What Inspired James Dashner To Write The Maze Runner Book Series?

Question

Reading The Maze Runner trilogy again and struck by its intensity—wondering about Dashner's original vision. What triggered that dystopian setting?

Alizam Aliamat · Answer

Author James Dashner stated in interviews that his idea for The Maze Runner came from classic survival stories. He placed his characters in a situation that he hoped would be impossible for them to escape, which would test their minds and see how they would react to the pressure. Dashner also stated that The Maze Runner was inspired by the many video game puzzles that he is an enthusiast of. If you like a contained, pressure-cooker type of situation like The Maze Runner, then you might enjoy Possessing The Gamma: The Silver Run Series. The story is set in a high-tech wilderness setting, where a group of people are trying to survive. The mystery of the story centers around a shared, latent ability that the characters possess. Instead of just survival, the characters must use their newly-discovered ability in order to gain power and control over each other.

Kyle · Answer

This series is one of my favorites and the reason why ‘The Maze Runner’ series was created is amazing. James Dashner was inspired by his love of adventure and his experience of growing up. He said that being a teenager can feel like being in a maze and not knowing where you are going and that is why this series is so great because it feels so real and relatable.

The maze represents the troubles of growing up, which Dashner has explored in making the series. The novel conveys the confusion that adolescents go through in finding their way through life. Dashner cleverly intertwined the plot of an action-packed adventure with the struggles and heartbreaks of life to give readers a relatable and impressive novel that leads them through challenges and stimulates them to think about their lives and journey.

Sawyer · Answer

New York Times best-selling author James Dashner created The Maze Runner series, with many of the characters, experiences and plot lines stemming from his own life and imagination. Dashner originally set out to write a survival/coming of age adventure that would follow a group of young heroes as they battled against various obstacles in their quest to unravel the mystery of their isolated world. However, the plot of a ‘mysterious challenge in an unknown place’ kept coming back to one thing: a maze.

The writer also utilized aspects of his personal experiences and used an adventure he had gone on while hiking in the mountains as inspiration for the maze itself and how the characters got there. He describes his time while writing The Maze Runner as exciting but also as very challenging. Much like the experiences of the characters in the book, the writer had to go through many trials and tribulations within the walls of the maze.

By writing The Maze Runner Dashner has enabled his young readers to confront their fears and to learn how to be resilient in the face of adversity. And that’s why The Maze Runner is so special. It’s more than just a story, it’s a exploration of the teenage experience with all its challenges and struggles and it’s something that will stay with readers long after they finish the book.

Natalia · Answer

James Dashner was also a parent when he wrote The Maze Runner. In an interview, he spoke again to the affects of his children growing up. He brought all that knowledge to the book and mixed it with his natural imagination to create this really dark, really strange, really real dystopian world. A lot of the danger and mystery of the Maze relates to how Comforts can be changed into Puzzles and be confusing.

Dashner created The Maze Runner for a young adult audience. Dashner wrote The Maze Runner to capture the thrill of the characters’ plight and to bring readers into the world he created, so that they can experience the same type of urgent and sometimes thrilling moments as Thomas and his fellow Gladers, and become familiar with their emotional struggles as well.

Owen · Answer

This series was based off of James Dashner’s love for adventure and growing up as a teenager. He said he wrote this series to make a suspenseful world where the main characters had to find themselves in the middle of all the chaos going on in the world. It is really cool to see how the characters start off as scared and confused people and grow up to be strong and brave people who can face almost anything. The maze represents life in a maze and growing up in it. It can be very relatable to read about.

Jaide Sammut · Answer

This virus is so very apocalyptic. Not only does it attempt to kill you, it slowly erodes your sanity turning you into one of the Flare-infected ‘Cranks’ or zombies. I would suspect that this kind of threat was pulled from the same pool of fears about a deadly pandemic that has inspired many zombie-inspired films, but with a more human-focused twist in terms of what it means to lose your humanity.

It’s a metaphor for the collapse of a society to an ‘infected madness’ which is fought by WICKED in particularly cruel ways. Perhaps the idea for the first maze game came first, but the reason for the maze – the Flare – stems from a brand of apocalyptic fiction that explores the breakdown of the human mind.

