Day Fourteen

Day fourteen: How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?

I have general ideas for maps in my head. I know what thinks look like in general but I’ve never been artistic in the sense of drawing out what I see. Trust me I wish I was, would make a lot of things a lot better some days when I am trying to nail down a look. I actually attempted pencil drawings of what I see but really they haven’t been touched in years and I didn’t really like what I had previously as it was.

I’ve been trying to look into computer generated maps, mostly because it takes the place of me needing to generate maps myself. Haven’t really found anything as of yet, but I honestly haven’t spent any significant time looking in to it for a couple reasons. First, when it comes to maps in books I’ve realized they are rarely ever looked at by the readers and are mostly a waste of space so a lot of the mapping out would be more for me then my readers. Second, most of my time has be devoted to writing lately.

Along the same lines of mapping though, one thing I’ve always wanted to do with my world building is getting a model doll house and model cars. There is one house that plays a big part of the novels and I would love to have something that is a physical representation of that house. But those cost a significant amount of money, also would need somewhere to put it. So it will have to wait til I have an office to put it in.

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Cara Mia Amore

Day Thirteen

Day thirteen: What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?

 

My favorite cultures to write are definitely my fictional ones, but mostly because of the fact that most of my main characters belong in cultures that do not exist in our world. Granted, the human world does occasionally interact with the magical world of my stories, but there really isn’t much of any character development revolving around existing cultures in our world. Most of the humans in my stories are flat characters though there are some exceptions but even the rounded characters that are human are so intertwined in the magical world that their culture mostly falls into the magical community they live in.

 

Of my races that I write, the one that I have the most fun writing right now is the culture of the Cats. I love learning the intricate details of their lives and how it differs from what I would consider every day life. It’s been interesting learning their rules and their laws, about what they find common and what would be considered unusual. I’ve been trying to develop their culture a lot more and allow it to come out on paper and I am learning that I love their world even when there are times it’s as harsh as it is beautiful.

 

Since most of my characters are of that race, there hasn’t been much development into the other cultures of my world. But I have been trying to develop at least the Dallion culture further. I see them as such interesting people in my head and I am sorry to say that that hasn’t come out on paper as of right now. I am trying to fix that because I do know that I want them to seem as wickedly amazing as my Cats.

 

I have learned, though, that creating cultures is a lot easier and more interesting then actually creating a world. You would think it would be just as easy or as hard in any case, but I am finding it’s not. Interesting, no? Then again, worlds and life on those worlds follow certain rules that are not malleable like rules in cultures can be. So… I don’t know why I’m rambling but there is the gist of what I have to say today. See you all tomorrow.

 

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Cara Mia Amore

Day Twelve

Day twelve: In what story did you feel you did the best job of world building? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?

 

Well we can take the a few different ways. When my stories started, it was one story and based in an alternate version of Earth. I was young and I did very minimal world building. I found out that that kind of world was a lot harder then coming up with my own because I kept trying to work things into the world we have now.

 

About 2-3 years ago now I decided having one story wasn’t going to work for many reason: first, I had too many voices vying for ownership of the book, second, I couldn’t make our world work for them and needed to develop things more.

 

During this revamp I first figured out who my main voices would be in the stories. And then I thought of the worlds they live in. It is the same world but they each touch a part of different things. As I thought more of my stories, I realized I really needed to sit down and work on true world building.

 

First I told myself “Where do people live?” and with that I started working on the geography aspect of the world. I got a basic idea of how many countries/continents/main land whatevers that I needed. I needed names and came up with them. The hardest part with this little bit was that I discovered since I have been working on this story for so long, it took me effort to pull myself away from Earth and put myself in my newly named Torrest Reyenne. I’m still working on that becoming a comfortably needed concept of my story.

 

The next big things for my world building that I did is I decided I needed to right down the rules and laws my people live by. This became a more personal world building project then an actually written in project, they get very minor parts in my writing, but for my personal comfort level I needed to develop them in detail so that I could understand the world that was being created around me.

 

With this world building I developed a lovely notebook. I call it my god’s eye view of the world. It holds all the details I’ve developed on my characters and on my world. I think its one of the most beneficial things I have. It’s all organized and accessible and makes keeping track of little details a lot easier.

 

That’s my world building structure. I thought I’d talk about that more then the actual world since I’ve talked about it before. I think the most important thing for any person who is going to attempt any world building is to keep organized and consistent.

 

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Cara Mia Amore

Day Eleven

Day eleven: Who is your favorite character to write about and who is your least favorite?

 

This is honestly a very difficult question for me to write. Each of them have their own ups and downs and make them my favorite at times and horrid at others.

