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A writing group that encourages quality writing and loving it

Forest Quest is a writing group that encourages quality writing and loving it.

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ENDED: Story Sequence Part 3: Secondary Characters

See assignment part 3

"Story Sequence Part 3: Secondary Characters" is over. Keep updated for the next step...

...any ideas as to what the next step should be?!

God bless friends!

- Banor

P.S. Sorry, I know this update is late... don't forget the new forum!

Story Sequence Part 3: Secondary Characters

See assignment part 3

Time to write about those secondary characters! The ones that make the story so interesting, but can be overlooked by even the earnest writer.

Create side characters, friends, enemies, servants, masters, peacemakers, warriors, business men, arists - you name it, it's your story. Make at least 3 characters: 1 a close friend of the main character (a sidekick if you feel like it,) 1 "middle man" (someone who is involved in the story and may help the main character, but is not a close companion to him in his journey/work, such as an insider research scientist or the protaganist's mentor,) and 3, an antagonist (enemey) of the main character.

Have fun, and I hope your story will turn out GREAT in the end!

By the way, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is starting up again this November! I am planning on continuing my novel from last year. Forest Quest members who participated in NaNoWriMo 2007 were: Calista, Jake Longbane, and me, BanorRealms. It's a great journey, vastly helped my writing, and is quite rewarding. Participation is free, but it takes time to write it each day.

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a novel writing compition where you sign-up and, starting the first of November, write a new novel and complete 50,000 words by the end of November, 11:59pm. Depending on your typing speed, it may take you 2 hours for 21 days to get 50,000 words. I highly recommend doing it, but some prepartion is a really good idea. Maybe more on that later, since I have already written a lot.

Well, best wishes, and God bless,

- BanorRealms

P.S. I know it's been a long delay. Sorry for making you wait. Hopefully I will find a better system so updating the website takes up less time so I can update it more often.

Minosa Films

Once again, I am sorry for not posting more frequently. With a play to be put to DVD, my school year portfolio to finish, and filming coming down the line I am keeping myself busy.

Another way I'm keeping myself busy is with Minosa Films, a new film group I've started. You can check out the blog here.

See assignment part 2

Part 2 of the new writing assignment is:

Create a world that your character resides in: the climate, his/her home, the current political situation, et cetera. Feel free to draw a map, create ethnic groups, kingdoms, and so on.

The next part of the assignment will be coming shortly, so make sure to create your new world soon!

HINT: Make sure to create plenty of useful hooks: that is, characters, places, or kingdoms with many facinating facets - ready to be explained with a little bit of the world's history!

If you have any questions, please let me know!

ˇFeliz Cinco de Mayo!
God bless,

- BanorRealms

Dreams

Hey, sorry for not posting for a while.

What are dreams? Not sleeping dreams, visualizations in the mind, but waking desires, thoughts and urges to create or be something you wonder if you will ever achieve, something you would grasp, if only you could.

I do. I dream a lot. I have many dreams. Some stronger than others, but still dreams. I want you to have dreams, God planted desires that reach beyond the stars

Go for them and go for God!

- BanorRealms

P.S. In the (hopefully near) future I plan to majorly update the Forest Quest website, making the homepage like a blog with WordPress (www.wordpress.org) and maybe even adding some more exciting things! :) The next assignment is forth coming, so be ready!

April Fools

The last entry, titled "Forest Quest Bought Out" was fake. It was an April Fools message.

The whole e-mail was a fake. I know no one with the name Yevin Reinhold, he offered me no money, I received no call from him, we are not rated top 100 in the State of WV, we are not the 1,049 in the nation, I did not receive 14,000 from this chap (nor am I likely to,) so on, so forth.

Have fun!

- BanorRealms

Forest Quest Bought Out

Just yesterday I received a call from Dr. Yevin Reinhold, the president of WriTen, a major magazine publication from California. He asked me if I was the president and founder of Forest Quest. I answered that I was. He thanked me for all the work I had done in producing a quality writing group and listed Forest Quest as one of the top 100 writing groups in the state of West Virginia, ranking 1,049 nationwide.

Then Dr. Reinhold gave me the shocking news: WriTen wanted to purchase the name "Forest Quest" as a branch of their new program, Young Writer's Union, along with many other smaller writing groups they were buying to produce commercial stimuli. He offered me $14,000 in U.S. dollars for the name.

Taken back, I hesitated to reply for a moment. Then suddenly it hit me: "Why am I even considering this?"

I told him "Yes, I will sell!"

Any further activity with Forest Quest will be channeled through WriTen's new young writer's program by June 8, 2008. I am sorry it all turned out this way.

With your best interests in mind,

- BanorRealms

Improving FQ

If you have any suggestions, ideas, or thoughts on how to improve your Forest Quest experience, or comments on anything you think should be changed, please let me know! I hope in the future to add more features to Forest Quest, but, that is in the future.

One way to improve Forest Quest is for members to send in stories and poems, essays or how-to's. Big thank-you's to those who have sent in their work to be posted! (You can also send in sketches for your stories.)

By the way, sorry I have posted anything new for a while.

Please send any suggestions or ideas, stories or pictures to forestquest@gmail.com!

Ciao!

- BanorRealms

2008 Haiku Contest Winner Announced!

The winner is...

Allegretto!

Glistening diamonds.
Winking from an old tree stump
Illuminating.

                - By Allegretto

Congratulations Allegretto! Great job!

- BanorRealms

Note: The winner is decided popular vote. Only members are allowed to vote.

Free Rice

Ever wanted to advance your vocabulary and help someone else out? Well, here's your chance! Check out the great site, FreeRice.com!

Free Rice has an online vocabulary-word-matching game where it asks you what the meaning of a word is and you must choose from four different word choices to match up the word's meaning. It is fun, simple, and, well, over my head as far as some of the words they choose.

As for the part about helping someone else out, each word you get right equals one donation of 20 grains of rice to those in need. Wonder how on earth they get the funding for it? Check out the big banner ad at the bottom of the page.

And finally, if you think 20 grains of rice isn't enough to make a difference in someone's life, see the following quote by Mother Teresa:

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." - Mother Teresa

So go ahead and learn some more words!

- BanorRealms

P.S. By the way, vocabulary is very important to your writing skill,
an essential building block of the art.

Text Rollplaying Overview

Much thanks to Bryn Silverhorn, the contributor of today's article!

- BanorRealms

"Okies all, this week's Weekly Plus is a little overview of Text Roleplaying, or RPing, as it's called among those of us who do it.

"Roleplaying is done in either of two ways, through IM chat or on a message board. The most prevalent form is a message forum. Basically, it can be thought of as..."
See the rest of the article!

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