make the stakes feel high and personal. Let’s go.

Understanding The Three Pillars of Power 

In any compelling story with politics, power isn’t a single thing. It’s not just “the king rules” or “the government controls everything.” Real power. the kind that creates tension and conflict—is a cocktail of three distinct types of influence.

When you mix these together, you create a living, breathing political ecosystem where conflict happens naturally. Characters aren’t just fighting for power—they’re fighting over which kind of power matters most.

1. Institutional Power

This is the formal stuff. The official structures. Kings, presidents, elected councils, written laws, courts, bureaucracies. It’s the power that comes with a title, a uniform, or a seat at the table.

Examples:

• The Capitol government in The Hunger Games (official authority over the Districts)
• The Iron Throne in A Song of Ice and Fire (whoever sits there rules Westeros… in theory)
• The Party in 1984 (total institutional control)
• Gilead’s theocracy in The Handmaid’s Tale (religious laws enforced by the state)
• The faction system in Divergent (official categorization that determines your entire life)

Institutional power is visible. It’s codified. Everyone knows who has it and what the rules are. But here’s the catch: institutional power is only as strong as people’s willingness to follow it.

2. Social Power

This is the informal stuff. The networks, alliances, and influence that exist outside official channels. Noble houses, religious orders, criminal syndicates, grassroots movements, social hierarchies. Social power operates in the shadows—or sometimes right out in the open, but without any official authority backing it.

Examples:

• The rebellion networks across Districts in The Hunger Games (no official power, but massive influence)
• The Great Houses in A Song of Ice and Fire (Stark, Lannister, Tyrell—they have social power independent of the throne)
• The Brotherhood in 1984 (underground resistance with no institutional backing)
• The Mayday resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale (secret network helping people escape)
• The Dregs in Six of Crows (Kaz’s crew has zero legal authority but runs half of Ketterdam anyway)

Social power is about who you know, who owes you, and who’s willing to follow you even when there’s no law saying they have to.

3. Personal Power

This is individual ability. Charisma, intelligence, wealth, magical power, physical strength, specialized skills. It’s the wildcard—the thing that lets someone punch above their weight class.

Examples:

• Katniss as the Mockingjay in The Hunger Games (her personal symbolism becomes more powerful than any title)
• Dragons and magic in A Song of Ice and Fire (Daenerys has personal power that terrifies institutional rulers)
• Kaz’s genius in Six of Crows (his ability to plan impossible heists makes him indispensable)

Personal power is unpredictable. It doesn’t follow rules. It can’t be transferred or inherited. And that’s what makes it dangerous.

Where the Magic Happens (When These Layers Collide)

The real intrigue starts when these three types of power clash.

Imagine a city ruled by an official council (institutional power). But there’s a secret guild of magic users manipulating things from the shadows (social power). And a brilliant inventor holds the key to the city’s energy source (personal power). Each group has a different claim to authority. The council passes laws. The guild bends them. And everyone’s trying to win over the inventor because without her, the whole system collapses.

Or look at Ketterdam in Six of Crows. You’ve got the Merchant Council (institutional), the criminal gangs (social), and Kaz Brekker himself (personal). The Council makes the laws. The gangs ignore them. And Kaz? He plays them all against each other because he’s smarter than everyone in the room.

When these layers interact—when institutional authority can’t enforce its will because social networks resist, or when personal power disrupts the entire system—that’s where the friction, the tension, and the intrigue begin.

The Three Questions That Generate Conflict

Great political fiction is built on three fundamental questions. These aren’t just abstract philosophical debates: every faction, every character, every political move in your story is ultimately fighting over one of these three things:

1. How did we get here? (The Past)
2. Where do we want to go? (The Future)
3. How do we get there? (The Path)

Each question is a different kind of weapon. And when your characters disagree on the answers, you get natural, compelling conflict that doesn’t feel forced.

1. The Past (How Did We Get Here?)

The past is a mix of memory and legitimacy. Who gets to tell the story of how things came to be? Whose version of history is “true?” And who gets to use that history as justification for power?

In 1984, the Party constantly rewrites history. They don’t just control the present, they control the past, too. 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” 

If you can change what people remember, you can justify anything. In A Song of Ice and Fire, succession crises are always about history. Robert’s Rebellion was justified because the Mad King was a tyrant. The Targaryens have a claim because they conquered Westeros three centuries ago. The Starks have legitimacy because they’ve ruled the North for thousands of years. Everyone’s using history as a weapon to say, “I deserve this power.”

Similarly, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead justifies its entire theocratic structure by claiming it’s returning to “biblical values.” They’re not inventing something new, they’re saying, “This is how it was always supposed to be.”