 

When it comes to deciding who and when I write in a character’s perspective it is usually when their voice becomes the loudest in my head. Right now I have about three stories going on, meaning I have three characters vying for my attention.

 

When it comes to character I am the least excited to write about its usually when I am trying to concentrate on a scene and the people in it aren’t wanting to play nice with others.

 

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Cara Mia Amore

Day Ten

Day ten: What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions.

 

I really like to torture my characters. But I also try to reward them in the end. My characters have experience everything from astral projection affairs to death.

Some of the more interesting scenes that I have ever written were things like having my characters hunt for the first time when they switch their forms. Their experiences range anywhere from disgust, to excitement, to fear, to loathing and with that I get to experience and write all sorts of fun emotions. Another one is when I have one of my characters astral projects for the first time and that is when she meets a man she falls in love with. She thinks it’s just a dream at first and acts on her reaction. She then meets him in person and realizes that her dreams were real life.

 

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Cara Mia Amore

Day Nine

Day nine: How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

My characters are derived from every day things that happen. Some in my dreams, so that come to me when talking to others, so that come to me when I ponder different situations in life. They come from everywhere. One thing I like to tell people that ask me this question is that I do not force characters in to life. They come to me.

 

That’s a good leeway in to how I create them. My creative process when it comes to characters is that they come to me. Usually they start as a shadow of a person. Coming from a statement I want them to say, from a personality I encounter, anything. They start as that singular, shadowy fact and from that fact I put them into a situation (say waking up late for school) and see how they react. I let the characters that pop up in my head talk to me. We have silent conversation about how they would handle something. Panic, relief, whatever. My fingers lie on the keys of a keyboard or wrap around a pen and I just let it flow out. If I push too hard, they push back.

 

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Cara Mia Amore

Voices

I’ve been thinking a lot about dialogue and the relationship between people and communication. This is a hard thing for me. As a writer this is one area I really need to learn to develop, especially along the lines of your classic show not tell, I’m good at “telling” a lot of the time and I need to work on that to make my stories the best they can be.

But back to dialogue, I think my issue here is that I am a very quiet person by nature. I’ve always been the quiet person in my circle of friends. I like to listen, I like to hear what people have to say. Yes, when I get going I am good at conversation for a little while, but as soon as that topic is gone I usually go quiet again. It takes a lot for me to process a topic and then come up with points I can make in it. I think this is a big reason why I have problems in conversations myself, because it takes me so long to process the topic by the time that I have come up with a response most people have come up with a new topic to talk about. I’m weird and I process way too much while trying to be in conversations.

But anyways. Conversations and dialogue and the like are not my forte, and I have been trying to use more of it in my writing – granted I’m trying to also not overuse it in my writing as well. I’ve discovered talking on paper is a lot easier and faster then talking in real life. I definitely get as much time as I want to think of response and the world doesn’t go on until I do. It also helps that my characters talk back to me in my head.

So for all you few readers who read this blog quietly, does how you write dialogue mirror how you talk to people, or are there those out there that are like me?

 

Cara Mia Amore

Day Eight

Day eight: What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?

When it comes to writing, I like to write the fantastical. Things that couldn’t happen in our world come to life in my writing. I like the idea of magic and creatures of magic that make the world exciting and dangerous.

 

As for reading, I really like anything as long as it can keep me interested. A well written novel will help you get through it. I tend to gravitate more towards the fiction instead of non fiction.

 

Lately I have been reading more young-adult then anything because I have been interested to see how people write for younger audiences. I’m trying to see if I want to go along that level for my books or to see if it has too many mature topics to be considered young-adult.

 

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Cara Mia Amore

Review: Hunger Games Trilogy

Description: The Hunger Games trilogy is a set of young-adult dystopian books written by Suzanne Collins. The first in the series is The Hunger Games, the second is Catching Fire and the final installment is Mockingjay.

The book is set in a world that has built up over the remains of our world. They call the world Panem and it consists of The Capitol, and feeds out into 12 remaining districts. The Capitol holds their world’s leaders, and these leaders – in order to control the districts from rebellion – host each year what is called the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is where one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen from each district. The chosen – or as Collins calls them: the Tributes – are taken to the Capitol and put into an arena where they must fight to the death. The final Tribute is sent back to their district with food and money, and at no risk to go again.

The series itself follows Katniss Everdeen who lives in District 12. Her sister is chosen as a tribute and instead of letting her go, Katniss takes her place. The three books follow Katniss through the Hunger Games and what happens after.

I really don’t want to say much about it because it really destroys the experience of reading it.

