I have, what I can only call, a ‘Hunger Games’ moment in my story. Around fifteen characters are put into a deep arena carved into an island. They have to survive a night while traveling to the middle and battle it out to find the winner. The winner gets lifted out and the others have to climb out the rock wall sides with nothing but their hands.
They’re not allowed to actually kill each other during this but they do beat the utter shit out of each other.
Just wondering how yall might feel about this. It’s a fantasy story and this part is called The Physicals and it’s actually not the big plot point. Do you guys like Hunger Games type moments in fiction?
It sounds like you are doing this more for character development. I agree it needs to be higher stakes, otherwise the set up seems staged almost. But I don’t have a problem with a situation like that as long as it makes sense to the story and isn’t needless. It should contribute something to the plot, as well as the characters. Also, I wouldn’t make it too similar to the hunger games, I’d add some more original elements if you can.
Have whomever is running this kidnap a family member out of nowhere to force desperation on these people. “We will treat them kindly, but if you don’t give it your all, their life will end.”
That could be fulfilled by just taking them away from family, not actually killing them, but people hear the worst.
Leeroy smuggles in contrabamd explosives and sets them off taking a 3rd the competition with them when his butt is literally the last things on their minds (in chunks)
Leeroy is now the example of why you get a thorough body cavity search.
Can you write a scene with 15 characters that is interesting? If so, kudos and go for it. If not, and it doesn’t do much, then I wouldn’t. Usually, the more characters are there in a fight, the more boring it becomes. Duel is imo the most fun.
It was going to be a scene with a little class hand to hand fight and then history classes and such but I had people tell me it was underwhelming and boring. So I thought it’d be much more fun to show them fighting in a more complex way that can both show off character personality but also give a more aggressive battle.
It’s not going to follow all of them at the same time. It shows a handful of them over a couple days. It’s sort of broken up into three sections.
When they’re first released into the arena and have to prepare for their first night there. That’s a perfect area to show some of the softer characters that are avoidant in a fight.
Then you have the scene where they get close to the middle and the violence begins. It’s the best place to show off the aggressive players in the competition and who’s the best physically since they win and get lifted out of the arena.
Finally, you get to see them hike together to the outer walls and have to climb out this very dangerous area with nothing but their hands and maybe teamwork, which would be amazing to show off characters who are more inclined to follow our main character when he gets in trouble later on in the story and show off characters who can’t stand defeat and get upset and defensive.
And you get this nice story of survival and violence to keep you interested while you read. So it’s a lot like hunger games and how you learn about the characters in a fast paced environment just without the final strike that kills them.