When you’re writing politics, treat history as flexible: something that can be molded and reshaped to justify characters’ and institutions’ actions.

Tools for manipulating the past:

• Slander and rumors. If you can frame your rival as a liar now, their version of history becomes less compelling. Delegitimize the person, delegitimize their story.
• Controlling education. If you control what people learn in school—what myths, what histories, what heroes—you control the foundation of power. The Capitol teaches Districts that the Hunger Games are necessary because of the rebellion. Gilead teaches women that their oppression is holy.
• Declaring a “new” past. You can retroactively grant legitimacy. A prince declares a commoner noble after the fact to fit the law. The Party in 1984 doesn’t just rewrite history, they make it so the new version was always true.

2. The Future (Where Do We Want to Go?)

Think of the future as the battleground for vision and ideology. What does a better world look like? Who decides? And what are we willing to sacrifice to get there?

In The Hunger Games, the Capitol’s vision is “peace through control.” Keep the Districts in line, maintain the status quo, and everyone stays safe (as long as they obey). The rebellion’s vision? Freedom. Self-determination. An end to the Games. Two completely different futures.

Similarly, in Divergent, the faction system’s entire ideology is “everyone has a place.” Society works when people fit into categories. But Tris represents the opposite vision: people can’t be categorized, and trying to force them into boxes destroys what makes them human.

Tools for selling a vision:

• Charisma and oratory. President Coin’s speeches in The Hunger Games are designed to inspire, to make people believe in a future worth fighting for. If you can make people see your vision, they’ll follow you through hell.
• Prophecy and symbolism. The Mockingjay isn’t just Katniss, it’s a symbol of rebellion. The idea that something is destined makes it easier to follow. Azor Ahai in A Song of Ice and Fire. If your vision feels fated, people are more willing to believe it’s inevitable.

2. The Path (How Do We Get There?)

This is where the most intense drama, the stakes within your story, exists. Here you’ll find characters strategizing or standing up to a system. And it’s also where you can add the most friction. Two characters can want the exact same future and still tear each other apart over how to get there.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss and Coin both want to defeat the Capitol. But Coin’s willing to use propaganda, manipulation, and civilian casualties to win. That disagreement—over method, not outcome—is what creates the final betrayal.

The Path is where alliances fracture, where friends become enemies, and where “we want the same thing” stops mattering because how we get there is just as important as the destination.

Avoid the “Good vs. Evil” Trap

The biggest mistake you can make in political fiction is reducing everything to “the good guys versus the bad guys.” Real politics doesn’t work that way. It’s messy, complicated and a web of narratives (shoutout to the story A Web of Lies for this phrase idea lol). And when you flatten it into heroes versus villains, your story loses tension, believability, and nuance.

Here’s the problem: if one side is clearly, cartoonishly evil, readers will ask the most damaging question possible—why does anyone support them? And if you don’t have a good answer, your entire political system falls apart.

Why This Kills Political Fiction

Politics is a complex network of compelling narratives, ideas, and relationships. People don’t just follow leaders because they’re evil or good. They follow them because of loyalty, fear, obligation, survival, ideology, or because they genuinely believe that the leader is doing the right thing.

Take The Hunger Games as an example again. If the Capitol were purely, mustache-twirlingly evil with no justification, no one would work for them. But the Capitol doesn’t see itself as evil. It sees the Games as necessary, a reminder and a way to prevent another war. The people in the Capitol aren’t monsters—they’re desensitized. They’ve been taught that the Districts are dangerous, that the Games keep everyone safe, and that this is just how the world works.

That’s what makes it terrifying. Because they believe it.

When every side believes they’re right, the tension feels real. Because that’s how actual conflicts work.

Give Every Faction Valid Motivations

No one is the villain of their own story. Everyone believes they’re doing what’s necessary for their people, for their family, for their vision of a better world. Even Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire isn’t just “evil.” She’s a mother protecting her children in a world that would destroy them if she showed weakness. She’s a woman in a patriarchal society who’s learned that ruthlessness is the only way to survive. Are her methods horrific? Yes. But she’s not doing it for fun. She’s doing it because she believes it’s the only way to keep her family alive.

In Divergent, the Erudite faction isn’t just power-hungry. They genuinely believe that knowledge and logic will save humanity from another war. They think the faction system is broken, and they’’e the only ones smart enough to fix it. Their methods are brutal, but their motivation makes sense.

When you give every faction in your book a reason to believe they’re right, your politics stop feeling like a morality play and start feeling like real, high-stakes conflict.

