Veronica Roth skyrocketed to fame in the early 2010s with the smashing success of her debut series Divergent in 2011 which quickly racked up enough interest across the globe to put a Hollywood blockbuster into production.
13 years later and the author is well aware of the impact her series continues to have on teen book fans, as well as some of their classrooms, with the dystopian fantasy often being hailed as a criticism of modern society.
But it might not be all that deep.
Sitting down with Express at MCM Comic Con, the 36-year-old admitted: “I don’t worry that we’re going to divide ourselves into virtue-based factions, no one’s doing that.
“There are themes that are relevant, the way we separate and categorise each other and use those categories to dismiss each other is real and something I think about… but it’s not 1984,” she joked, referencing George Orwell’s iconic dystopian state.
She continued: “I don’t think Divergent surfaced from a place of social critique in the way a lot of dystopia has. It was more dystopian fantasy, a fun thought experiment.”
Veronica candidly admits her debut was a “blaze of ignorance”, claiming the “extreme arrogance of youth” was a major factor behind why she was able to take such a bold first step into her career and she does have some words of wisdom for other eager creatives seeking that first big high.
She said: “You have to let it go. It’s not bad to have dreams but what’s important is to focus on the work itself because you only get this life and you can’t spend all of your time reaching for something instead of what’s right in front of you. If you do that work, maybe good things will come of it, but you can’t control whether good things come or not.”
While there hasn’t been a development on the Divergent front since Allegiant’s cinematic release in 2016, the author revealed fans could soon be getting some unexpected updates: “I did a short story recently on Tris’ perspective if she had chosen Abnegation which was really fun, maybe I’ll do more of that casually.
“It was a great way to revisit the series in a way that was creative and positive – not that I have negative feelings about it but it was really stressful and a long time ago.”
Elsewhere in her writings, Veronica is returning to her usual sandbox of Chicago in her latest work When Among Crows and is in the midst of writing a sequel for the contemporary retelling of Slavic folklore.
While it may hold some similarities to her iconic debut on the surface, this novella is far more personal as it forced the author to delve into the Polish ancestory she felt she “wasn’t allowed” to see because she was born in America rather than her family’s homeland.
She lifted the lid on her writing process: “The tricky part was giving myself permission and approaching it with respect. But with any mythology and any folklore you have to let go of accuracy because accuracy doesn’t exist with folklore. People who teach folklore in college usually post their reading lists so I have huge stacks of used textbooks just sitting at my house. Writing is eternal college.”
When it comes to finding ideas for new projects, the writer seems to get much of her outlandish dystopian fantasy plots from her everyday life. The seeds of Divergent sparked in her psychology course at college while one of her more recent works, Arch Conspirator, seemingly came as an act of defiance.
The novella is a futuristic science fiction retelling of the Greek tragedy Antigone, which arose when she was “complaining to a friend about how many retellings there were”. The conversation ended with Veronica declaring she’d never do a retelling of the ancient classics, but a few hours later she admitted: “Unless it’s Antigone…in the future.”