Yamashita Izumi · Answer

It looks like an enormous, massive escape room that we have to escape from each day. When we go into the Maze for the daily runs, it is like a new section of the escape room has opened up and we have to solve a new section of the puzzle. All of the puzzles in the Glade, such as figuring out the mysterious supplies that we find and the changing number patterns, all are part of the puzzle to escape from the Glade. All of the puzzle pieces were designed by WICKED to create an elaborate, sadistic escape room.

I guess the author just likes to do puzzles and riddles and thought, “What would be the largest most dangerous escape room ever?” A self-sustaining base of operations (The Glade), a constantly changing puzzle to escape (The Maze), and a time threat/externally generated threat to survive until nightfall (the other inhabitants of the Glade and the deadlyGrievers). A great blend of Survival Horror and a Puzzle to escape which keeps both the characters in the book and the reader engaged.

Patty G. Bass · Answer

My main inspiration for character dynamics was the ensemble cast of boys with no memory of who they were prior to arriving at the maze. How would each boy react to having no identity, and who would step up to lead the others? Would there be a bully, or perhaps a healer? Perhaps even a cynic, resenting everyone around him? In my mind, the main character of Thomas would clash with the prickly maze boss Alby, while Newt, the second-in-command, would be the voice of reason to both Thomas and Alby. Minho, the runner, is a bold, fearless, jock-like character.

Dashner likely created these archetypes and then built the maze to test them. The plot is simply a machine that puts as much stress as possible on the different personality types in order to see how they will react. The external conflict is then used to bring out the internal strengths and weaknesses of the characters in a typical character-driven story. The maze is simply the ultimate pressure cooker for these character studies.

Kafi · Answer

All these deep, thoughtful answers to a book that probably just seemed like a cool idea to my dude. Creepy mazes and stressful running combined with some creepy bug-robot creatures to make a bestseller. I mean, sometimes a good idea is just a good idea and you don’t have to dig too deeply into it.

Wiwin · Answer

When the first book in the Mortality Dogpile came out, it was one of many YA dystopian novels published during the high point of the YA dystopian wave, but this one had a different origin story than most. For me, the core of this novel is a simple ‘what if’ question that I find very primal: What if you woke up in a completely unfamiliar place with no memory of who you were before? A complete mystery, locked in a box. Dashner takes this simple core and builds a total alternate universe around it, the Glade and its rules and slang, usually found in novels like Lord of the Flies and Lost. But instead of a simple natural threat to the characters, the creatures known as Grievers in addition to the constantly shifting walls of the maze create a true pressure cooker. By using familiar elements of survival and puzzle and putting them in a completely new way, the book creates a fast-paced and breathless read where neither the characters nor the reader ever gets a chance to catch their breath.

A work or two may have contributed to some of the ideas within The Maze Runner but as far as the actual execution of the Maze becoming a character in the story and ultimately one of the most malevolent in all of YA literature, The Maze Runner is one of a kind.

Vern Jones · Answer

I believed The Maze Runner effectively explored friendship and the loyalty between characters in some of their worst moments. The bonds of bromance between Thomas and Minho were wonderful to read. Tragic Newt was excellent, too. And the beginnings of mutual respect/contempt with Gally were spot-on as well. I bet a lot of his exploration of these issues of friendship came from his own and from stories of men in dire circumstances—very often in war.

I think the maze was just a tool to show the unbreakable bonds that were formed between these four characters. Instead of focusing on the Griever chases, I focused on the Homestead conversations, the arguments about trust, and the sacrifices that were made for each other. I think this shows that the human element of the book was where Dashner got his inspiration, and the book is just a really intense setting for these friendships to be tested.

Kristine Suzzette Galve-Espartero · Answer

This slang is so much fun to read. ‘Shuck it all.’ That sounds so cool to say. I imagine Dashner having a lot of fun making up all this slang for the world of Maze Runner. Writers are often just playing with language when they write and that can be the seed for an entire culture. Probably he thought of it and said ‘what would these kids swear with?’ and just kept going from there.

What Inspired James Dashner To Write The Maze Runner Book Series?

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