 

Reaction: Saying that I loved this book is too mild an emotion. This book was amazing. I read each of the books in a day each, that’s how gripping they were. The series has a slightly depressing feel to it, but honestly its one of the best young-adult series I have ever read.

You really get to love the character and you want to do nothing more then save Katniss from all the dangers her life puts her in.

The trilogy has a bittersweet happy ending and it fit the whole set of the writing.

I commend Collins in her writing style and her ability to make you fall in love with the characters and support them through the whole story.

 

Rating: These books definitely get all five stars.

 

Cara Mia Amore



The World as I know it...

We could call this: Welcome to My Life, but I like this title better. I just wanted to take a moment away from my writing focus here and catch everyone up on my life because there have been quite a few changes in the last year-ish amount of time.

The biggest change that I have seen in the last year is that I was married. Which was why I had taken the hiatus to begin with, planning a wedding while working and trying to go to school is a lot of work in itself, trying to find a spare minute to blog on here was just an impossible task.

The wedding was wonderful. Everything I ever wanted and more. And now I get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend. Granted, we had already been together for four years (almost 4 and a half now!) but now we’re all official and I get to call him my husband instead of my boyfriend. Still gives me butterflies.

Most of our time is currently spent at work. As of right now I work four ten hour shifts and I hate it. It is nice having the extra long lunch and three days off, but I only get one day off with Todd with the way they have my days off now. It kind of sucks. Work is also getting in the way of school. I tried going back to school for a semester but failed horribly. I was just too busy. Going to school now while I have to hold a full time job makes me so appreciative towards my parents and how they allowed me to go to school full time while living with them and not having to worry about holding a job to make money.

I am really trying to find whatever way possible to go back to school. I want to finish, I want to have that degree in my hand. And I think I finally know what I want to get it in (that really does help the process). I want to be a teacher. Elementary preferably because I’ve always enjoyed being around kids and helping them learn things. I really enjoyed the preschool atmosphere that I was in in high school. Learning how teaching plans worked and the like and being around kids and watching that light bulb go off in their head when things clicked in to place and they understood what was going on. I want to teach, I want to be the cause of that light bulb going off.

I’ve been looking primarily into online schools. I know that I failed that attempt this last time, but Todd is going to be a work horse and try me going on that. University of Phoenix has an Education program, so we’ll see how that goes. I don’t know how many of you actually read this thing, but have any of you tried that school? They seem to be relatively along the same lines, cost wise, as most schools who offer online classes. Seem to be a little more … I don’t know, “well known” or at maybe “accredited”. I don’t want to go through the expense and find out that what I was going through for probably the next couple years isn’t going to work.

Other then all of that, I’ve been slacking in my little world here. I’ve let work bring me down lately, forgetting to leave it at work where it belongs. The attitude it seems to put me in has been being brought home with me the last bit of time and it’s been effecting me in ways that I hope it doesn’t continue to do. One of my goals this year, I don’t want to call it a resolution but a goal (seems to have an easier sound to it that way), is to leave work at home – unless its funny stories and the like to share with Todd – and get back into a better run of things. I need to start getting things done on time when they need to be and get into the swing of not being a blob sitting on the couch letting my chores and life get away from me. No more with this slacker attitude, especially if I expect to get back into school and do well in it, I can afford to slack off and waste money on school again.

So one of my big goals this years is to better myself. Get healthier, keep up on my responsibilities, go to school, and make medical/dental appointments that I have been putting off. All those things that I have been slacking on need to get done and I hope that I’ll do well at these goals that I have for my personal life to become a better person and to step up as the adult I’m supposed to be.

Another big goal I want to set for myself is to write. Sounds simple, but lately it’s been harder to find the time then I would like to say. I want to start to devote some time each day to write, either in this blog or to my actual story or to both, preferably both. I’m sure how much time I can devote to it, but I want to write as much as possible. I want to finish these stories that have been brewing in my head, to listen to the characters there that have been yelling at me to let them tell their story all the way through with out pauses. In the same area of things, I also want to develop my craft better. I want to take courses on writing to get things down so I can say I at least know what I am trying to do, I want to take courses on “the next step” and learn what I need to know about this world of writing, publishing, selling and the like. Because I want to share my stories with the world, I want my character’s lives to be experienced. So that is my next big goal. I want to join communities and develop my craft and push myself into the tight, little world of writing.

So that is all I have to say to catch everyone up on my world, my life, everything and I plan on continuing the daily blog with that meme that I found. Hopefully after the 30 days have passed I will be in the habit of writing daily in this thing and get to the point where I am writing unscripted each day.

 

Cara Mia Amore