Avoid Modern Bias

Here’s a trap a lot of writers fall into: they give their characters modern values and assume that’s enough to make them sympathetic. But if you’re writing a medieval-style fantasy or a historical setting, your characters probably wouldn’t be fighting for democracy, gender equality, or individual human rights. Those ideas didn’t exist yet—or if they did, they weren’t mainstream.

A Song of Ice and Fire works because characters don’t fight for modern ideals. They fight for their house, their honor, and their oaths. Ned Stark doesn’t want to reform Westeros into a democracy—he wants to serve his king honorably and protect his children. That’s it. And that’s what makes his story tragic, because honour isn’t enough.

Instead of forcing modern values into settings where they don’t fit, explore conflicts that are authentic to your world. Focus on:

• Duties and obligations (family loyalty, oaths, honor codes)
• Religious or divine order (what the gods demand, prophecies, sacred laws)
• Survival (protecting your people, securing resources, avoiding destruction)

A character in a fantasy world might seek justice not through legal reform, but by appealing to ancient customs. Not by demanding equal rights, but by invoking a blood debt. Not by starting a revolution, but by fulfilling a prophecy.

Make sure your conflicts fit your world. Because when the stakes feel authentic to the setting, readers believe them.

How to Make Your Story’s Politics Feel Personal for Readers

Here’s the deal: politics in fiction only works when it affects characters readers care about. You can build the most intricate political system in the world: institutions, power structures, ancient laws, competing ideologies but if your readers don’t care about the people caught in that system, none of it matters. Political worldbuilding without personal stakes is just a history textbook. And nobody reads those for fun.

Fun fact: This is the problem I ran into with the first draft of my manuscript. I’d written this amazing (in my opinion) prologue where I explained the world readers were stepping into. But the problem was that no one knew the stakes or the characters well enough to care. So, in my new, revised draft, I’ve fixed this issue and taken a more subtle, “show, don’t tell” reveal of the world.

The key is connecting the political to the personal. When a treaty negotiation forces your protagonist to choose between peace and justice, it’s compelling. When a character has to betray a friend to save their family, readers are hooked. When political maneuvering isn’t just about crowns and councils but about impossible choices that break people, that’s when politics becomes a page turner.

To keep your characters from becoming one-dimensional political puppets, you need to understand what’s actually driving them. Not just what they say they want, but what they’re hiding, what they’re afraid of, and what they’d sacrifice everything for. 

The Four Quadrant Matrix

For every major player in your political landscape, map out four things:

• Personal Ambitions: What do they want for themselves? This is the selfish stuff. Think power, wealth, recognition, revenge, safety and all that. What would this character pursue even if it had nothing to do with ideology or duty?
• Ideological Beliefs: What’s their vision for society? This is what they think the world should look like. What kind of future are they trying to build, and why do they believe it’s the right one?
• External Pressures: What forces are pushing them? This is everything outside their control. Maybe it’s a merchant guild threatening their family. Or, maybe it’s a religious order demanding obedience. Or, an economic collapse or war. These are the things that force characters to act even when they don’t want to.
• Hidden Agendas: What secrets are they keeping? This is the information gap. The thing they’re hiding from allies, enemies, or even themselves. Hidden agendas create dramatic irony and let you blindside readers with twists that still feel earned.

When you map these four quadrants for every major player, you get characters who feel real. They’re not just mouthpieces for factions. They’re people with competing desires, conflicting loyalties, and impossible choices.

Examples

For better understanding, let’s look at how this works with characters from the books we’ve been talking about.

1. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)

• Personal Ambitions: Protect Prim and survive. Get back to District 12 and live a quiet life.
• Ideological Beliefs: She doesn’t have a political ideology at the start. She’s not fighting for freedom or revolution—she’s reactive, not ideological. That’s what makes her such a reluctant hero.
• External Pressures: Used by both the Capitol (as a spectacle) and the rebellion (as propaganda). Everyone wants to control her.
• Hidden Agendas: She doesn’t actually want to be the Mockingjay. She doesn’t want to lead a revolution. She just wants her family safe. But she can’t say that out loud because it would destroy the rebellion’s morale.

This is why Katniss works. She’s trapped between what she wants (personal), what everyone expects from her (external), and what she’s hiding (that she’s not the hero they think she is). That tension drives the entire trilogy.

2. Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fair)

• Personal Ambitions: Earn respect. Prove his worth despite being dismissed and mocked his entire life.
• Ideological Beliefs: Believes in pragmatic governance. Thinks rulers should be competent, not just noble born. Values wit and intelligence over brute force.
• External Pressures: The Lannister name is both an asset and a burden. His family despises him, but he’s still tied to their legacy. He’s constantly navigating their expectations while trying to survive.
• Hidden Agendas: His loyalty to his family is conflicted. He wants to prove himself to them, but he also resents them. And eventually, that resentment boils over into betrayal.

