The Hunger Games is a story about children who are forced to kill other children. There are few things more morally despicable than that.
Yet by telling a robust story with well-developed characters and conflicts, the storytellers draw us in, maintain our attention, and even inspire us to root for one specific child to be successful in killing the other children.
That’s the power of well-crafted story.
The Hunger Games perfectly utilizes the novel matrix method. Even though you’ve never read another book like it, it’s doing the same things that every great story does.
A well-developed universe, the three-act structure, five conflicts, and seven influential characters…it’s hitting all of the marks that we would expect from a great story. This proves what lines you can get your reader to cross with you with a great story, and also demonstrates that these methods don’t prevent you from telling a truly unique and remarkable story.
The movie and the book by Suzanne Collins are remarkably similar, but the notes here are based specifically on the 2012 movie adaptation of The Hunger Games.
One Universe
The Hunger Games is ambitious in its world-building, and utilizes a Dune-esque “less is more” approach. As you can see on the chart, there are a number of world-building elements that directly impact the plot and must be developed.
The storytellers utilize a conversation with Gale and a documentary-style video of the Capitol’s history to quickly fill in lots of backstory (which was accomplished more subtly in the book version).
As benign as it seems, the scene of Katniss hunting in the opening of the movie is one of the most important to the world-building. The audience needs to see that she is a skilled tracker and survivalist, and a master archer, long before it becomes important to the story.
For the purposes of this example, I’ve only included a few notes on the worksheet to demonstrate the type of information that you should include in each box. For a story like this, however, there should be a lot more information included in your planning. These boxes aren’t big enough. The “social classes” and “The Hunger Games” sections could easily have a page of rules and notes each.
Three Acts
The Hunger Games follows a fairly typical three-act structure. Science fiction and fantasy stories often slightly elongate the first act to accommodate all of the world-building that must be accomplished, and this is no exception. Here the first act is stretched to almost the 50% mark of the story, which is even longer than typical.
This extended length is assuaged by a second “Old College Try.” The first being Katniss’s attempt to play the game and win favor as the “girl on fire” in the tribute parade, the second being her audacious audition in which she shoots the pig on the judge’s buffet table. These dueling Old College Tries also draw out Katniss’s philosophical conflict in which she must decide how she’s going to play the game.
The story begins with an exceptionally long “Save the Cat” sequence, culminating in Katniss volunteering to replace her sister Primrose in The Hunger Games. Prior to that moment, we see that Katniss is the loving head of her household and an overall beloved person. The emphasis on the Save the Cat is necessary because the story later requires Katniss to do absolutely depraved things. Because she’s well-established as a good and selfless person, it’s easier for us to accept that she kills other children later in the story.
The story also deviates from what we typically expect in the Denouement, in which more time is taken than typical to set up later books in the series. In general, this is not advisable unless specifically done in coordination with the publisher when the sequel is guaranteed. In any case, the first book in a series must be a complete story, which we have here.
Five Conflicts
We definitely have five conflicts in the story, however, the Big World philosophical conflict is weakly developed.
This works because the other conflicts are so severe. Katniss’s internal conflict is morally insurmountable, her Little World philosophical conflict is very well developed by the supporting characters, and her Little World external conflict is all-engrossing.
When it comes to the Big World philosophical conflict, we really don’t know what the districts want or believe. In the Big World, we have a clear sense of good guys and bad guys, or oppressor and oppressed, but little more. We do see quite a bit of President Snow’s (our Mega-antagonist) thoughts and feelings about control, and his desire for it, but the districts are significantly underdeveloped. Collins later uses this to her advantage, especially in the third book, as it turns out that philosophically the rebel district leadership is equally as corrupt and controlling as the existing leadership at the Capitol. We can see in the first book that the districts have been willing to accept the Capitol’s brutality in exchange for peaceful relations, but this is the limit of what we see.
Seven Characters
For the most part, these characters fall perfectly into their archetypes. In the opening of the story, Gale helps the reader to understand the rules of the universe, right and wrong, etc. Shortly into the first act, Gale is sidelined and Haymitch takes over that responsibility.
The only character role with any ambiguity is the Sidekick. Remember that the Sidekick brings tools, skills, and relationships to the protagonist, and also provides a sounding board for the protagonist to express her internal thoughts. When we look at the story with this definition in mind, Cinna perfectly fits the bill. Cinna makes Katniss beautiful in a way that she cannot on her own, which is important to her character arc, and she expresses herself safely to him.
The Hunger Games is an excellent example of choosing a specific antagonist when there’s a cohort of bad guys. Even though Katniss must defeat 23 other tributes, the storytellers continuously draw Cato into focus as the head of the snake. We really can’t develop and keep track of 23 tributes, so the emphasis is placed on one. Even though we can focus on and emotionally relate primarily to Cato, we don’t lose the sense of the group and its individual members in the process.
The Hunger Games Notes
The Hunger Games is a master class in world-building and in pushing your reader’s moral boundaries.
By developing a robust Little World philosophical and internal conflict (which are very different from each other!), the viewer is invited into Katniss’s no-win situation. Because this is well development, we can sympathize with the actions she takes, even though from an objective standpoint most of us can’t condone the boundaries Katniss will cross.
Suzanne Collins does an excellent job of developing the story’s universe before the story requires those elements, so the story never feels contrived.
The characters are each nuanced and complex, but in a way that lends itself to the primary plotline. Despite the many competing interests, the story does not feel disjointed. Collins masterfully draws Cato to the front of the pack as a single antagonist and makes the story digestible and relatable to the viewer/reader.
The Hunger Games proves the value of a great Save the Cat moment. The movie spends 15 minutes on an elaborate Save the Cat sequence to show us how noble and good Katniss is. This is absolutely critical for us to root for her as she enters into and participates in a world of total moral depravity.
Further, the story does an excellent job of taking away Katniss’s agency. The reader feels that she has no choice and is stuck in an unwinnable situation.
The Hunger Games proves that with a well-developed story, your reader will stick with your protagonist through thick and thin, no matter what boundaries she “must” cross.
Using the Novel Matrix method, you can achieve the same results. The Novel Matrix helps you ensure that you’re building a robust story and hitting those critical story marks, to keep the reader engaged and rooting for your protagonist…even if she has to do terrible things.
Ready to get started? Pick up your own copy of The Novel Matrix on Amazon (click here) and put these principles to work in your storytelling.
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