Writing Openings - Learning from The Hunger Games Model

Picture from hungergamesdwtc.net

Openings are tough. For me, they're one of the hardest things to get right. The balance of exposition and action, character introduction and identification, has always been something that takes me much longer than it probably should.

What everyone tells you to do in openings:

1. Show what the main character cares about.

2. Threaten what the main character cares about.

There are a billion and eleven ways to accomplish those two things, and however basic they may seem, they're still hard to do. It's the how, not the what, that's a little tricky to me.

At the most recent meeting of my writing club, Raven brought up a point our friend Ed (of IGMS and Magical Words) had made on a panel at ConCarolinas: The Hunger Games has an impressively succinct opening.

Think about it; within the first pages we learn how deeply Katniss cares about her sister, Prim. Not only does she break the law to feed her family, but she also tolerates her little sister's cat, which she hates. Despite the cat being another mouth to feed, Katniss lets it stay because Prim loves it, which shows how deeply Katniss cares about Prim. That's all within the first two or so pages. This caring perfectly sets up the story's inciting incident: Prim getting chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, and Katniss taking her place.

Openings don't come naturally to me, and I tend to take a while to ramp up into the story, action or not. In conjunction with this observation, two of my beta readers for HELLHOUND, Bryan Lincoln and Darci Cole, made a couple of points that had me rethinking that opening. I knew I needed to make it succinct and precise, like the Hunger Games, and to do that I had to think critically about the opening. I came up with the following method for accomplishing the two elements of the opening:

The Hunger Games Model

1. Demonstrate what the main character cares about by showing them overcoming some obstacle/hardship or another because he/she cares about it. (Motivation in evidence!)

2. Threaten the thing that character cares about in such a way that forces him/her to take the first step along the story's course.

I know, I know. Reading it written out like that makes me sort of go, "Duh. Of course that's how an opening should be done." But it has taken several failures and some strict, sit-down-and-analyze time for me to figure out not only what needed to happen, but how to do that.

I came up with exactly how to harvest these elements from HELLHOUND and weave them together in a scene that is similar to what I already had, but will likely work much better.

Does your story's opening follow the Hunger Games Model? How? What other ways have you seen or utilized to open a story?

Medieval Mounted Backwards Paintball

I finished rewriting THE MARK OF FLIGHT last year, and to get closer to the action, I chopped off the entire beginning. I liked how quickly we got to the action, but the pace was halting and the exposition was mainly back-story. It looks like I jumped ahead a little too much.

Rather than scrapping that new scene, I looked at the backstory I put in and retrieved a few scenes I'd cut from the early chapters of the rewrite. This is the part where Beta-readers are awesome. I had Raven read, explained where I was going to go with it, and the following conversation ensued:

"Yeah. That should work..."

"...but?"

"But, I don't know. It's fine the way it is, but is there something else the court ladies can be doing besides weaving favors? I mean, it's medieval--we figure they can sew and stuff. Is there anything you can have them doing that makes us go, 'Hey, we're in Rizellen! Rizellen isn't Camelot or Middle Earth! Or whatever. Like something more exciting, like a sport."

Badass chicks are badass.

Bingo. I love it when Raven's right, but it usually means at least an hour of brainstorming. The result was something I can only describe as Medieval Mounted Backwards Paintball.

Yes, Medieval Mounted Backwards Paintball. And it's ladies only. Sorry, gentlemen; go play with your swords.

In historical Rizellen, women were allowed to join the ranks of soldiers as part of the cavalry. Most of them were mounted archers, but of course they also trained with polearms and swords. Why cavalry? Simply because it gave them both an advantage of strength and momentum for melee combat, and the speed to make a fast retreat. Also, female Mages and Markmasters often entered battle, and the safest way to do that was on horseback.

Because of this, women would have spent a good deal of their time on horseback. It makes sense that some sort of game would be developed that requires the women to be both mounted and performing difficult maneuvers without the use of their hands to direct the horses.

Then I looked at my heroine, Arianna. What is she good at? Horseback-riding. Politics. Oddly enough, I always had her be good at throwing things. Before, it had been a way to show that she and her mother were both a bit hot-tempered, and tended to hurl teacups at people who displeased them. There were lots of places in the book I could have made that skill useful, but didn't--mostly because Arianna wouldn't have trusted her own aim in that kind of situation. Now, however, she can.

In the sport, which i have named Threshing (because it used to be played in threshing seasion, with wheat shafts bound into targets), women ride on horses with satchels of ammunition tied on the saddle. The ammo could be anything from rotting fruit to stones to missiles made from sheep-intestine and filled with dye. They run a course which has jumps and turns, and must hit targets both in front of and behind them.