Tyrion isn’t just “the smart Lannister.” He’s a person torn between wanting his family’s approval and knowing they’ll never give it to him. That internal conflict makes every political move he makes feel personal.

3. Kaz Brekker (Six of Crows)

• Personal Ambitions: Revenge on Pekka Rollins for destroying his life. Everything he does is ultimately about that.
• Ideological Beliefs: Survival of the fittest. Loyalty to his crew. The Barrel doesn’t have heroes—only people smart enough to stay alive.
• External Pressures: Criminal underworld politics, rival gangs, the Merchant Council—you name it. Everyone wants him dead or under their control.
• Hidden Agendas: His trauma and his vulnerability with Inej. The fact that he’s not as untouchable as he pretends to be.

Kaz’s entire character is built on this matrix. He’s ruthless (personal ambition), loyal to his crew (ideology), constantly navigating gang politics (external pressure), and hiding the fact that he’s deeply broken (hidden agenda). That’s what makes him compelling.

When you use this matrix, political maneuvering stops being a dry chess match. It becomes a heart pounding journey where every decision costs something, and every victory comes with a price.

The Iceberg Principle

One of the fastest ways to kill your political fiction is to stop the story dead so you can explain how your senate works for three pages. If you’re dumping three paragraphs of exposition about succession laws in the middle of a tense scene, you’ve lost your readers.

Political worldbuilding should work like seasoning in cooking. You need just enough to enhance the flavor without overpowering the dish. Too little, and the world feels flat. Too much, and it’s inedible. The goal is to make readers feel the weight of your political system without ever sitting them down for a lecture.

Why Three Pages of Senate Explanation Kills Your Story

This is something I learned while writing my own manuscript. Your readers don’t need to understand every detail of how your government works. They just need to understand how it affects the characters.

Think about it. In The Hunger Games, do you know exactly how the Capitol’s government is structured? Who’s on what council? How do laws get passed? Not really. And you don’t need to. What you do know is that the Capitol has absolute control over the Districts, that the Hunger Games are mandatory, and that defying the system gets you killed.

That’s all you need. Suzanne Collins doesn’t stop the story to explain the political hierarchy. She shows you the Reaping. She shows you tributes being taken from their families. She shows you Peacekeepers enforcing rules. You learn about the system through the story, not in spite of it.

That’s the Iceberg Principle.

Show the Tip, Let Readers Feel the Weight

The Iceberg Principle works like this: readers only see the tip of your worldbuilding, but they should feel the massive weight of what’s underneath. You don’t need to explain everything. You need to reveal just enough so that readers understand the stakes, the power dynamics, and the consequences of breaking the rules.

1. Reveal through events, not exposition

Instead of explaining succession laws in a prologue, show a character trapped by them. Maybe your protagonist can’t inherit the throne because they’re the secondborn, and that single rule shapes their entire arc. You don’t need to explain the law in detail—just show it in action and let readers figure it out. In A Song of Ice and Fire, you learn about succession through conflict. Joffrey’s legitimacy is questioned. Stannis believes he’s the rightful king. Renly makes a play for the throne even though he’s younger. You don’t get a history lesson—you get characters fighting over these rules, and you learn the system by watching them navigate it.

2. Use environmental storytelling

Show inequality without saying a word. The contrast between a brightly lit city center and a dim, crumbling outer quarter tells you everything about class divides. In The Hunger Games, the Capitol is vibrant, excessive, colorful. The Districts are gray, industrial, starving. You don’t need Katniss to explain the wealth gap—you see it.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the color-coded clothing tells you the entire social hierarchy at a glance: red for handmaids, blue for wives, and green for Marthas. You don’t need a chart. You just need to see them walking down the street.

3. Let politics flavor your dialogue

Politics should seep into how people talk, not just what they talk about. A shopkeeper grumbles about new tariffs. A soldier mutters about orders from the capital. A servant refuses to make eye contact with a noble because that’s the law. These tiny details build the world without stopping the story.

In 1984, Newspeak isn’t just a language, it’s a political tool. The way people speak shows you how the Party controls thought. You don’t need Winston to explain it. You hear it in conversations, and you get it.

4. Sprinkle, don’t dump

Drop political details throughout your story like breadcrumbs: a comment here, a law there. And show the consequence later. Let readers piece it together. They’re smarter than you think, and they’ll enjoy figuring it out more than they’d enjoy having it explained to them.

When you use the Iceberg Principle, your political world feels vast and real—but your story never stops moving.

