Tag: process

Posted in updates, Writing

Finding the Middle

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Another week comes to an end. Progress has been slow but there has been progress. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a post Monday. I got caught up with errands and school work. I promised myself I’ll do better.

I did go back and take a look at Crimson Queen, the story I worked on for Camp NaNoWriMo. Reading through, I realized that the beginning worked. The middle on the other hand didn’t. There was no direction. So, I went back through it and wrote down the main plot points that I found. There was a couple of them but they were just buried under unnecessary scenes/ words.

Moving forward, I need to fill in the blanks to get from one point to another. That “filling” has to be relevant to the story and has to contribute. Otherwise, the words become unnecessary and I don’t want that. Plus, I have the information, the filling if you will, I just have to find a way to add everything together.

With school going on now, I have to steal time to write until I get a schedule down. It’s going slower than I would like to. For sure this upcoming week, there’s going to be a post Monday. Wednesday is still writing prompt day. I’m having really fun with those prompts. They’re different but I need a way to get out of my comfort zone. I need to write something I wouldn’t normally write. Is there a website for random writing prompts? I definitely have to look for that.

If anyone has any suggest, send a message/ comment and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for reading.

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 NaNoWriMo, Writing

Ready, Set . . .

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Camp NaNoWriMo starts in a day and I’m not exactly prepared. While I do know what I’m going to be working on next month, I might not be mentally prepared for this task.

Now, while I have participated in NaNoWriMo before, I don’t think I will ever be mentally prepared to write 50k words in one month. It doesn’t get any easier. It’s going to be a challenge.

I’m not nervous or anxious. Not really. It’s more like I’m already thinking of potential lack of motivation and hair pulling down the line. Granted, I’ve always finished NaNoWriMo and gotten through tough spots but even so, I can’t help but think of what’s in store. I guess this just means that I have to manage my time a bit more than I have been. (I might have to cut back on gaming. Yikes!)

As of right now, I haven’t downloaded Scrivener on to my desktop yet. I’m really hoping I can download the program to a flash drive so I can take it anywhere with me. Probably not but a girl can hope. If it doesn’t work, I’ll manage. It’ll work out in the end.

For those participating in Camp NaNoWriMo I wish you the best of luck. May the odds be forever in our favor.

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Uncategorized, Writing

Preparation Complete

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Preparing for April has been very smooth. In part, it has to do with the fact that I’m rewriting a story I’ve already written. At this point, I have a good idea of where I want the story to go.

Even before the rewrite, I knew where the story was going. That was always present in my mind. The character development, background information, and subplots, on the other hand, need a bit more work. That is what I’m focusing on in rewriting the story.

Of course, preparing for Camp NaNoWriMo or just preparing to write a novel or even the other half of a story can be tough. You can prepare so many things but at the end of the day, you could scrape the entire thing. It’s happened to me more times than I can count.

While I can prepare for all situations of what might occur when I’m writing, I have a bit of confidence that I won’t loose my way, so to speak. IMHP (in my humble opinion), I believe that rewriting a novel might be easier than first starting out. Here are three of my reasons.

First, at least I have a basis of the story. I’ve put my thoughts and ideas down on paper. It doesn’t have to be great but at least I have something written down. I might not use everything or even anything at all but that’s okay.

Second, it’s something you can proofread/mark up. I like to print out the story and mark it up with a red pen. I write my comments on it and I have something visual to go back to whenever I need it. Personally, I’m not a big fan of editing on a screen. I have always found it more useful to me to write out corrections and comments.

Lastly, at least the story exists. It is out there and that just makes it all the better. This motivates me to work to make the story better. It’s the process that solidifies the main storyline and other aspects I want to include.

In essence, everyone has their own methods on how they do things. Finding what works for you is just another step in the process.

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.