Since the latest and final installment in the Twilight film saga, Breaking Dawn, has just recently hit the silver screens, why not update your trivia knowledge on the books that made the hugely successful film franchise possible? Most people can name the main characters in both the films and the books, and are aware that the book was penned by Stephanie Meyer. However, there are lots of fun facts about the Twilight series of books that might change the way you experience the film. To boot, you get to learn things about your favorite story and characters out there, so scroll down, for glittery-vampire-filled trivia!
1. Stephenie Meyer’s Smashing Debut
Since Twilight mania first started to sweep across the globe, a few years back, it seems nearly impossible to go anywhere without ‘bumping into’ something Twi-related. However, few people are aware that now hugely successful author Stephenie Meyer had never written, much less published anything prior to Twilight. She was a stay-at-home mom with a penchant for scrapbooking. According to the author herself, she first put pen to paper after one of her most vivid dreams, which ended up a fragment of the first book.
2. Speed and Success
You might think it takes years, or even decades, to produce a hit book. Sometimes, this is actually the case – there are many literary classics out there whose completion drove their authors to ruin, hopelessness or even suicide. However, nothing could be less true of the Twilight saga. Stephenie Meyer completed the first installment of the four Twilight books in no more than three months.
3. Rejection Doesn’t Have to Mean a Thing
Nobody really likes to be rejected in life, and many of us take it the wrong way, seeing it as an end-all, be-all to our most privately held hopes and dreams. Luckily, this does not apply to resilient Stephenie Meyer, who survived no fewer than nine formal rejections of her written Twilight saga, from various editors, literary agents and publishing house officials. Additionally, five of the first queries she sent out for the first book were never even replied to. Bet those people are sorry now…
4. ‘Write What You Know’ Is Relative
One of the most oft dispensed pieces of advice that young or debutant writers receive is that it’s best to write about the places, people and lifestyles they know. If Stephenie Meyer had abided by this piece of popular wisdom, the Twilight saga would have never been set in the town of Forks, Washington. In real life, Meyer only visited the place in 2004, a whole year after she had had the dream that prompted her to write the first book.
5. What’s in a Name?
The name of the child that Bella gives birth to in Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight saga, is Renesmee. Many critics, and even a substantial proportion of TwiHards, have commented negatively on this choice of name. Accordingly, Stephenie Meyer herself dislikes fancy, odd or otherwise unusual baby names and would prefer if people stick to regular names. This, even in spite of the fact that her own first name is not spelled the conventional way.
6. Record Breaking Book
Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in the Twilight saga was an instant hit of never-before-seen proportions. In the first day of its release, the book sold a whopping, record-breaking 1.3 million copies. As a matter of fact, The Hachette Book Group, which had initially estimated demand for the book at 3.2 million copies and printed accordingly, had to supplement their print volume. They printed an additional half a million copies before publication.
7. Author! Author!
Unlike several other authors whose literary works were adapted by Hollywood to great commercial success, Stephenie Meyer has not kept away from the Twilight film franchise. The author made a cameo appearance in the first Twilight film as a patron of the Forks Diner. She now returns for a similar performance in Breaking Dawn – astute and impassioned readers and fans will surely be able to spot her at Edward and Bella’s wedding.
8. Keeping up with Technology
It’s a well-known fact that adapting a book into a film is a lengthy-time consuming process, no matter how efficient the production team, or how interested they, too, might be, in seeing the movie be released as soon as possible. In the best possible scenarios (and the Twilight saga is one of the luckier adaptation instances out there), it still takes a couple of years for a book to smoothly transition to film. As such, technologies employed in books sometimes become outdated by the time the film is released. Case in point: in the book, Bella uses a portable CD player. By the time film opened, it had been replaced with and updated to an iPod.
9. Fact and Fiction
Not many of you know this, but Forks High School, the main backdrop to your favorite heroes’ trials and tribulations, is an actual, real-life place. If you’re really into school spirit and call yourself a true TwiHard, you can order memorabilia emblazoned with the Spartan logo onlne.
10. The Volturi Transition
Not to give away any spoilers, but many have commented on the change in attitude displayed by the Volturi. It seems that, as the Twilight saga draws to an end, the clan transitions from the vampire role into a parental role. This might be ascribe to the fact that Stephenie Meyer’s own mother suggested to the author that she amp up the action at the end of New Moon.
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