In this 10 minute writing session, MJ rewrites a character description for a CritterBot Guardian from an upcoming Grobug Tale and talks about the TYPHOON writing system.
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Refining My Plant-Based Monkey Critter Bot’s Abilities for a Children’s Book Series
Rewritten from transcript by Claude AI
In this 10-minute writing session from February 16th, 2024, I, author MJ Muñoz, share my progress in developing abilities and traits for one of the Critterbot Guardian characters that will appear in my children’s book series. Specifically, I’m focusing on Timber Tale – an intelligent monkey-like robot creature made entirely of vegetation.
These Critterbots serve to protect a fantasy island from harm. So giving thought to their combat talents and nature-derived skills provides consistency and depth I can draw from creatively. Earlier I had the AI assistant Claude suggest preliminary concepts to accelerate my design process. But as the abilities are integral, I’m carefully revising each one to fit the tone and mechanics of my fictional world.
For instance, Timber Tale should wield plant-based powers fitting his greenery-infused body. I’m tuning superfluous technical elements, ensuring his talents align with the lighter magic system. Refining these fundamental building blocks makes plotting future stories much more fluid. My goal is crafting an approach to effortlessly generate adventure ideas around engaging characters like Timber Tale.
By investing focused time in these critical details now, the Critterbots essentially become storytelling tools I can utilize in unlimited ways down the road. Their personalized weapons, quirks and backstories constitute pieces for constructing and commanding dynamic narratives at will, without risk of repetitive plots. It’s all about establishing the pieces – the places, players, props and premises – to enable organic storycrafting.
So while these plant and machine heroes won’t necessarily star in their own book yet, their unfolding development directly feeds my overarching mission of publishing imaginative children’s fiction. Setting the table to summon and send such creations into action as needed is what writing is all about. The enrichment process itself bears the fruit that feeds future books.
MJ Muñoz 