I finished the fifth book, Fear, in the Gone series by Michael Grant. One of the things that I like about how he writes his book is the use of a count down for chapter headings. For example in the last book of the series, Light, I’m on chapter six. It states 73 hours, 3 minutes and chapter seven states 71 hours, 12 minutes. What this does is create a building sense of tension as you read towards the climax of the book.
In the previous books there have been periods of time after the climax like in Fear chapter thirty-eight it states 15 seconds and what would be chapter thirty-nine isn’t even called that. It is simply called Later. So for plot format and naming that would be the falling action after the climax.
The first novel that I was aware of this was Looking for Alaska by John Green. Green’s is a completely different type of book from the Gone Series, but they have the countdown for each chapter heading that I really like. I may have to try that out in some future book that I have not yet started.
What the heck does a Mountain Goat – Oreamnos americanus have to do with anything?
I have to say that one of the things that I love about being a writer is that I get to learn new odd stuff all the time. I was looking for a breed of goat to use in the middle grade novel that I’m currently working on called NDSK. The chapter is about a twelve-year-old boy who meets up with this bad-ass goat that tears most people apart. Well not Gus. Here’s the cool thing about the goat/not goat that I chose to put in my book. The North American Mountain Goat isn’t really one – it’s part of the goat-antelope family, but is a close relative.
The danger with research and writing is you can get lost doing in the research and after a few hours realize you’ve only written ten words.