The Divergent Series Complete Collection (106 page)

VERONICA
: This quote was actually integral to my discovery of Tris’s voice. I wanted to create a character who could and would deliver that line, and Tris can and will. Her voice is clipped, direct, and strong, just like these lines.

“My will is mine … I shall not make it soft for you.”

—Agamemnon,
Aeschylus

VERONICA
: Sometimes I imagine Tris repeating this to herself during her initiation, over and over again.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

—Dune
by Frank Herbert

VERONICA
: This, I imagine, is what Tris’s enemies would say to her. And they would be wrong.

“Well, let her know the stubbornest of wills

Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron,

O’er-heated in the fire to brittleness,

Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.”

—Antigone,
Sophocles

VERONICA
: A word of advice to the faction that causes so much trouble—and to every flawed human being.

“But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

—Galatians 5:15

VERONICA
: These lines, I imagine, would inspire the people in Tris’s world to fight the good fight.

“Hold on to the world we all remember fighting for

There’s some strength left in us yet

Hold on to the world we all remember dying for

There’s some hope left in it yet

Arise and be

All that you dreamed.”

—“Arise” by Flyleaf

VERONICA
: For Tris and the people who help her at the end.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in the old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

—“Ulysses,” Lord Alfred Tennyson

1. “Starts With One” by Shiny Toy Guns. This song gets me in touch with the good aspects of Beatrice’s chosen faction.

2. “Chasm” by Flyleaf. And this song gets me in touch with the
bad
aspects of Beatrice’s chosen faction.

3. “Come Alive” by Foo Fighters. This is the love interest’s song for Beatrice.

4. “Again” by Flyleaf. And this is Beatrice’s song for her love interest.

5. “Help I’m Alive” by Metric. This is Beatrice’s initiation song.

6. “We Die Young” by The Showdown. This might as well be the theme song for Beatrice’s chosen faction—it’s what they would choose for themselves.

7. “Canvas” by Imogen Heap. This is the “riding on trains” song.

8. “Running Up That Hill” by Placebo. The tone of this song matches the tone of much of the book, for me.

9. “Sweet Sacrifice” by Evanescence. I was listening to this song when the first scene I wrote (in chapter 6) popped into my head. That scene led me to the world of the book and its basic plot.

10. “Arise” by Flyleaf. A powerful song that’s perfect for chapters 38 and 39.

MY TIPS INVOLVE A SERIES OF STAGES
:

STAGE ONE
: Word Vomit. (Sorry for the graphic image there.) Just write. Do not reread what you’ve just written, even if you don’t remember it and you want to check it for the sake of consistency. Don’t do it! You will be tempted to edit, and editing before you finish the draft is the enemy of writing progress.

STAGE TWO
: Let it sit for a while. This is a good time for you to reconnect with friends and family you may have neglected while writing, and to recharge your writer batteries, so to speak. Not writing is as important as writing—go out into the world and remember how interesting it, and the people in it, are.

STAGE THREE
: Reread, and make notes. I prefer the Microsoft Word in-text comments, but I have also used notebooks. I try to write down big, plot-or-character-shifting things the first time I reread. Like “remove this character” or “the end has to happen differently” or “set up this huge plot element earlier in the story.”

STAGE FOUR
: Rip draft to shreds. The phrase “murder your darlings” (meaning: the stuff in your manuscript that you love best is probably the stuff that needs to go—and you have to be willing to get rid of it) has been important to me in developing as a writer. I try to make it a big, dramatic event wherein I save my old draft, copy-paste the text into a new document, and start deleting huge sections of text. It hurts, but it’s oddly liberating. The story can become something new now—something better than it was before, something it couldn’t become if you clung to everything.

STAGE FIVE
: Start writing again.

1. What purpose does each of the five factions serve in society? What personality types are drawn toward each faction? Do you think these factions represent every basic personality type and fulfill all the basic needs of people? If not, what faction(s) would you create to fill in any gaps?

2. What was the reason behind the creation of the factions? Do you agree or disagree that such a system is a beneficial way to structure a society? Do you think the factions are working “toward a better society and a better world” as they say they are? What about the structure seems to be working for Tris’s society? What doesn’t seem to be working at all?

3. What faction do you think you would have been born into, given your family and its values? Which faction would you select at your Choosing Ceremony? Why? How would you feel about making a decision that would determine your life’s course at the age of sixteen?

4. What choices have you made that have transformed you? What future choices might you also make, and how do you think that they will change you?

5. How does the idea of “faction before blood” come into play throughout the book? Do you think this idea has a place in today’s society, or is it contrary to what most people believe? In our society, what ideas and beliefs are people loyal to in the way Tris’s society is loyal to the concept of the factions?

6. Why is Tris’s government run only by members of Abnegation? Do you think this is a good idea? Do you agree with her father’s statement that “valuing knowledge above all else results in a lust for power, and that leads men into dark and empty places”? Why or why not?

7. What does it mean to be factionless in Tris’s society? How does a person become factionless?

8. Tris says about Candor, “It must require bravery to be honest all the time.” Do you agree? Which do you think is a braver faction, Dauntless or Candor? Would you like to live in a society like Candor, where everyone tells the truth no matter how hard it is to hear?

9. During initiation, is it selfish of Tris to crave victory, or is it brave? Do Tris’s friends have a right to be jealous when she’s ranked above them? If you were Tris, would you forgive them for their reactions?

10. How does initiation change and transform Tris? Do you think she made the right faction choice? How do you think she might have changed if she had chosen one of the other factions?

