Full Circle of The Hunger Games
"The exit is usually where the entrance was."
-Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
If you know me from my Facebook page, then you know I collect a lot of quotes about writing. This was one that really spoke to me when I saw it. The idea of coming full circle in your story was something I had not thought of before. It makes sense, though. Sometimes you need to follow a character through their entire journey and end up where you started, just so you can see how far they have come.
***The Hunger Games Spoiler Alert*** A great example of this is The Hunger Games
trilogy by Susanne Collins. When the trilogy opens, we first meet Buttercup, who is the cat belonging to the main character's sister. The whole beginning is about how much, the mains character and the cat don't like each other. It seems simple enough and something I am sure most of us didn't think twice about. What we didn't realize was that the author was actually setting us up for the ending. We follow our main Character, Katniss, to hell and back on several occasions, and over almost a thousand pages.
We are with her every step of the way and then at the very end it all comes back to her in her house with the same cat. After everything that has happened, they both realize that all they have left is each other. They finally bond, signaling to the reader, that you grow closer through the experiences you share, no matter how traumatic. It's a very intimate moment because no one else is in the room except for us, the reader, who went through the whole journey with them.
So how can this help you? I know a lot of writer's have a hard time coming up with an ending for their work. So, next time you're stuck, think about how it all started and see if you can get your character back there, and if you do, how will they be different because what they have been through?