Don’t Forget the Grassroots (Bottom-Up Politics)

Here’s a mistake a lot of writers make: they focus all their political attention on the people at the top: kings, presidents, and council leaders—the big players making the big decisions. And sure, those characters matter. But if only the tallest trees in the forest get your attention, your world will feel hollow.

Real political systems aren’t just top-down. They’re a constant push and pull between those in power and the people living under that power. If you want your world to feel alive—dynamic, unpredictable, real—you need to show grassroots politics. The people who aren’t in the halls of power but are trying to change things anyway. Because political change doesn’t just happen because a king decides it. It happens because enough ordinary people demand it.

Beyond Kings and Councils

The best political fiction shows layers of power. Not just the council chamber and the law, but the people who accept it and those pushing back against it. In The Hunger Games, you don’t just see President Snow and the Capitol government. You see the way District 13 organizes itself. You see how Peacekeepers enforce control at the local level. You see small acts of rebellion—the three-finger salute, the bread from District 11, the way people quietly resist even when they can’t openly fight.

Those grassroots moments matter. Because they show that power isn’t just imposed from the top—it’s negotiated every single day between those who rule and those who are ruled.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Mayday resistance isn’t a formal organization. It’s a network of people—drivers, Marthas, even some Commanders—who secretly help Handmaids escape. It operates in the cracks of Gilead’s system. And that underground resistance is what keeps hope alive, even when the government seems unbeatable.

Grassroots politics shows that power isn’t just about who sits on the throne. It’s about who the people are willing to follow, who they’re willing to fight for, and what happens when those in power stop listening.

Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up

The most dynamic political systems show the interplay between top-down decisions and bottom-up resistance. A ruling council passes a restrictive law. Local communities organize a protest. The council cracks down. The protest grows. Suddenly, what started as a policy decision becomes a full-blown crisis.

Side Note: This happens in my manuscript too btw. At least in the current version.

That back-and-forth—the way grassroots movements force those in power to respond, and the way those in power try to suppress or co-opt those movements—is where some of your best conflict lives.

In The Hunger Games, the Capitol tries to control the narrative by making Katniss and Peeta into star-crossed lovers. But the Districts take the Mockingjay symbol and turn it into something the Capitol can’t control. The rebellion starts at the bottom, not the top. And by the time the Capitol realizes what’s happening, it’s too late.

International Relations Matter

Don’t just look inward. Look outward as well. Your nations, political blocks, and city-states exist in a world with other nations, factions, and city-states. And those relationships—trade, diplomacy, alliances, rivalries—affect your characters’ lives in tangible ways. Treat nations like people: they have fear, ambitions, and also have long memories and old grudges.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, alliances are constantly shifting. Houses marry into each other for political advantage. The Starks and Tullys are bound by marriage. So are the Baratheons and Lannisters. These alliances aren’t just abstract—they shape who fights for whom, who betrays whom, and who survives.

And here’s the key: ground it in the everyday.

A trade dispute between nations doesn’t just affect diplomats. It affects the blacksmith who can’t get the iron he needs. It affects the farmer who can’t sell her grain. It affects the soldier who’s told to enforce a blockade and knows it’ll starve his own people.

When you show how international politics trickles down to ordinary lives, your world feels real. Because readers see that politics isn’t just something that happens in distant council chambers—it’s something that affects everyone, whether they want it to or not.

Add Cultural Layering to Your Story

I’ve talked about this in detail over my blog post on worldbuilding so if you’re interested, do check that out. If you want your political systems to feel believable, you need to understand this: politics doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

It grows out of culture: religion, economics, social hierarchies, philosophy, and history. All of these things are the soil your political systems are planted in. And if you don’t understand what’s feeding your politics, your world will feel shallow.

Think of culture as the foundation. It’s why people accept certain power structures and reject others. It’s why one society values individual freedom while another values collective duty. It’s why a law that makes perfect sense in one culture would be unthinkable in another. When you layer culture into your worldbuilding, you create depth. Because suddenly, political decisions are about values. And values are worth fighting for.

Culture as Foundation

Every political system is shaped by the culture it emerged from. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead’s entire structure is built on a twisted interpretation of Christianity. The commanders don’t just use religion as propaganda—they genuinely believe it justifies their actions. Fertility is sacred. Women’s bodies are vessels for God’s will. The Ceremony isn’t just horrifying—it’s holy to them. That’s what makes it so chilling. Politics and religion are inseparable.

When politics is rooted in culture, it feels inevitable. Not random or arbitrary. Like it grew naturally from the beliefs and fears of the people who built it.

