Cassandra Hamm

* @julianne

@Cassandraia aww, thanks. 🙂 I’m glad you approve.

@Julianna @Cassandraia no, you’re totally fine! Life is busy. And Realm Makers!!! Yay!! I want to go there at some point. 😀

Okay guys. It’s officially submitted. *thumbs up* You people are amazing.

@raemarie @mcnoggin @cindy @kate @elizabeth @girlsetfree @theresa-play @r-m-archer @literatureforthelight @livgiordano @lady-iliara @m_corinnemusic @j-parkhurst @gabbyj @sierra @cassandraia @chalice @samuel @noahlittle @julianne @corissa

@Noahlitle CRIPES! Cuttin’ it kinda close, don’t you think? :’D

Like I’m one to talk. XD

I really like your edits though. Especially towards the end, as mine felt a little rushed. (I wonder why… not like I was trying to cram an ending in as few words as possible… hm…) I did tweak a few things; wording and such, and cut a few lines that…[Read more]

Alrighty people. First of all, thanks so much for all your help in the doc. You could set up as an editing team and take over the world. ;P

We’re still a few dozen words over the limit, but that shouldn’t be too hard to fix with some more clipping. Right now I’m just going to open the floor for general thoughts on the point of the prompt—…[Read more]

Okay guys. *deep breath* I’m not quite happy with it, but that’s what first drafts are for. We’re over our limit by a few hundred words, so clipping would probably be a good thing to look for. 😛 Let’s get started.…[Read more]

@kate Every time I’ve had to cut a story down to fit a word limit, the story has been much better for it.

@r-m-archer It’s not that bad. They come a little at a time. There’s always a baby in the house. And now I have two nieces, so there’s always going to be a baby in the house. XD

@cassandraia Yeah, me too. :-j

@cassandraia It wasn’t that they were too dark. Ted Dekker writes darker stuff than Steven James. But Ted Dekker’s stuff doesn’t bother me (except for Showdown – that one was just creepy).

I think it’s the fact that he makes being a pathological killer look attractive. At least on some level. The Bowers Files made me look inside myself, and de…[Read more]

@kate   XD   Yeah, there’s a lot of things like that.

@cassandraia It does have a character with a mental disorder. I didn’t mention it earlier because it’s kind of a spoiler. 🙂 It’s really good. Steven James is one of my favorite authors. I had to stop reading psychological thrillers, though. Even though he is Christian, I think they were hav…[Read more]

@kate You have ten siblings too?!? Are you home-schooled as well? It’s amazing how creative the large, Christian, home-schooled families are. And how many of them there are.

By all means, go ahead. I have no emotional attachment to the writing or not writing of this project. Which may be another argument against me writing it. XD

@cassandraia…[Read more]

@Cassandraia awesome! We could use your perspective then. 😀 I’m super interested in that topic myself, though on a more ‘hobby-like’ level. 😉 And I also have ten siblings, so I’m pretty familiar with the way little ones think. 😛

@Noahlitle thanks for volunteering! You’ve had lots of great ideas and insights to contribute to the discussion. I…[Read more]

@literatureforthelight  Exactly! That’s exactly what I had in mind. Leave the audience wondering if the fire pixie was real. I couldn’t have said it better.

Also, @corissa I think we could do the same kind of thing with his moral dilemma. Give both choices enough weight to leave the audience wondering if he made the right choice. Whatever he…[Read more]

I like the second idea as well; it’s a bit less of a plot to cram in 2,500 words. I would agree with Kate, though, that we don’t know whether or not the fire pixie is real, although we could probably hint at what Noah said, to make the audience think there might be some mental disorder going on, but leave all of them unsure.

(Apparently…[Read more]

I’m with you, @kate, I like the second idea better. It would lend itself pretty easily to one scene. Where he and the pixie break into the palace and warn the king.

We could give him a sort of hallucinogenic schizophrenia, or whatever you call that, where you see and interact with people/things that aren’t real. Then we could make the fact that…[Read more]

@Literatureforthelight we have been unusually prolific with ideas, haven’t we? 😛 I suppose that’s a good problem to have though.

If my memory serves me, we have two main ideas on the table now.

Chimneysweep is sweeping chimneys with the aid of happy fire pixies whom all other chimneysweeps mistreat, when the pixies discover a plot to…[Read more]

I tried replying twice a few hours ago, and neither one showed up, so let’s see if third time’s the charm. 😛 😉

@kate I absolutely love that idea!

What would we do with the ending then? Would he still go back to his chimney sweep life, and if so what would that make the theme? Or would we give it a warmer, happier ending, where he does get…[Read more]

@Julianne welcome! Thanks for jumping right in and contributing; great thoughts.

@Corissa I love the idea of him being kind to the fairies. Great way to spin it.

But guys, guys— before we go any further I had a thought. I’ve been trying to think how we can better fulfill the prompt, moving on from the story and developing an engaging voice…[Read more]

Okay.

I just got caught up with the conversation, let me recap what we have so far (disclaimer: as I understand it):

We have two story lines here.

The first (which I think we scrapped already, but just in case):

Kid, the chimney-sweep, 5, is happily sweeping chimneys for his chimney-sweep master, when he finds out about a plot to kill a…[Read more]

@mcnoggin @cindy @kate @elizabeth @girlsetfree @theresa-play @r-m-archer @literatureforthelight @livgiordano @lady-iliara @m_cornnemusic @j-parkhurst @gabbyj @sierra @cassandraia

@kate The problem with both of these to me is that they might take too long to describe—they would be perfect as part of a longer story, but I’m not sure we can milk the emotional depth in a short piece. But maybe that’s just me. (Remember, I have literally no experience in character death!) 😝

One thing that’s particularly heartbreaking to me i…[Read more]