Tag: progress

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

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 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.

 

Posted in updates, Writing

Progression

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

After a very long month, I was finally able to sent out my 8k words to Sarah from Lopt & Cropt. At the end of last year, I entered a contest on the blog, A Writer’s Path. I was the winner of said contest and having 8k words edited by a professional was one of the prizes.

Sarah provided a free sample edit before I sent over the 8k words. Thanks to her wonderful feedback, I got a broader feel and sense to my story (Clan of Ash). While I planned to send my 8k words to her immediately after her initial edit of 15-20 pages of my manuscript, I didn’t. Instead, I focused on NaNoWriMo which is where I wrote Clan of Blood, the sequel to Clan of Ash. Let me tell you, that broadened my view of the story even more.

In essence, this caused me to look back at the 8k words I was going to send Sarah. I ended up rewriting almost the entirety of those 8k words with a few exception. I did copy pasted a couple of sentences here and there the plot for those scenes stayed the same. They were just rewritten in a better way. I even discovered a minor plot hole that I fixed right up. That being said, I have to make a couple of more changes down the line but I already have a few ideas on how to remedy that.

Even as I wait for Sarah’s response, my work doesn’t stop. While I didn’t make any new year’s resolution, I did make goals for myself. One of those goals is to completely finish rewriting Crimson Queen. Slowly but surely, I will.

Posted in Writing

Making your Reader Care

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

“Why should I care about the main character?”

This is a comment I received a few weeks ago on one of my stories. It was for Clan of Ash to be precise. For a while, and even now, the comment still lingers in the back of my head. I’ve read plenty of articles and blogs, over the years, on tips/advice/questions on how to make your readers care. A few of these were:

-Don’t make your character perfect. He/she needs a flaw.

-Make them relatable.

-What does your character want?

-What are the obstacles?

-Is he/she an underdog?

Even then, I never thought that I would be asked that question (why should I care?) It took me by surprised and left me reeling. I’d thought it was clear. But if I really think about it, maybe, I wasn’t as clear as I thought. It was clear to me but not the reader. I set up my main character with an impossible task and he grits his teeth and does because otherwise, they’ll kill him.

One of the most important things I came to realize is, it’s a process. Sure, hooking your readers and making a likable/relatable character at eh beginning is important. However, you have to keep “working” on your character throughout the story. Make your readers worry about them. Make them root for them.

There’s no ‘one way’ to do this. I remember some articles talked about having tension and conflict, twist and turns, in your story helps develop your character. It does and that way, readers see your characters struggle against the odds/ obstacles in order to reach their goal.

The key word is struggle. Nothing in life is ever easy or simple. Characters in stories shouldn’t have it easy. Otherwise, what’s the point of having the story? There would be no story. In essence, that’s what I need to keep in mind. I need to present the problem to the readers and have them “watch” the character try to resolve this problem.

As mentioned above, there’s no clear way to do this. There’s no ‘how-to’ or step-by-step guide. Sometimes, you wing it and try to have it all made sense. Luckily, there are beta readers out there that can point all the stuff you missed.