Use Specific Cultural Elements

Here’s where it gets interesting: when cultural beliefs clash with political reality, you get organic conflict. If energy sources in your world are viewed as fragments of a god, then energy distribution can be reframed as a religious controversy. Who gets to control sacred power? Who decides how it’s used? Suddenly, your energy crisis is also a theological debate, and both sides believe God is on their side.

Similarly, if your society believes that leadership is divinely ordained, then a coup is blasphemy. The person staging the coup has to either reject that belief entirely or find a way to reframe their claim as divinely sanctioned. That’s why prophecies are so powerful in fantasy—they let characters challenge authority while still working within the cultural framework.

In 1984, the Party doesn’t just control resources, it controls language. Newspeak is designed to make rebellion literally unthinkable. If you don’t have the words to express dissent, you can’t even conceive of it. That’s culture as a political weapon.

Build Believable History Through Layers

If you want your politics to feel lived-in, you need to show how they evolved. Don’t just present your political system as it exists now. Show how it got that way. Layer your history so that every decision, every law, every power structure feels like a natural outgrowth of past events.

Here’s a simple framework: start with a foundational event, then layer on how society changed over time in response.

Example timeline (using Panem from The Hunger Games as a model):

• Year 0: The Dark Days rebellion. Districts rise up against the Capitol.
• Year 1: The Capitol crushes the rebellion and obliterates District 13 as a warning.
• Year 2: The Treaty of Treason is signed. The Hunger Games are established as annual punishment and reminder.
• Decades later: The Games have become normalized. The Capitol views them as entertainment. The Districts view them as unavoidable tragedy. New generations have only ever known this system.
• Present day: Katniss volunteers, and the system begins to crack.

When you build history this way, every political element feels earned. The Hunger Games are the direct result of a war, a punishment that became tradition, and a system that generations of people have lived under.

Show Generational Perspectives

One of the most powerful ways to show cultural layering is through age. Older characters remember how things used to be. They lived through the changes. They have context. Younger characters only know the current system—they take it for granted, or they question it in ways their elders never would.

In The Hunger Games, Haymitch remembers the rebellion more clearly than Katniss does. He’s cynical because he’s seen what happens to people who resist. Katniss is younger, less jaded, and that’s part of why she becomes the spark. She doesn’t have the same defeated mindset.

When you show how different generations view the same political system, you add texture. Because politics isn’t static. It’s constantly being reinterpreted, challenged, and reshaped by the people living under it.

Keep the Landscape Shifting (Revolutions and Domino Effects)

Okay, so we all know that nothing stays the same forever. We see this in real life and your book should reflect this fact too. No matter how stable your system looks, no matter how entrenched the power structures are, something is always pushing for change. And if you want to keep your readers invested, you need to show that.

Static political systems are boring. If the status quo never shifts, if the same people stay in power with no real threat, there’s no tension. No stakes. No reason to care.

But when the landscape shifts—when a small change cascades into something massive, when a long-simmering conflict finally boils over, when a single event shatters the entire system—that’s when your story gets exciting.

Three Ways Politics Evolves

There are three main ways political systems change, and each one creates a different kind of tension.

1. Slow Burn

This is when sentiment builds gradually. Resentment simmers. People quietly organize. And then, one day, it boils over into protest, rebellion, or revolution.

The key to a slow burn is foreshadowing. You plant seeds early. A character grumbles about taxes. A shopkeeper complains about new laws. A protest gets violently suppressed. These moments feel small at first, but they build. And when the explosion finally comes, it feels inevitable.

The Hunger Games trilogy is a perfect example. The rebellion doesn’t start in the first book—it builds across all three. Katniss’s defiance at the end of the first Games is a spark. District 11’s uprising in Catching Fire is the fire spreading. By Mockingjay, the entire system is burning. And it works because Suzanne Collins spent two books showing us why people were ready to fight.

2. Sudden Shock

This is when a single event changes everything overnight. A foreign power invents technology that nullifies your world’s primary power source. A beloved leader is assassinated. A secret is exposed that shatters public trust. A natural disaster forces mass migration. One moment, the system is stable. The next, it’s absolute anarchy.

Examples:

• The Hunger Games: Katniss and Peeta’s berry stunt. One decision. Two teenagers refusing to kill each other. And suddenly, the Capitol looks weak. That single moment shifts the entire power dynamic.
• Game of Thrones: Ned Stark’s execution. Nobody expected it. And once it happened, the entire political landscape changed. The Starks went to war. The Lannisters cemented their brutality. Alliances fractured. One beheading, and Westeros was never the same.
• Game of Thrones (again): The Red Wedding. Robb Stark’s rebellion ends in a single night. The North’s hope is slaughtered. And the political calculus shifts again.

