Let’s talk story structure, shall we?
On the day of publication, we don’t need to get past the Table of Contents for some interesting discussion. Looking at my Audible book TOC, I see that, as I predicted (sort of!) yesterday, Collins has returned to her structural touchstone, namely, a twenty-seven chapter book with epilogue, divided into three equal Parts having nine chapters each. All the Gregor the Overlander books were in this formatting and the first three Hunger Games novels were, too. Only Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by far the longest novel written by Collins at over 500 pages, broke with this preferred structure; it, too, though, had three Parts with an equal number of chapters in each, ten instead of nine.
Sunrise at only 400 pages is back to Collins’ signature story form. She has given titles to none of the chapters, again per formula, but to each of the novel’s three Parts: The Birthday, the Rascal, and The Poster. If you’ve read the ‘Sneak Peeks,’ you know that Haymitch Abernathy’s birthday is the Fourth of July, Reaping Day in Panem, and that this year’s Quarter Quell reaping will be the beginning of his new life, a change in status as radical as that of a newborn leaving the womb for life in the world of air. Who ‘The Rascal’ is and who or what ‘The Poster’ is, I’m sure will be clear on our first reading.
What I hope we can discuss is Collins’ structure as such, the Dantean three squared chapter numbers in each of the three Parts for three cubed novel length. Is Sunrise on the Reaping a three-act drama a la her first three Hunger Games novels? Is the book a ring composition — with each of its three Parts of nine chapters being a ring within the ring? If the prequel series is to be a three-parter in parallel with the first three books, does the center of prequel Book Two line up with the story beginning in the way that chapter 14 of Catching Fire did with the series opening?
Share your thoughts below!
Sunrise on the Reaping Placeholder Posts:
1: First Impressions — Delight or Dismay?
