Tag: fantasy

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing

And . . . Go!

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Camp NaNoWriMo isn’t going as I expected. Due to Easter, I’m behind about a thousand words. I’ve been catching up gradually but I haven’t exactly caught up. I’m not worried about not being on target. I believe I can still catch up and finish on time.

The story is progressing as expected. A few changes have been made some conversations because they simply didn’t make sense. It’s also probably because I didn’t know what I wanted to reveal in those conversations and they didn’t have a point. They didn’t do anything for the world or story. I needed to change that. I tend to only keep conversations that move the story forward in some shape or form.

Another thing I encountered while writing was the lack of characterization of one of my major characters. While he is a warrior and a devoted knight to the Church, I don’t think I was portraying him that way. He seemed bland or maybe it was just me. Either way, I needed change him.

Lastly, there’s one ‘issue’ I’ve been mulling over. While Crimson Queen is third person, I have the opportunity to change POV once in a while. There’s information I want to include that the main character wouldn’t know but I don’t know if it’s needed or not. I don’t want the reader to feel that I’m just dropping information on them all of a sudden. I think I’ll just add the information and see how that works for the story.

Decisions, decisions.

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 Game Reviews, NaNoWriMo, Writing

Camp NaNoWriMo, Day 11

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

I’m happy to announce that I did manage to catch up on my word count. Thanks to careful planning and calculations on my part, I have been able to reach my word count for the day without sacrificing any other activities.

There’s been a lot going on lately. My sister and I agreed not to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo for our collaboration story. Unfortunately, there were too many things that we needed to work on and it just wasn’t the right time to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo together. Luckily for me, I had been writing my own story so I’ll continue to write that one on my own.

With the collaboration story, my sister and I still intend to write the story. That hasn’t changed. We just won’t be on a deadline per say to write it. It’s a bit disappointing but it couldn’t be helped. For next time, I’ll be fully prepared for a collaboration story if it presents itself.

A few other things going on is that I have also been working on other stories as well. Now, these aren’t other side projects for Camp NaNoWriMo. No, I’m not capable of doing something like that. Writing 50,000 words for one novel is tough enough. I’m not doing that for two. What I meant is that I’m writing weekly chapters for one of my stories on wattpad. It’s called The Vampire Prince goes to High School.

Yes, I know how it sounds. To be truthful, I don’t even like this story. It would be no issue for me if I stopped writing it. However, there are too many fans that like this story and so that is why I continue to write. I do it for the fans. They deserve closure and I’m going to give it them.

The other side project I mention is the rewrite of Crimson Queen. It’s another story that I wrote on wattpad and it’s been completed. I have been rewriting the entire story and adding more depth and side stories. The first draft was just plot and it needs to be beefed up a bit more.

These side projects keep my creative juices from drying out. Writing one story, motivates me to write another. It might explain why I am exhausted by now but I won’t stop. I will reach my goal.

Lastly, another one of my game reviews has been posted. It’s called Shapeless. You can read it here. It’s a game where you match shapes to create a different shape. The tricky part is that you have to shift the entire board to match the shapes. It took me a while to get used to this. I like it because it passes the time.

Posted in Writing

Moving Forward

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Just a quick drop in since I didn’t post this past week. With the team I’m working for the game, it’s really moved along. The basic story is agreed upon and, although there might be changes, we got the basics. Now I have to work on the characters, races, classes, etc. I’m trying to make a chart so I keep everything organized. I also have to create a character creation sheet so that the team can make their own companion characters.

On a side note, I’ve been editing and writing here and there with Phantom Blade and Crimson Queen. Both of which are on wattpad.

The website had a change and I even added a writing samples page. I’ll be adding more documents on that later. Plus, there are a lot more changes coming to the site.

More information on that later.