On Writing Revolutions: The Ultimate Guide for Writers

Fun fact: I finished reading Catching Fire, part of The Hunger Games trilogy, about a couple of weeks ago. And it got me thinking about writing revolutions a lot. In my manuscript, while there isn’t a revolution (yet), I’m trying to establish the natural conditions that might lead to one. 

Of course, I won’t glorify revolutions here. Both history and fiction has taught us that revolutions are messy, chaotic and very gruesome. But in fiction, we can at least experience it from the position of an observer and allow ourselves to get lost in the story.

However, as fascinating as revolutions are to read, bringing them to life on the page is surprisingly complex. Revolutions don’t happen because a single hero decides it’s time. They emerge from a tangled web of causes, interests, and tensions.

So, in this blog, let’s dive into what makes revolutions really tick, and how understanding these dynamics can help us craft truly compelling narratives.

The Main Causes of Revolution (in Fiction and IRL)

First thing’s first, before you start writing revolutions, you need to understand why revolutions happen in both fiction and reality. These conditions are specific, almost pattern-like in nature. They don’t have to be front and center in your story, they might not even be part of the main plot, but there are certain things you can add to the background, hinting at what might come next. This is a great point to consider when you’re worldbuilding.

• For more on worldbuilding, check out On Worldbuilding: A Comprehensive Guide.

So, without wasting any more time, let’s look at the five core building blocks that create the fertile ground for revolution.

1. Socioeconomic Instability

This is a huge one, and it’s often the bedrock upon which other revolutionary factors build. It’s not just about individuals struggling, but about communities feeling deprived, exploited, or like their fundamental needs and opportunities are inconsistent. This could affect regions, sectors of the economy, age groups (especially the young and unemployed), or ethnic groups.

But instability isn’t just about everyone getting poorer. Rapid economic shifts, even growth, can introduce huge instability and disruption. The Industrial Revolution, for instance, saw immense economic growth but also created widespread instability, disruption, forced migration, and undermined traditional communities. This era was fertile ground for revolutionary sentiment, challenging existing power structures. It’s also the sense that your way of life is being dramatically disrupted, that things are changing outside of your control, leaving you feeling insecure. This feeling can exist at both the elite and the population level.

Sometimes, this instability manifests in ways that directly challenge the regime’s power base. War or disease can introduce widespread instability. A state’s ability to collect taxes or rent might be hampered. Or perhaps new, socially mobile groups gain influence, making the traditional elite feel their wealth and power are threatened or could be taken away. The relationship between communities and those in power is changing, and the very foundations of that power can be eroded. Figuring out which groups are most loyal and what circumstances could shift that loyalty is key.

Interestingly, regimes sometimes try to insulate certain groups – like the military, nobles, or those in vital economic sectors – from this instability to maintain their loyalty. The Hunger Games offers a fictional example, with the Capital giving special privileges to Districts 1 and 2, which supply their military, creating a buffer zone. 

2. Alienation

Feeling alienated from your national community, its institutions—legal, social, cultural, political—is a potent force driving people to seek change outside the system. When you feel like you’re outside the system, you lose respect for it and feel motivated to change it, sometimes radically.

This applies to both the underprivileged and the privileged. Historically, colonial powers famously alienated the populations they governed, actively repressing them, which often fuelled independence movements. Revolutions frequently occur along ethnic, religious, regional, or class lines, driven by groups who feel their identity is being erased, they are severely disadvantaged, or simply excluded from the system. Their problems aren’t being addressed within the system, making revolution seem like the only answer. 

But it’s equally, if not more, important to consider when privileged factions feel alienated. These are the people with the resources, influence, and connections to truly kickstart a movement. Their alienation might stem from being excluded from the circles of power, despite past loyalty or perceived merit. Robert’s Rebellion in A Song of Ice and Fire, while sparked by injustice, also involved elite alienation, with figures like Tywin Lannister feeling spited by the Mad King.

Alienation doesn’t require brutal repression. It can be as subtle as cultural exclusion, a feeling that a group isn’t accommodated within the national identity, or that a region is economically neglected. These feelings of being ignored or cut out of the system are powerful. Alienation, especially when felt by both underprivileged and privileged groups simultaneously, can be the matchbox and the matchstick that sparks a revolution.

3. Elite Infighting

Revolutions don’t just spring out of nowhere; they require organization and resources. This is where elite infighting becomes crucial. Elites possess the wealth, influence, and connections to mobilize communities. They have the organizational capacity that is essential for a revolution to gain traction.

