Pacing in "The Hunger Games"

Each chapter has a story arc. You've heard that, right? In view of some comments about pacing in my own writing, I did some studying in The Hunger Games. Look at these chapter endings-

Me in red and my sister and some of our kiddoes hanging off a cliff. Get it?

Ch 1- Effie trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not me.
It's Primrose Everdeen.

Ch. 2- Peeta looks me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it's just a nervous spasm. We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays. Oh, well, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are that someone else will kill him before I do.

Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.

Ch. 3- Just then, Haymitch staggers into the compartment. "I miss supper?" he says is a slurred voice. Then he vomits all over the expensive carpet and falls in the mess.
"So laugh away!" says Effie Trinket. She hops in her pointy shoes around the pool of vomit and flees the room.

Ch. 4- All of the pieces are still fitting together, but I sense he has a  plan forming. He hasn't accepted his death. He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me bread, is fighting hard to kill me.

Ch. 5- Peeta is planning to kill you, I remind myself. He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likeable he is, the more deadly he is.
But because two can play this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.

Ch. 6- I pull the covers up over my head as if this will protect me from the redheaded girl who can't speak. But I can feel her eyes staring at me, piercing through the walls and doors and bedding.
I wonder if she'll enjoy watching me die.

Ch. 7- the arrow skewers the apple in the pig's mouth and pins it to the wall behind it. Everyone stares at me in disbelief.
"Thank you for your consideration," I say. Then I give a slight bow and walk straight toward the exit without being dismissed.

Okay, is that enough to get an idea of what she does?

My big breakthrough came when I realized that if I were writing THG, my chapters would have kept going. On. And ON. Primrose's name is called? I wouldn't have started a new chapter. I would have made that whole scene, with Katniss climbing the stairs and Effie congratulating them one continuous scene.

Suzanne Collins doesn't follow the classic story arc inside her chapters. She is continually cutting us off right at the climax. Then the next chapter finishes the scene up, if necessary, or if the reader can easily guess what will happen, she starts at the next scene.

Her chapters tend to be briefer than I go, also: 17, 12, 13,12, etc. Low teens, not low twenties.

I was giddy as I read through and figured it out. I promptly printed the last page of each chapter with the plan to find those high tension moments and insert a page break! Except the moments weren't there. They were back a page or two...or five.

Sometimes I found that the end of the scene was necessary and kept it. Other times, it was just me trying to wrap up all my loose ends. Which is exactly what I don't want to do! Delete! Delete! Delete!

No loose ends=no tension. No reading on to find out what happens next.

I'm not suggesting that we all have to structure our chapters that way; every story is different. But Suzanne Collins knows how to keep the reader turning pages, and I found it helpful. I hope you do too!

Any other tips on pacing? Any other authors to check out? Thanks for reading.

PS- My kitchen is now pistachio pudding green, and the foyer will soon be a buttercream. I love it. Plus the two hundred bulb I bought are in the ground. Yay!
Glutton for Punishment?

Fiction, really?

Here's my recent experience that makes the Hunger Games trilogy a lot more poignant. My husband works in the tire industry and this past weekend we went to the MotoGP races in Indianapolis. I've never been to a car/motorcycle race before, so I looked at the experience as a research opportunity. We were able to meet two of the racers at a company dinner and also go inside one of the garages on pit row and learn some cool stuff- for instance, the bikes cost in the neighborhood of 1.5 million dollars, and the riders (not drivers, they're particular about that) can make anything from a decent living to 35 million Euros. Holy. Crap.

So we went to the race, were amazed by the unbelievable, eye-blurring speed that these 800 horsepower bikes can reach (over 200 mph) and saw some very skilled people doing what they love.

This morning, Nathan called me to let me know what we hadn't heard at the race: in one of the exhibition races for up-and-coming stars, a 13 year old boy, Peter Lenz, crashed and was run over by another rider. He was pronounced dead a few hours later.

Peter Lenz in a race two years ago. These bikes are much smaller than

the MotoGP bikes, 125 HP instead of 800. AP photo from OregonLive.com

He was a skilled rider and was leading his circuit in points, according to the NYT. His father expressed that Peter had died doing something he loved. No one stuck a gun to his head and forced him to pull out on that track, but he's dead and I am left wondering how different we are than the spectators in ancient Rome. How different is the audience on race day than the spectators in the Hunger Games? Is attraction to risk just human nature? 

People die all the time. A child at my kids' school died a few days before school started as a result of a short illness. Death happens. I understand that. But I can't help feeling a bit responsible. I don't think the riders look at it that way, though.

Collin Edwards, whom I met briefly at a dinner on the Friday before the race, said this about the death of his young friend, "It's a normal racetrack and racing incidents happen. From what I understand, it was a pure racing accident.

"The fact is, it's going to happen again at some point to somebody and we hate it, but we know what's going on when we put a helmet on. We know what can happen." (Quote taken from Sky Sports)

My thoughts and prayers are with Peter's family and those who are grieving in our community.

What do you think? Can things change or are we human, always have been, always will be?

Glutton for Punishment?

I'm not obsessed. I can prove it.

Okay, I can't prove it, but you can't prove the reverse.

I found this on the blog 'Old Picture of the Day'.

This is a man, I know, but you'd be surprised at how few

beautful pictures there are of women with a bow and arrow.  

If you read Tuesday's post, you know I've been studying the opening chapter of 'The Hunger Games'. 

"Why?" you ask. "Are you obsessed?"

No! But yes! I have a little problem, you see. I had this idea that I could tell my story by letting events unfold and the reader would figure it out, like a beautiful 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, ten different people have read my first chapter and they all say basically the same thing.

That's really interesting and I want to read more, but what the heck is going on?

The first two comments are encouraging, the third I thought would resolve itself by the time they got to chapter three. But they were still confused. What to do? Info dumps are bad. Very bad.

I checked out about ten current YA books and read the openings (and more if I was intrigued enough: Shiver). But I got out a pencil and took some notes in 'The Hunger Games'. (I bought HG. I don't write in library books. Why did you think that?)

I discovered something shocking. Out of the first 109 lines (first four pages), 81 lines are exposition in past tense. Collins spends 81 lines explaining the world. I was trying to spend 0. No wonder my world is murky!

Some of the chunks of exposition are inherently interesting, like when Katniss talks about how she tried to kill the cat or how she and Gale met hunting, but some of it is about how close her house is to the woods, how often the fence is electrified, how the other coal miners are scared of the woods. 

Lesson: It's okay to explain a few things. Find what makes your world different and tell the reader. Turn on some lights and let them look around. Just don't describe the china pattern or the brand of air freshner.

Okay, back to rewriting! Remember to never follow the rules off a cliff. Thanks to the many readers who have suffered some confusion so I could figure this out. 

Any rules you've misapplied? Any tricks to share? Thanks for commenting!  

Glutton for Punishment?