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Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing

Fixing Details

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Spring Break has been, for all intents and purposes, very productive for me. During one of my rereads of Clan of Ash, I discovered a slight plot hole. It’s not really a plot hole. It’s more like the suspension of disbelief would have been stretched very far. And I like to avoid that.

Fixing this wasn’t too hard. I was able to make some dialogue changes. Some scenes had to be reworked but all in all, it went well. I still have to rewrite an entire scene though and make a few modifications down the road. Luckily, I printed out the manuscript and made some notes for me. I find easier to edit on paper as oppose to editing on my computer. I don’t have to scroll too much. Plus it’s easy for me to organize everything.

One thing I will say about organization is that I have yet to try Scrivener. As some might recall, I mentioned that as one of the winner of NaNoWriMo last November we got some goodies. One of those goodies involved a coupon of sorts for Scrivener. I plan to put this to use for Camp NaNoWriMo in April.

I’m looking forward to the experience and how it’ll effect my work from now. It should be interesting.

Posted in updates, Writing

Doubts and Optimism

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

#Pitmad came and went without any success. I prepared over ten different pitches for Clan of Ash but they didn’t work. With this, I can’t help but think that maybe I should put Clan of Ash away for awhile and try to get it published later.

I know there’s self-publishing out there but I don’t want to do that for this book. I have another, Crimson Queen, that I would self-publish but not Clan of Ash. Maybe I’m being stubborn but I want to see Clan of Ash make through the traditional route. Call be stubborn or delusional. I just can’t help it. It just so happens to be a goal of mine.

I try to keep myself from overthinking whether or not I should keep trying to publish Clan of Ash. I know getting publish is tough and famous people had tons of rejection letters. At some point, I just wonder and then I realize that if I stopped, I’ll most definitely regret and that’s a part of what keeps me going.

Even though I wasn’t successful this year, many of my fellow writers on twitter got there tweets liked and I’m super happy for them. I really hope they manuscripts get published. I saw a lot of good pitches yesterday. Luckily, there are more opportunities for #Pitmad coming in June so I’m not discourage.

If anything, I optimistic. I know there’s more opportunities and it’s not like I’m going to quit. Luckily, I am also keeping myself busy with other projects. I’m going to keep working towards my goals until I succeed and even after, I’ll keep going.

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing

Camp NaNoWriMo -April

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

As March beings, I came to realize that Camp NaNoWriMo in April is only now 29 days away. After giving it some thought, I decided to participate. However, I’m going to be doing something different this time around. Instead of starting a new novel, I’m going to continue a novel.

The novel I’m specifically talking about is Crimson Queen. I mentioned before that finishing that novel was a goal I have for this year. With NaNoWriMo in April, I think it’s the perfect opportunity to work on one of my goals.

Luckily for me, continuing to work on the novel is going to be a bit easier than starting from scratch. This is due to the fact that I already know what’s going to happen. The outline has already been set. While I might change up some things here and there, for the most part, everything is set in stone. I know I mentioned about letting creativity and the characters move the story, but for this one, the story is already set. All that matters is writing is now. I’ve taken everything that I needed to from the original story of Crimson Queen and implemented it into the revision. I’ve got all my notes and all that’s left is to write.

While April is still some time away, I’m not going to stop working on Crimson Queen. I’m going to keep writing. When April comes around, I’ll be, basically, adding 50k more words to what I already have. Now, I don’t think doing this will be difficult. For one, Crimson Queen is a fantasy novel.

In the original story, I had only written about 30k words for the novel. At the moment, I have around 13k words and I’m just in the beginning. In the months since I finished the original story for Crimson Queen, I have added so much content that wasn’t there originally and there is still so much more to add. While 50k words are a lot, I doubt I will complete the full revision in April. This is the reason why I’m still going to work on the story in March. I want to get a lot of work done so, when April comes around, I can focus on the last 50k words.

In truth, even I can’t exactly gauge how many words it’s going to take me to complete finish the revision before going back in there and proofreading and all that good stuff. However, it’s a start and I think it’s going to go well. But, with all things, only time can tell.

Posted in Methods, Writing

RP and Storytelling

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

It’s been close to a year that I fully got into playing Dungeons and Dragons. It’s been a lot less than that since I took up the role as a Dungeon Master.

In this role, I basically give the players a situation, e.g. they are hired as guards by a merchant to escort him and her goods to the next trade city, and they play out tue scenarios as they wish. Of course, this situations are part of modules and hard-cover campaigns so mostly everything is scripted.

As a player, I’ve had really good DMs. They manage to bring the world to life with a couple of words and it’s so easy to imagine everything that’s happening in the scene and round by round. It’s flawless how they can paint so vivid images. As a DM (dungeon master), I know I will never be able to do that.

It’s not like I’m putting myself done or anything. I just know that that’s never going to be me. I won’t be able to paint vivid worlds with the spoken word, I plan to do this through the written world.

Lately, I’ve been hyper aware of how I described an environment/scene to my players. They rely on me for information and it’s my job to provide it to them. This is similar to writing a story. The readers need information, not only to comprehend what’s going on but also to imagine the world you’ve built in your head.

This has helped me in my writing because describing the situation or environment in speech tells me that maybe I’ve forgotten to include sensory details or perhaps one social interaction didn’t go so smoothly.

By taking note on all of this, writing and describing things has gotten easier. I’m aware of what I’m missing and try to include everything I can. Of course, I do this in moderation. Personally, I don’t like to bog down my readers with so much description. I try to only include all the necessary information.

While I haven’t exactly perfected all of this and I have a long way to go, I’m going to keep learning. I believe as a writer that there’s always something new to learn. Perhaps one writing style doesn’t fit a genre or theme. The beauty of it is that I can try new things and figure out what works with the story I want to write.

Posted in Writing

Working towards the Goal

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

This week has been full of headaches and too much drama. Valentine’s Day was nice. I stayed home and played WoW (World of Warcraft) with my fiancé. Granted, running D&D campaigns has been a good hobby and a stress reliever. Playing Savage Worlds (ETU) has also been great too. Come to think of it, I have a lot of things to be thankful for. I just need to remember that there’s more good than bad.

Speaking of good, I learned something very useful. While it is a little embarrassing to say this, I will say it anyways. I finally learned how to make an em dash in Word while only using my keyboard (CTRL+ALT+ -). Somehow, I feel like I should have known this shortcut but didn’t. At least, now I know.

I have also been going through Sarah’s edits of the 8k words I sent her, and it’s been very helpful. One of my goals this year is to send Clan of Ash agents by the summer. While I have more agents to research, I’m looking forward to it.

The rewrite of Crimson Queen is going well. There’s a scene that can go in two different directions and I think I made my decision. I’m going with the easier approach as to why my main character is alive and nobody knows about this. Plus, this approach also adds to the conflict later on and the risk factor goes up. There’s always a present danger of my main character being found out.

While I still have a lot to do, I’m steadily working towards my goal even if it’s a little bit at a time.