there’s no place where everything runs smoothly. every country has it’s problems. that might be poverty, weak government, fake news, gun violence, or abuse of magical abilities. it could really be anything. so what’s wrong with your world?
corrupt government (a few infiltrations? biased officials? a dictator?)
discrimination/persecution of any kind (sexism, racism, religion, anything that makes someone unique)
violence (gangs, guns, magic, sexual assault)
counterfeits (money, expensive products, anything)
drugs (fake drugs, very real and dangerous drugs)
weak government (ie. the government isn’t necessarily corrupt, but no one listens to them and they have no real power at all so everyone just runs amok)
relations with other countries/regions
fake news (can be something smaller like what goes around on the internet today, or something as horrible as the propaganda the axis powers fed their people about the allied powers)
stereotypes (remember, even seemingly positive stereotypes can be damaging)
manipulation/using people
there’s a whole lot more, get creative! as saddening as this will be, scrolling through news articles will give you some good inspiration because our world is pretty messed up
how to choose which problems to include
what is your world like? as obvious as this probably sounds, your world’s problems are directly related to the things in your world. choose pretty much any element of your world, however small it may seem, and there can be made a problem out of it.
magic can be faked (ie. in harry potter, around exam season, students sell items that “enhance your brain” or whatever when it’s really pixie poop, i’m not even kidding)
discrimination between magical and non magical people (muggleborns vs. purebloods)
people rely too much on magic and become weak (a great example of this is the Renegades series, where the non prodigies depend on the prodigies way too much)
non magic people using magical people (or magical people using other magicals, ex. grindelwald/percival graves using creedence to find the obscurial)
really, the problems for a magical world are endless - you can use regular real-life problems with a twist. the magical government lies to the public, buying out the main news source? people of pure magical lineage are somehow better than those related to non magical people? harry potter is a fantastic example of magical worldbuilding, steal stuff from jkr (but don’t make gay characters who are never actually gay)
i’m a big fantasy nerd, much less sci-fi, so i don’t really have any good examples from books/movies, but here are some ideas anyway
the people who live on a different planet are starting to run out of resources and take over the earth (literally the plot of the Lunar Chronicles series)
the government is testing out new sciencey techy stuff and they accidentally make superhuman demon things (Incredibles, but they’re nice guys, not demon things, except maybe jack jack but he’s a cutie don’t hurt him)
terrorist groups steal a smart guy to make weapons for them (Iron Man)
two + planets are fighting over something
technology/inventions/whatever can be abused
wow these are terrible i’m sorry i need to read more sci-fi
again, you can take regular real world problems and put a sciencey twist on them; a gang that kills people with laserbeam contact lenses, a new invention that uses a very rare element that’s important to the ecosystem and is starting to destroy the planet, the little robots we send to mars become self aware and build a colony of robots. go off