Sudden shocks work because they create urgency. Characters can’t plan around them. They have to react, adapt, and survive. And readers are glued to the page because they have no idea what happens next.

3. Domino Effect

This is when one small change triggers a chain reaction. A trade dispute leads to a shortage. The shortage sparks innovation. The innovation threatens a monopoly. The monopoly retaliates. And suddenly, what started as an economic disagreement has become a full-scale conflict.

The domino effect is slower than a sudden shock but faster than a slow burn. It’s about interconnection—showing how one thing affects another, and how systems are more fragile than they look.

Each event is a consequence of the one before it. And by the time you get to the end, you can trace the entire chain back to that first domino falling.

Balance Stability and Change

To effectively incorporate politics in your story, you need both stability and change. If everything is constantly shifting, readers will get exhausted. They won’t know what to hold onto. But if nothing ever changes, they’ll get bored.

Think of it like a river. The riverbed is stable—it provides a consistent channel for the story. But the water is always moving. Sometimes it flows gently. Sometimes it floods. Sometimes it carves new paths. The bed and the water work together to create a dynamic system.

In 1984, the Party is the riverbed. It’s stable, oppressive, seemingly eternal. But Winston is the water—he pushes against it, tries to carve a new path, and eventually gets crushed. The tension comes from the attempt to change a system that refuses to change.

Use Coups and Revolutions Strategically

When you finally do blow up the system, make it count.

• Coups are swift and secretive. A small group of insiders seizes power, usually through violence or political maneuvering. Coups work best when they’re surprising—readers didn’t see it coming, but in hindsight, the pieces were all there.
• Revolutions are messy and rarely turn out as expected. They involve mass movements, popular uprisings, and chaos. The people who start revolutions are rarely the ones who end up in power. And the new system is often just as flawed as the old one.

The Hunger Games shows both. Coin’s takeover is essentially a coup—she’s positioning herself to replace Snow, not to dismantle the power structure. And Katniss realizes too late that Coin is just another authoritarian leader. The revolution succeeds in toppling the Capitol, but it doesn’t create the utopia people hoped for. That’s realistic. Revolutions are bloody, complicated, and full of betrayal.

When you show the messy reality of political change—the compromises, the unintended consequences, the fact that new regimes can be just as brutal as the old ones—your world feels real. Because that’s how power actually works.

Maintain Logic and Consistency in Your World

Your political intrigue needs to be as tightly logical as a mystery novel. Seriously, if you establish rules for how power works in your world, you need to follow them. If characters act in ways that contradict their established motivations, readers will notice. If your political system bends and breaks whenever it’s convenient for the plot, your world loses credibility.

Think of it this way: mystery readers expect the clues to add up. They expect the detective to follow logic. They expect the solution to make sense based on what they’ve been shown. 

Politics in fiction works the same way. Your readers are paying attention. They’re tracking who has power, how that power works, and what the rules are. And if you break your own rules just because it’s easier for the plot, they’ll feel cheated.

Consistency isn’t about being rigid. It’s about making your characters work within the constraints you’ve created. Because when victories are earned within a logical system, they feel satisfying. When they come out of nowhere because you bent the rules, they feel cheap.

Politics Must Be as Logical as a Mystery

Every political move your characters make should be consistent with:

1. Their established motivations
2. The rules of your world
3. The constraints of their position

If a character suddenly acts out of character for no reason, readers will call bullshit. If a law that’s been absolute for the entire book suddenly doesn’t matter because it’s inconvenient, readers will feel manipulated.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, trial by combat is an established part of Westerosi law. When Tyrion demands it, he’s not making something up—he’s using a real legal mechanism. And the tension comes from the fact that he has to find a champion willing to fight for him, knowing that if his champion loses, he dies. The system is logical, consistent, and unforgiving. That’s what makes it compelling.

If You Establish a Rule, Don’t Break It

Here’s a test: if you’ve told your readers that a council needs a unanimous vote to pass a law, don’t let them pass a law without one just because it’s convenient for your plot. Instead, make your characters work within that constraint. Maybe they:

• Bribe or blackmail a council member to get their vote
• Assassinate a dissenting member and replace them with someone loyal
• Find a loophole in the law that lets them bypass the vote entirely
• Stage a coup and dissolve the council

All of these options are more interesting than just ignoring the rule you established. Because now your characters are problem solving. They’re using their intelligence, their resources, and their ruthlessness to achieve their goals within the system’s constraints. That’s what makes it compelling.