When elites within the existing regime turn on each other, it significantly weakens the system from within. Power struggles, ideological differences, disagreements over policy (economic, social, religious), or even just personal feuds can create cracks in the regime’s foundation. The Handmaid’s Tale, for example, shows how purges within the ruling class weaken the regime and can pave the way for external resistance and popular revolt.

Elite infighting can expose other instabilities and injustices, fostering alienation even within the ranks of the powerful. It creates opportunities for different factions to align with revolutionary interests.

4. International Support

No revolution happens in a vacuum, and international support can be a game-changer. Foreign powers can provide essential resources: funding, arms, supplies. Logistics are often more critical than a righteous cause; a well-supplied, organized force has a much better chance than a determined but starving one.

But why would other countries get involved? It’s rarely purely altruistic. International support is often a tool of disruption, aiming to isolate, destabilise, or undermine a hostile government by targeting its assets or capabilities. It can also be a tool of coercion, forcing a government into concessions, policy changes, or granting access to resources or trade. 

Essentially, it’s a form of pressure, backing someone who might offer a better deal. Finally, it can be a tool of regime change, aiming to install a more ideologically favourable ally. Germany’s decision to send Lenin back to Russia during World War One is a classic example – not out of belief in communism, but to destabilise Russia and knock them out of the war.

Sometimes, international support takes the form of financial leverage. The Iron Bank in A Song of Ice and Fire is a fictional example, funding revolutions against regimes that default on loans. 

However, neighbouring countries might also choose to support an autocratic regime, even a terrible one, because they fear an unstable, war-torn neighbour more than the existing government. Their decision can be based on economic ties or strategic alignment rather than moral considerations. Dictators are often wary of international influence precisely because it frequently leads to disruption, coercion, and potential regime change. Yet, other dictators might band together for mutual survival, fearing the spread of revolution in their own backyards.

Understanding what other countries want, their interests, and how their involvement would shape the revolution is vital.

5. Injustice

Injustice often serves as the framework or narrative attached to existing instability. It provides a shared vision and a simple, powerful message that many can rally behind. The death of Rue in The Hunger Games is a fictional example of a single, clear injustice sparking widespread anger and rebellion.

However, the narrative around injustice can be manipulated. Regimes often frame injustices to justify repression, using ethnic, religious, or regional lines to create divisions. 

A crucial, often overlooked, aspect is that revolutions themselves introduce instability and injustice. When rebels are bombing areas or causing conflict in the streets, everyday civilians might view the revolutionaries, not the regime, as the source of their problems. Killing a few protestors might seem like a lesser injustice compared to your neighbour being killed by rebel crossfire. 

Logistical targets of revolution, government buildings, railways, bridges, are often used or manned by civilians, making their lives hell. This can turn people against the revolutionary cause, even if its stated goals are just. The Legend of Korra shows this dynamic; non-benders initially saw the Equalists as the source of instability until the bending government imposed oppressive policies, shifting indignation back onto the regime.

When building your world, consider who different factions would blame for the instability and injustices. Whose narratives would resonate, and how would they spread? How does the perceived injustice interact with the community’s existing problems and instabilities?

Bringing Revolution to Life in Your Story

Okay, so we have the raw ingredients: socioeconomic instability, alienation, elite infighting, international support, and injustice. But how do we weave these complex elements into a compelling story?

Revolutions are not just historical events; they are tropes and story webs. They aren’t the story itself, but a backdrop or catalyst for exploring deeper themes: struggle, sacrifice, injustice, wealth and power dynamics, why people fight, cycles of history, tyranny, utopian ideals, and the gap between ideology and reality.

The strength of your revolutionary story lies in the story web you create. Characters, places, and events are connected, pulling and tugging against each other until something breaks. This tension reveals what your story is truly about.

1. Weaving the Web: How Tensions Interact

Every compelling revolution in fiction hinges on interconnected tensions. It’s not just the existence of oppression or unrest that fuels a story—it’s the dynamic push and pull between factions, ideologies, and individuals.

When you build a world where power structures are fragile, shifting, or violently reinforced, you create an environment where every character interaction matters. What socioeconomic instabilities, political fractures, or emotional loyalties are pulling your characters in opposing directions? Where do those threads cross—and where are they about to snap?

This web of tension is what gives your narrative momentum. It creates pressure points that can erupt into turning points, betrayals, or radical transformation.