11. What is the difference between being fearless and learning to control your fears? Do you believe anyone can be truly fearless? What does Tris mean when she says that “half of bravery is perspective”?

12. Is Four’s desire to be “brave, and selfless,
and
smart,
and
kind,
and
honest” realistic in the society in which he lives? Discuss examples of people in our own world who successfully bridge different cultures, perspectives, or ways of living.

13. Tris’s mom says, “Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.” Do you agree or disagree? Why?

14. At the beginning of the book, Tris does not understand what it means to be Divergent. How do you think she would explain it by the end of the book?

15. When Tris encounters her old neighbor Robert after their Choosing Ceremony, he is concerned about her choice and insists, “You should be happy.” Tris responds, “The goal of my life isn’t just … to be happy.” If Robert had then asked what
is
the goal of Tris’s life, what do you think she would have said? If asked again at the end of the book, do you think she’d answer in the same way? How would you answer this question, if asked?

If utopian fiction became the new trend, instead of dystopian fiction, I wouldn’t read it.

If you actually succeed in creating a utopia, you’ve created a world without conflict, in which everything is perfect. And if there’s no conflict, there are no stories worth telling—or reading! It would be all “Jenny thought she might not be able to attain her lifelong dream of marshmallow taste tester for a little while … but she did!” and “John’s dad said he couldn’t go to the movies, so John asked really nicely and his dad changed his mind.” I’m bored already.

But if I were going to create a utopia, I would make a world in which people are focused on their personal, moral obligations, and strive to be the best possible version of themselves. They would be allowed to choose whatever path they wanted in life. They would know what was expected of them, they would have a clear purpose, and they would have a strong sense of group identity and belonging. And there would be five factions....

Oh, wait. I tried that already.

But seriously:
DIVERGENT
was my utopian world. I mean, that wasn’t the plan. I never even set out to write
dystopian
fiction, that’s just what I had when I was finished—at the beginning, I was just writing about a place I found interesting, and a character with a compelling story, and as I began to build the world, I realized that it was my utopia. And then I realized that my utopia was a terrible place, and no one should ever put me in charge of creating a perfect society.

Maybe it’s a little depressing to think that my vision of a perfect world is actually so messed up, but I think it means that I don’t really understand what “perfect” is. To me it’s all about virtue and responsibility; to someone else it would be about happiness and peace, and happy drugs would be pumped into the water supply—but that sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? Because both of us are wrong about perfect. We have no idea what it would look like, and our approximations of it are incomplete.

And that gives me a lot of hope, because if I don’t know what perfect means, it’s not something I can reach on my own. Which means that I can stop trying to be perfect and just try to love the people around me and the things I’m doing. And strangely enough, that’s Tris’s journey. She tries selflessness on for size, and then she tries bravery, but at the end, it’s what she does out of love that’s more important than any virtue.

I think maybe utopian fiction would actually look just like dystopian fiction, depending on who you are. To the heartbroken person, a world that eradicates love might be a utopia; to the rest of us, it isn’t. To the person who doesn’t have a plan, a world in which everything is planned out for you might be a utopia; to those of us who like to choose our own adventure, it’s definitely not.

So maybe I’ve changed my mind—maybe I would read utopian fiction. Or
maybe I already am
. What a scary thought.

I have been asked in the past if I made up the words for the faction names. I didn’t, but I did intentionally choose unfamiliar words, for an assortment of reasons. One of them is that I wanted to slow down comprehension of what each faction stands for, so you learn as much by observing as by the name of the faction itself. Another is that the definitions of the more obscure words are more specific, in interesting ways. And a third is—since I’m being honest here—that they sound cooler.

People have also commented that the faction names are different parts of speech—three nouns (Candor, Amity, Abnegation) and two adjectives (Dauntless, Erudite). (For the record, I love this kind of grammar consciousness.) I am aware of that, and it was something I thought about in revisions. The reason for the discrepancy is that each faction chose their own names independently, just as they wrote their own manifestos independently, and formed their own customs and rules independently (to a certain extent, anyway). Keeping that in mind, I tried to pick the words that made the most sense for each faction without considering the other factions too much.

Abnegation
: 1. to refuse or deny oneself (some rights, conveniences, etc.); reject; renounce. 2. to relinquish; give up

VERONICA:
I like the verbs in that first definition: “refuse,” “deny,” “reject,” “renounce”—active forms of stripping things from your life. As opposed to “relinquish,” “give up” in the second definition—which are more passive.

Amity
: 1. friendship; peaceful harmony. 2. mutual understanding and a peaceful relationship, especially between nations; peace; accord. 3. cordiality

VERONICA
:
It’s not just about banjos and apple-picking. It’s about cultivating strong relationships and trying to understand each other. Oh, Amity.

Candor
: 1. the state or quality of being frank, open, and sincere in speech or expression; candidness. 2. freedom from bias; fairness; impartiality.

VERONICA
:
That definition helped me flesh out Candor more, particularly in the second book,
INSURGENT
. The faction is not just trying to develop honesty—they’re also trying to develop impartiality.

Dauntless
: fearless, undaunted. (Undaunted: courageously resolute, especially in the face of danger or difficulty; not discouraged.)

VERONICA
:
It’s those two definitions (“fearless” and “undaunted”) that I found so fascinating. Being fearless and being undaunted are two different things. And the characters in
DIVERGENT
struggle with that distinction.

Erudite:
characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly

VERONICA
:
The word “erudite” focuses on knowledge rather than intelligence—intelligence being something you’re born with and can’t necessarily control, and knowledge being something that you acquire. I find that interesting, given what I know about Erudite.