Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Cliffhangers

Ben and I are enjoying the Author’s pattern of ending every chapter with a cliffhanger. So far each one has been an unexpected twist and makes us look forward to reading the next chapter. The characters and details are coming at us non-stop and I am finding myself being careful to absorb information, but even so I had to go back to find the reference when Sammy met Bill Eckert and realized she was the guy she had ‘bumped into at the mall’.

I was thinking that the ‘Characters’ panel needs to be reworked into four categories.

“Main characters”: Sammy, Grams, Marissa, Heather Acosta, etc.
“Special”: Characters that have some special quality that may prove useful in solving the crime. For example, Oscar and his figure eight sales route and prowess at giving change.
“Suspects”: Do we have any yet?
“Other”: Interesting Characters that we do not fit into the other categories.

Does this seem like a good idea? Do you agree or disagree with the catagories?

What characters did we meet in Chapters 7 & 8? What category would each fall in and why?

2 Comments:

Ben said...

I think that leaving cliffhangers at the end of each chapter pulls you into the story. It makes you curious about what’s going to happen next. If you don’t know, you just want to go back and find out. Cliffhangers are like magnets to your mind.

I do not think we should separate a characters section. I just think we should put the minor characters at the bottom, and the major characters at the top. Although a suspects section would be nice.

We met two (really one and a half) characters in these two chapters. One of the characters is Hudson. We really don’t know much about him, except for the fact he’s a friend of Sam. The other character we “met” was Bill, who was really the guy Sam ran into at the mall. We didn’t find out a lot about him.

Mr. Z said...

Since I wrote the post I obviously like the idea, though I could be persuaded that my set of categories should be different.

In Chapters 7 & 8 we met -
Hudson Graham: odd furry booted neighbor that loves books and has a great memory. He thinks like a sleuth. He definitely would fit in the ‘special’ category.
Bill Eckert: odd new tenant of Hudson. He doesn’t talk much. It would seem like he is more likely to become a suspect then an assistant in solving the crime.
Mr. Garnucci: Building Manager at the Senior Highrise. I am tempted to call him an ‘other’ character but the fact that he ‘practically lives in the lobby’ and he ‘knows everybody’ could be useful.
Rommel: Hudson’s digging dog. He has already unearthed one clue, who is to say that he will not uncover more?

By the way:
7: Its only a matter of time
8: Uncovered