2. Grounding the Conflict: Make the Pain Personal

Compelling revolutionary stories ground the reader in the visceral realities that drive people to risk everything: injustice, alienation, and desperation. It’s not enough to say your characters live under an oppressive regime—you need to show what that feels like day after day.

Les Misérables does this masterfully. Jean Valjean’s criminalization over a stolen loaf of bread or Fantine’s descent into destitution are personal, brutal, and deeply emotional. We don’t just hear about a broken system—we feel its sharp edges cut into lives.

Great writing doesn’t rely on exposition; it builds empathy by anchoring the political in the personal. Despair becomes real not through speeches, but through scenes: empty bellies, lost dignity, impossible choices. That’s the heart of revolutionary fiction.

• For more on writing emotions like pain, check out On Writing Emotions: A Writer’s Guide to Mastering Feelings in Fiction.

3. When Desperation Becomes a Catalyst

Desperation isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a long, slow erosion of options until revolution becomes the only path left.

Cormac McCarthy’s prose, though not always about rebellion, nails this: stripped-down, survival-driven writing that captures the weight of living moment to moment. When your characters are reduced to essentials—food, safety, dignity—you invite readers into the emotional space where rebellion starts to make sense.

Many dystopias fail not because they lack cruelty, but because their cruelty feels abstract or performative. Real desperation is grounded in the familiar: unaffordable medicine, corrupt courts, food insecurity. When readers recognize the building blocks of real-world frustration in your fictional society, your revolution stops being just plausible—it becomes inevitable.

Crafting Revolutionary Character Arcs

Characters are the lenses through which we understand the revolutionary world. Their arcs and internal struggles shape the emotional core of the story and colour the meaning of the revolution itself.

You might follow someone inside the system who begins to see its rot, like Winston in 1984, or someone disenfranchised who gets pulled into a rebellion, like Katniss in The Hunger Games. But it’s not just about who they are at the beginning—it’s about how they change, what breaks them, and what they choose to believe by the end.

• If you’re struggling with writing characters, check out How to Write More Likeable (or Unlikeable) Book Characters.

1. Who Leads, Who Follows, Who Breaks?

The roles your characters play in the revolution—leader, follower, defector, skeptic—reveal how different people process upheaval. In V for Vendetta, V begins as a mysterious revolutionary idolized for his brilliance and boldness, but as the story unfolds, his methods and obsession with vengeance reveal a chilling edge. His arc forces readers to question the morality of martyrdom and the fine line between liberator and terrorist.

By contrast, Natasha Rostova in War and Peace romanticizes revolution at first, only to become disillusioned by its violence and unpredictability. Her journey highlights how noble ideals can collapse under the weight of brutal reality.

These arcs don’t just move the plot—they shape how readers interpret the revolution itself.

2. Conflict, Disillusionment, and Diverging Ideals

Great revolutionary stories don’t present a unified front—they embrace ideological tension. In The Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta’s conflict isn’t about romance, but about propaganda, sacrifice, and how to survive a revolution without losing their humanity. Gale’s increasing radicalism, and Katniss’s moral hesitation, create fractures that expose the story’s deepest ethical questions.

These interpersonal conflicts mirror the broader struggle: should the revolution be pragmatic or idealistic? Should it seek justice or vengeance? These differences don’t weaken the narrative—they sharpen it, making the revolution feel real, flawed, and emotionally charged.

You can show followers questioning the movement, leaders compromising their values, or idealists breaking under pressure. Disillusionment is a feature of revolutions—not a bug.

3. How Arcs Change the Meaning of the Revolution

Revolution isn’t static, and neither are the people living through it. A character might begin to be loyal to the regime and slowly unravel, or begin as a radical only to question their cause. These shifts aren’t just personal—they reflect deeper truths about your world.

What your characters experience—betrayal, victory, fear, clarity—becomes the lens through which readers interpret your themes. If a hopeful revolutionary loses faith, the story leans toward tragedy. If a disillusioned skeptic learns to believe again, the revolution takes on a redemptive tone.

Your web of tension changes as your characters do. The revolution might begin as a cry for justice and end as a meditation on loss. Let your arcs guide the reader toward that deeper meaning.

What Kind of Revolution Are You Writing?

Writing revolution is hard because it’s easy to focus on the dramatic, the personal vendettas, the clear-cut injustice of an innocent victim. It’s much harder to dramatise collective action, logistics, or international support, even though these are fundamental to realistic revolutions. Realistic revolutions are messy, driven by a complex interplay of factors, often for not-so-noble reasons, like power struggles or perceived opportunities amidst instability. 