This requires horsemanship, reflexes, and good aim. Also, much like modern soldiers are given a few "civilians" on their courses which they absolutely cannot shoot, Threshing courses have a few "villager" dummies, which the women get docked points for hitting. The game doesn't require great strength, and it would have helped the historical women soldiers practice directing their horses with their legs, and with coodination.

:)

Have you ever invented a game or sport for your story? What are some of the most memorable games from fiction? (I know, I know: Quidditch)

First-Person Present Tense in YA

Not even all of them.

Last week I declared a no-writing week, and set to work on the massive pile of books on my bedside table. Some of these are from StellarCon, and some of them are my first-paycheck treat.

I've taken to carrying books around with me, which has helped in the effort to read more. I always carry at least one general fantasy novel, and one YA novel. Recently, I've noticed that I finish three or four YA books per regular fantasy book, which is why I like reading young adult fiction -- I can finish a book in two or three evenings, and the prose isn't as thick as that of Tad Williams or Jaqueline Carey.

I've zoomed through several YA books in the past two or three weeks, including The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins, Matched by Ally Condi, and White Cat by Holly Black.

I wasn't shocked to find that The Hunger Games was in first-person present-tense, because the immediacy of the plot really lends itself to that narrative mode. After obsessively devouring the trilogy, I picked up Matched because the premise was fascinating. I wasn't disappointed, but I was struck by the fact that this author had also chosen first-person present-tense. I thought about it, and decided that in a world where the future is decided, and all reminders of the past are removed, present-tense was the only option. By the time I got to Holly Black's White Cat, I wasn't even surprised. First-person. Present-tense.

 I'm sure by now we're all used to first-person, especially in YA, where the immediate sympathy of the reader demands a close perspective from the word go, but reading present-tense in genre fiction was a bit of a surprise for me. I see it in literary fiction sometimes, but where I first noticed the trend was in fan-fiction, especially short works. Now, I fell off the fan-fiction bandwagon somewhere around 2006, when I decided it was time to focus my writing on original work. But last year, while waiting for season 3 of Merlin, I skimmed through livejournal to see what was there. I clearly remember Skyping with Adryn one evening, and reading Merlin fanfic whilst waiting for her responses.

Scribe: Shouting to Corwin for cover, Zieke lunges forward and hacks through the foot-soldier's waxed leather armor...*blahblahblah*
Adryn: Are you reading fanfiction?
Scribe: @_@ How did you know that?
Adryn: Because you keep writing in present-tense.
Scribe: ...
Adryn: Don't you hate writing in present-tense?
Scribe: ...

It was pretty embarrassing. I'm the most grammar-conscious of my friends, and to have made a tense-shift error of that magnitude mid-scene was uncharacteristic. The funniest thing was realizing that Adryn had spotted the trend well enough to identify exactly why I had staggered over to the "dark side". (Since that mortifying slip, I have written one thing that includes present-tense: Goodbye Girl, the first half of which is f-p/p-t.)

I have to wonder why that's becoming such a common narrative mode. I find it to be spare, and almost too immediate in most cases. While the subject-matter of The Hunger Games and Matched were both well-suited to present-tense, I feel like White Cat would have been exactly the same book in past-tense. There was no clear reason why the book needed to be in present-tense. Black's faerie series is in past-tense, so it isn't just that she's a present-tense author--it was a clear authorial choice for this set of books. Maybe it was simply because she wanted to experiment writing in present-tense, or because that's just the way the character spoke to her--I get that. As the author, her choice is valid, even if it's not the choice I would have made. Admittedly, I would never make the choice unless the story would be improved by it (and you'd have a hard time convincing me it would), so my biased self is probably off the mark concerning her motivations. My point, however, is not why she made that choice, but the question of whether Holly Black or any author would have made that choice fifteen years ago.

Personally, I don't think so. I know there were f-p/p-t novels back then--there had to have been. I just don't think they made up such a large percentage of the YA section. I certainly don't remember reading any, and I read even more fifteen years ago than I do now. I think the recent trend probably has to do with the idea that immediacy lends itself to faster reader sympathy. Things beyond authorial (and even agent and editor) control are causing writers to need that immediate sympathy any way we can get it. The length of books is being cut, prose is being dumbed-down, and Tolkein-esque jaunts into the land of useless description are halted in their tracks. We simply don't have time for it...or so we tell ourselves.

Oh, what was the line? "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." But who is "they"? It's useless to try blaming anyone--authors, agents, editors, publishers, readers, Hitler--because the narrative mode of fiction is beginning to reflect our current culture, which demands short, fast, and now.

"Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees. Please."

Have you recently read a book in present-tense? What did you think? Do you think the recent trend of present-tense will last?


GO READ Raven's response post on this topic - it's not only hysterical, but provides another layer of analysis on the subject, and the three novels.