Alanna's+Reflection

1) Actually, I enjoyed writing with a small group better. While both cases were fun, I feel like I got a lot more done, so therefor the story didn't become stale. But that might be because I mostly wrote with the teacher... who worked through her precious vacation with me to get a few of the longer quests done. Thank you Ms. Doughty! However, I have to make a note that because I usually write by myself, my best writing was with the individual quests.

2) I'd have to say that my best piece of work this year would have to be... The Black Wolf. Not because it was long, (which believe me, it was LONG,) but because I felt that my characters were more fleshed out than in the other pieces. It was the quest where Kurona faced her fears, and spoke and acted like Kurona. Not the two dimensional character I made in the character creation sheet. I also gave Misaki a personality. I had planed on bringing him into the picture sometime or another, but I had never really thought about it. All in all, I just liked the way Black Wolf went. I even ended up giving Kurona a special power I had not planned on in the beginning. Things fell into place, and there was foreshadowing where I had not even realized.

3) I actually struggled coming up with my region. I always start with the character, but never really branch out into her surroundings. And yes, my character is usually a teenage girl. So the region was hard because I never really had //thought// about a country or world before. I have a vague idea, yes, but I never come up with a history. I also couldn't really get into any of the questions, so I just answered a lot of them like a character creation sheet.

4) My character started out as a normal, and frankly useless, girl, with a special past and friends. Kurona was meant to be an average person, with nothing special about her besides her personality and the fact that she's a "demon contractor." In Black Wolf, she started to become more brave, and she realized that she had the potential to be a Demon Controller. After the three year gap, she //was// a Demon Controller. But amazingly enough, I think I managed to get to mature (being more relaxed and not quite so obsessed with Fizzy Pop and romance novels,) but still retain her original personality traits. There's nothing I would really change about her. Now... my region was... a different story all together. It remained the same. No changes were made. Of course, that was the point of it. Ringence was an old if not ancient country. In the time it existed, it always was the same, so for it to change at all would be odd and unneeded. That's why I don't think the Biweekly Region Updates were appropriate for me this year. I had no need to have change, so I really didn't put anything in any of them. While the idea was good for others, like Anarchintia, it was unnecessary for me. There was a few times that I wanted to change the name to the japanese word for Ring or Circle, but we never got around to it. And by then, I had used the term Ringence so many times that it was pointless.

5) Suggestions... really, I think the teacher has it down pat with this course. There really wasn't any gaps with her plan. I've already stated before any problems I personally had with it this year, so I don't really need to say anything else.

6) She was kind of like the person that both edited your grammar, and also got you thinking. In this class the teacher was a part of the class, not in the separate role of "teacher."

7) I would like to do a little more individual quests. We did a few, then all the rest were group. While I agree that I should also practice writing in groups, (and this class is the only one I've ever had that I enjoy doing anything in groups,) individual quests let me sound more like a person is talking and doing these things. When I write in group quests, I've noticed that I tend to be in such a hurry to reply that it sounds more like an email from the character than a person. So God knows that I need practice with that. But I also don't think that it is absolutely necessary that everyone does the Biweekly Region Updates. Sure, if your region is due for a lot of changes, the idea would help, but if you don't plan on doing that... it's actually a pointless endeavor. Maybe instead of less of it, the teacher could give students the choice of whether they needed to do the updates or not.