Track Your System (Or You’ll Lose Track of It)

Here’s a practical tip to make sure you’re consistent. Create a document that tracks your political system. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just a simple reference sheet that lists:

• Who holds power (and what kind—institutional, social, personal)
• What the rules are (laws, customs, unspoken agreements)
• What the hard limits are (things that cannot be done without massive consequences)
• Who owes whom (debts, alliances, betrayals)

Then, as you write, test your plot points against those rules. If a character wants to do something, ask yourself: Can they, according to the system I’ve built? If not, how do they get around the rule? What does it cost them?

This doesn’t mean you can’t have political upheaval or rule breaking. It just means that when rules are broken, it should be a big deal. It should have consequences.

In the A Song of Ice and Fire series, guest rights are sacred. When the Freys and Boltons violate it at the Red Wedding, it’s not just murder, it’s a cultural and religious violation that marks them as dishonorable forever. The rule was established. The violation was intentional. And the consequences reverberate through the rest of the series.

When you track your system and stay consistent, your world feels solid. Readers trust that the rules matter. And when rules matter, stakes matter. And when stakes matter, readers care.

Don’t Forget About the Human Story

Now, we’ve talked about how you can add politics in your story and make it real. But let’s be real: a story just isn’t about politics. Even in 1984, we’re following Winston Smith. It’s your characters that truly allow readers to invest in and follow the plot.

At the end of the day, it’s the characters and their stories .The systems, the power structures, the factions, the laws—all of that is just the framework. What makes politics in fiction compelling isn’t the complexity of your government or the intricacy of your alliances. It’s what those systems do to the people caught inside them.

Readers don’t care about your senate’s voting procedures. They care about the character who has to betray a friend to secure a vote. Politics works when it forces impossible choices. When it puts characters in situations where every option costs something. When it makes them sacrifice their happiness, their integrity, or the people they love in order to survive.

That’s when readers care. That’s when they can’t put the book down.

Connect Politics to Personal Consequences

Every political decision in your story should have a human cost. In The Hunger Games, Katniss becomes the Mockingjay—a political symbol for the rebellion. And that role destroys her. She’s used as propaganda. She loses Peeta. She watches her sister die. She ends the war by assassinating Coin instead of Snow. The politics aren’t abstract—they rip her life apart. And that’s why we care.

When you connect politics to personal consequences—when characters have to lose something that matters in order to gain power, or when they have to sacrifice the people they love to achieve their goals—that’s when political fiction becomes emotionally devastating. And that’s when readers remember it.

Mix Your Tools (And Let Heroes Fight Each Other)

The best political fiction uses all the tools available.

• Oratory. President Coin’s speeches in The Hunger Games. The way she manipulates language and emotion to control the rebellion.
• Resource control. The Capitol’s monopoly on food. Jurda parem in Six of Crows—the drug that makes Grisha more powerful and makes them slaves.
• Legal manipulation. Trials in Game of Thrones. Thoughtcrimes in 1984. The way Gilead uses biblical law to justify atrocities in The Handmaid’s Tale.
• Espionage and assassination. Game of Thrones is full of this. Littlefinger manipulating everyone from the shadows. Varys playing the long game. The Faceless Men. Six of Crows is literally a heist built on espionage.

But here’s the key: don’t just pit villains against heroes. Let heroes fight each other. Katniss versus Coin. Both want to defeat the Capitol. Both believe they’re doing the right thing. But their methods are incompatible, and that conflict is more interesting than Katniss versus Snow ever was. Of course, you don’t have to do this, but it does break the monotony a bit and adds layers to your characters.

Keep Stakes Personal

If you build a political system rooted in culture, show the interplay between institutional, social, and personal power, let the landscape shift and force your characters to adapt, your readers won’t have time to be bored.

They’ll be too busy turning pages. The best political fiction works because it’s not really about politics. It’s about people trying to survive, trying to hold onto their humanity, and making impossible choices in systems designed to break them. And that’s what makes for a good story—and readers will remember that.

Don’t Shy Away from Politics in Your Book 

And that’s all. This one was a long read and I’ll be honest; I could go on about incorporating politics in fiction. If anything, I think it’s a sign of the times we’re in (this is an easter egg by the way). But I think adding politics just makes your story more realistic. Like even children’s books have politics.

Even if it’s something as simple as the King asking a Knight he trusts a lot to look for a thief who’s stolen the crown jewels. Like, even the act of the King asking the Knight to carry out the King’s justice is political; the thief stealing the jewels is also an act of politics. 

Of course, you don’t have to be so deep. I don’t like thinking too much when I’m reading random stuff too. But like, it can be political if you think about it long enough. In the words of Philip DeFranco:

You may not f*** with politics but politics will surely f*** with you.

And that’s true. So, go out there and write the best romantasy or fantasy story you want to and don’t hesitate to add a bit of politics there to heighten the tension!