People don’t always agree on what constitutes injustice, and it’s easy to manipulate narratives.

But here’s the thing: your revolutionary story doesn’t have to be realistic. It can be mythic, inspiring, and optimistic. Stories like 1984 (despite its absurdities), Arcane, Snow Crash, or Star Wars use the aesthetic of revolution or dystopia to explore themes like sacrifice, loyalty, and resistance, even if their portrayal of how a system falls isn’t strictly realistic. They can still be incredibly compelling and hold deep meaning.

However, focusing purely on the mythic can sometimes lead to tropes like the “head of the snake” fallacy, where killing the top villain instantly collapses the entire system. In reality, such a collapse would likely lead to splintered factions, possibly just as bad as the original regime. While audiences might be getting tired of this trope, mythic stories where individual virtue or action can turn the tide against tyranny are still powerful. Stories don’t need perfect realism to resonate.

How to Write the Post-Revolution World?

We often focus on the fight to overthrow the oppressive regime. But what happens after the revolution? This can be just as fascinating, if not more so, to explore. Revolutions bring down the old order, but they are a lucky collision of groups with compatible goals for dismantling the current system, but not necessarily for what comes next. Once the common enemy is gone, the radical ideologies, economic interests, and ethnic tensions that were temporarily aligned can clash violently.

Autocracies are often simpler systems to establish in the face of instability than democracies. Revolution isn’t a single event; it’s a continuous process of growing pains and adaptation. Utopian ideals, while galvanising, can be rigid and hard to implement, creating a gap between aims and reality. 

Characters face immense challenges: dealing with chaos, rebuilding infrastructure, managing groups who joined for different reasons (including foreign interests), protecting the rights of former oppressors, and confronting the physical and psychological costs of war.

A particularly compelling aspect of the aftermath is exploring how people relate to the fallen regime. Even oppressive systems are beneficial to someone, often more people than revolutionaries might assume. Many people idealise the past, even a difficult one. Elderly people who relied on the Soviet Union’s pension plans might regret its dissolution, despite its oppressive nature. They grew up in that culture, their identity intertwined with it, making it hard to separate personal connection from a critique of the regime. This creates fascinating internal conflict for characters in the post-revolution world: how do they reconcile their past with the new reality? What do they justify to themselves, and what do they let go of? Sometimes, the morality of the fallen regime, or the new one, isn’t black and white.

Why People Don’t Rebel

Finally, a powerful way to highlight the desperation, alienation, and injustices of your regime is to show why people don’t rebel. Revolution requires incredible risk, organisation, and often a level of privilege or bandwidth that many simply don’t have.

The Handmaid’s Tale offers a stark counterpoint to many revolutionary narratives. Offred is a victim of extreme alienation, injustice, and repression, yet revolution isn’t a viable option for her. The story focuses on her lack of autonomy, showing the reality of being repressed and why open rebellion is impossible for so many. Offred’s internal struggles, her desire to rebel warring with her inability to act, are incredibly compelling. This kind of narrative challenges the optimistic assumption that everyone would fight for what’s right if given the chance; many simply cannot.

Showing the immense effort required just to survive, the fear, the lack of organization, the successful repression by the state – all of this illuminates the true oppressive power of the regime and makes the eventual acts of resistance, or even just survival, more meaningful.

How to Set Up Your Story for a Revolution

To bring all of this together, think about your revolutionary story as that web of interconnected points.

1. Identify the core tensions: What socioeconomic instabilities, alienations, elite conflicts, international pressures, and injustices are present in your world?
2. Place your characters: How are your characters connected to these tensions? How do they experience the injustice, alienation, and desperation on a personal level?
3. Follow the threads: Where do these connections lead? How do they create conflict, both external (regime vs. rebel) and internal (character dilemmas)?
4. Consider change: How do the characters and the tensions evolve throughout the story? How do character arcs colour the meaning of the revolution?
5. Choose your focus: Are you telling a realistic story of complex causes and messy aftermath, or a mythic tale of individual action and hope? Are you exploring the struggle to overthrow the regime, or the challenges of building something new? Are you highlighting why people rebel, or why they cannot?
6. Tug on the strings: The scenes and conflicts you spend the most time on, the tensions you focus on most – that’s what your story is ultimately about.

Revolutions are complex, messy, and deeply human events. By understanding the multifaceted causes, the human cost, the strategic challenges, and the difficult aftermath, you can craft a revolutionary story that is not only exciting but also insightful and resonant. Happy writing!