writing

Which book’s ending would I rewrite if I could?

1984.

So I did rewrite it.

Let me back up.

“If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?”

This was WordPress’s Daily Writing Prompt today, July 27, 2026. When I saw it, it felt surreal, almost dreamlike. Because I literally just finished writing the last book in a trilogy that was inspired by a couple things:

ICE in Minnesota.

And the ending of 1984.

Worst Book Ending Ever

The MC in 1984 ends the book by saying he loves Big Brother? Seriously? No!

No, no, no!

Controversial, maybe, but… I’d kind of like to see dystopian satire books about authoritarianism and fascism and control and automated surveillance and all that stuff that nobody wants but just seems to be coming at us anyway (Your car gets to decide if you can drive? Seriously?) end with, oh, I don’t know… something better.

Hope, for starters.

A new, egalitarian way of living that treats everyone with respect and dignity would be amazing.

A glimpse of how we might get ourselves out of this mess—without resorting to the typical dystopian way of resolving things that I find so disheartening.

So I wrote it.

A third thing that inspired me

When Jimmy Kimmel was suspended, I read a post somewhere, written to Disney, that said something like, “Didn’t you watch Andor? It’s your own show!”

I haven’t seen Andor, but from what I can tell, it’s a high-fantasy type story. And it occurred to me that maybe, for some people, when a show’s world is too far removed from the real world, the themes don’t always hit home as strongly as they could.

So, I decided to write a dystopian trilogy that stuck to the real world—today’s real world—as much as possible.

What do you call dystopian fiction that’s partially ripped from the headlines?

Near-Future Collapse Fiction?

It took me three books, not one, to move the “High States,” a fictional country that looks a lot like the 2026 United States, from a growing fascist government into something better—to see if it was even possible—but I did eventually get the characters there.

It is possible.

And the last book shows how they do it.

Hopeful Apocalyptic Fiction?

Now if only the world could move in that direction, or something like it, without first having to suffer and learn the hard way that it didn’t have to be this way.

Megan Bledsoe writes stories with a touch of fantasy across three distinct emotional tracks: dark, light, and gray. Her next release is The Epoch Rite of Passage, a dystopian satire trilogy for readers who wish 1984 could have ended another way. Read the first scene here.

Optimistic Dystopian Fiction

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the state of the world and the massive transition we all seem to be navigating. It’s what inspired my latest project, The Epoch Rite of Passage trilogy. If you’ve been feeling like the old world is dissolving, I wanted to share a resource I built to help map the path forward.

This year it became absolutely clear to me that we are living through a massive, collective Rite of Passage.

If you feel like the world you loved has vanished, leaving you to navigate a landscape that no longer makes sense—you are not alone. You are not crazy. You are simply in the middle of a transition. We all are. But…

Why is this happening?
How do we get through it?
How will it end?

I felt compelled to explore these questions, and the result is The Epoch Rite of Passage trilogy. (The first two books are available for preorder now, and I’m hard at work on the conclusion.) It seemed to me that people felt powerless in part because they couldn’t imagine change–both what it might look like when it was done or how to get there. So I put some characters into our world and propelled them toward a cliff to find out what will happen if we don’t change—and what’s possible if we do.

The characters aren’t just trying to survive a financial and societal collapse. That’s the first step, sure, but not the only one. The next steps are even harder: How do they reclaim their sovereignty in a world that has convinced them they don’t have any? And then how do they maintain their sovereignty and their humanity when its time to rebuild and the old “poisoned bricks” of control are the only tools they’ve ever known?

When I first started writing the trilogy, I broke this journey down into three stages—the stages of a rite of passage—to help me guide the characters:

Stage 1: Separation — The terrifying moment of realizing the system isn’t “broken”—it’s functioning exactly as it was designed, and to survive it you have to detach.
Stage 2: Liminality — The space between worlds, where you are free from the old system consciously but your body still has to live with in it and your subconscious is still reacting to its fearmongering and its “official” truths.
Stage 3: Incorporation — The act of co-creating a new order based on love, freedom, and individual sovereignty, rather than by fear, violence, and control.

I came at the story organically, but on a foundation of lots and lots of reading. I curated a PDF list of 9 books that speak to these three stages of a rite of passage into a resource I’m calling The Sovereignty Library.

This isn’t just a reading list. It’s a roadmap for anyone who is done waiting for the old world to fix itself and is ready—or wants to be ready—to start building something else entirely.

[Click here to get your copy of The Sovereignty Library]

When you download the PDF, you’ll get the list, plus my personal notes on how each book speaks to the stages in a rite of passage. By grabbing the library, you’ll also join my free monthly newsletter, where I share updates on my writing projects, book recommendations, and deeper dives into the themes of questioning reality in all its guises. You’ll also get a handful of other “goodies,” including a novella. Make sure you check your spam for the welcome email. That’s where the goodies are.

Get The Sovereignty Library

If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose? | Writing Optimistic Dystopian Fiction