This week I read Alex Shoefeld's blog and was intrigued by his topic choice. He chose to research the bystander effect. Alex discusses some reasons why the bystander effect occurs, the most common being diffusion of responsibility. When other people are around people feell less likely to do anything about the situation. Actually, the more people present, the lower the odds are for someone to take action. He even describes a test that was performed in which actors failed to react to a certain life threatening situation and the more actors in the room the fewer people responded to the danger. This is a very interesting topic that, unfortunatley, can be relevant in our everyday lives. One case that comes to mind when I hear the term bystander effect is the Kitty Genovese case. However, there is also a lot more information that Alex will be able to research for his project. I wish him luck on the rest of his work and will defintely keep an update on his future research.

I believe that we deserve a break over our vacation and should not have to do work for on-going projects or anything else. Apparently our teachers don’t feel the same way since I have more work over vacation than I’ve had all year. After three and a half years of almost non-stop work, I think we deserve a break this vacation, especially now that I already made it into college. I don’t mind doing a little work when I have all this free time and I will eventually have to do it anyway, but I think that I often get way too much work over vacation and I have to finish it all in the one day I am at home and not away.

Written novels have probably been the most helpful to me so far, since for my project I will be writing a mystery story, and they demonstrate the techniques used by various authors in writing mysteries. They also help me build my skills in being able to recognize certain hidden clues and see the best ways to disguise them. However, technology has been a contributing factor to my progress. I have researched different mystery experts to learn about their styles. I have also watched numerous movies that have given me insight into mystery. I also found some good websites on the internet that give guidelines on how to write mysteries. Without technology, I wouldn’t be able to write this blog, so I guess that’s also a positive, but then again we wouldn’t have the blog in the first place if it weren’t for technology. I think technology can still play a large part in my project as I will keep using it in the same ways I have currently been doing.

After reading Zoe’s blog I can truly say that I am fascinated. The topic of dreams, which is so deep and complex, is something that I am sure every person has grappled with. I constantly wonder about the level of awareness and the significance of the subconscious, and I think Zoe is going to really touch upon the horizon of our present day knowledge about dreams. From Biblical characters like Yosef to modern day pioneers like Freud, Zoe has a lot to work with. Although she may have initially been worried about the length of the paper, she will have plenty of material to cover, from hard facts and sources to hypotheses of her own. I will continue checking up on her blog with the hope that she will provide some insight on questions that I have always had. For instance, I dreamt last night that I got an A+ on my project…Do you know what that might mean??

Two books and one movie were particularly informative and helped me understand certain important techniques that are used to create mysteries.  For example, in “And Then There Were None,” Agatha Christie provides clues to help the reader deduce who the murderer was.  Some of these clues were easier to figure out, while others were more complex and difficult; however, the clues continuously drew the reader in to try to solve the mystery.  It also gave me insight into character development and how character development can be used to present clues or create red herrings for the reader.  These same techniques can be seen in the film Murder on the Orient Express, which is based on Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was expert at candidly presenting clues to the reader of varied complexity.  The difficulty is discerning the clues and interpreting the meaning of those clues.  His Sherlock Holmes short stories are very helpful in developing my skills of deduction which will help me create my own clues and reasoning in my mystery.  

Knowing how much time I spent getting through plot in a number of the books I read, I would have started with some locked room mysteries and the Sherlock Holmes stories, which provide less plot and helps build clue identification and deciphering skills and techniques.  This would have helped me when reading the longer mystery novels in identifying what was truly important to the mystery as compared to the red herrings and macGuffins.  I will also be more selective with the movies I watch to make sure they are true mysteries and not simply suspense thrillers.

I have had the opportunity to watch a number of movies that I believed would be helpful in depicting certain techniques relating to my topic.  Having watched these movies, I have determined that a few did not provide much assistance including North by Northwest, which wasn’t a traditional mystery, but instead was an action thriller.  There were no techniques relating to mysteries or revealing clues to the audience.  The Maltese Falcon, showed the technique called the “MacGuffin,” as coined by Alfred Hitchcock.  This is where the storyline follows a specific object that obscures the main focus and goal of the protagonists, and is unimportant to the overall storyline.  In this case, the Maltese Falcon was the MacGuffin, and the real mystery was the murder of Sam Spade’s partner and the mystery woman’s involvement.  I plan to read shorter mystery stories, including “locked room” mysteries which I will take less time to read and provide better guidance relating to techniques for providing and revealing clues.