Tag: book creation

Character Creation: Random Element and Character Interaction

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

(what am i actually doing this okay here we go)

CHARACTER CREATION! For most, this is no mere hypothetical. The Latin Alphabet is composed of 27 characters… or is it 26? 14?? I don’t know. But this is irrelevant. I am referring to characters in a story. Most stories have them. Stories that don’t exist may even have them. Stories that don’t exist as well. These two sentences are saying different things. Where am I going with this? WELL. Even the shortest, saddest story has characters, even if some of them are dead. Do baby shoes count as characters? Well, that depends on what kind of story you’re writing. Has anyone ever written from the POV of the baby shoes?

Longer, more involved stories, novels particularly, have a lot more characters, some of them even named! These characters are usually dealt with for so long that some backstory is in order. Sometimes it’s as simple as where they were raised; other times it’s a dark and brooding history of death and loss and that’s why they have this scar and this edgy haircut and wear a mask.

But in my case, I don’t just don’t have involved stories, I have an involved figgin universe. Lord of the Rings had a lot of history and only a few books. Discworld had over 40 novels and quite a bit of backstory, but I’m not sure how much. I forget if Rincewind’s parents are ever mentioned. But many writers, especially of a series with multiple books, write more backstory than ever gets mentioned in books. Having all this solidified lets the writing be more consistent; you won’t have a character mention their childhood on the farm and then in a later book we meet their high-profile business consultant parents. No, you decide early on their parents are owners of a taco stand, and you stick to that. Well, unless you come up with something better later, but then you have to make sure it doesn’t contradict what you have written into books, unless you just don’t care, because honestly, are we sure most readers are gonna care?

Anyhoo, how does character creation work? Well, you start out with a setting and generally have an idea of what kind of character you need. Meek accountant? Beefy accountant? Clownish accountant? Someone who’s not an accountant?? Maybe a small business owner who shows kindness to the protagonist, or a small business owner whose churlish attitude just shows them further how dismal the city they’ve arrived at is. A military general to fight in a war, or a cool kid friend to balance the nerdy friend. There’s lots of characters to choose from, and the general idea isn’t that hard to start from. Then you do a whole bunch of stuff like names and design that I don’t want to talk about today. I am going to touch on it, though. Because:

RANDOM DECISIONS: So the thing is that in real life a lot of peoples’ information is arbitrary. Not always–names might change based on who their parents are, date of birth might make when events in their life happen different, gender probably changes stuff. But for the most part a character can have any number of these things and still basically be the same. How do you decide? Um I just pull up a random number generator and let it decide for me. Names I’ll usually look at a list of names and choose one at random but like, date of birth? Random number. Gender? Random number (and yes, that’s on a spectrum–depending on the number, this character may be trans!) Do you need glasses? WELL YOU DON’T GET TO CHOOSE IN LIFE IF YOU NEED GLASSES, SO I WON’T CHOOSE FOR THESE CHARACTERS. Maybe. I have different species and some have naturally better eyesight. Maybe better eyecare is available for the affluent? You know, I use random number generation but still pull things in various directions.

And then there’s character interactions. Characters interact with other characters, usually, and having a backstory means they meet other characters. Once again I use a random number generator to go through my list of existing characters and find out–have they met in the past? If so, when? From this I get a clearer idea of a character’s history. (And in one case got a potential short story idea for the future!) Once I know who they’ve met I determine who they’ve met long enough to get an opinion or history with, and then–you guessed it–RANDOM NUMBER GENERATION. I get a random number, and the better the number, the better their relationship.

So for example, a group of senior generals for a kingdom’s military. Get a variety of personalities, some good, some bad. Maybe use RNG for this, maybe not. One of the generals is a nice guy, very jovial, everyone loves them and they’re one of the most personable generals. They have a family, they’re well-known and respected, and then as you’re grabbing random numbers to determine their relationship to characters they’ve met their spouse rolls a ONE. This loved character has the worst possible relationship with their spouse.

And so that’s how a well-respected, noble, adored general is secretly beating their spouse.

Not all is well in random number generation land. Sometimes it makes characters and settings harder–harder to figure out, harder to write. But realistically? I think adding the random element makes it more real. And it adds another dimension to a character and their history that wasn’t there before.

I mentioned characters meeting other characters in their past, and I’m actually going to talk about that more next week. After all, once you’ve put all this work into a character, why only use them once?

Physical Darmenzi book! Patreon changes! KO-FI!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

The physical book version of Darmenzi is now available for purchase on Lulu.com! It’s even better than my first book Slubes, and I’m excited to finally have a second book in physical form. Now I can show people TWO things and they’ll go “whaaaa, you’re dedicated to this??” It’s $12 on Lulu and it’s amazing and formatted and just take a look at what the critics may or may not have said!

“I laughed! I cried! I ate a banana!”

“If you only read one book this year, you should read more. What’s this about a Darmenzi story?”

“The title character is truly the greatest villain of our time. Even if Duth is a charlatan who skews how I–I mean, he looks.”

To go along with this announcement there’s been some changes to my Patreon, although some of it is just cleaning up. The most immediate change is to the $2 and $3 reward tiers, which no longer has the “give for a million months and get a name in book”. I really don’t like having rewards that require someone to sustain giving over a period of time, because not everyone can do that.

Instead, those are now a part of my Ko-fi page! I’ll still be on Patreon but they will generally focus on different things–Patreon in the prog chapters I post for free each month (you can see them early or see excerpts from what I’m working on at the time, for example), and Ko-fi on the final products:

$3 gets you an ebook copy of one of my books, $18 gets you not only a signed physical copy in the mail but also an exclusive bookmark, and $30 gets your name in the next figgin book, wow!

Think of Patreon as helping fund my creative process, and Ko-fi as being closer to me. Somehow. I also plan to add goals to Ko-fi that I feel are things I don’t necessarily need to make a monthly income as the prerequisite for doing, although I can’t guarantee that none of them are going to be jokes.

That’s about it for now! New Ko-fi, continuing Patreon, physical Darmenzi book. See you in about a week for the next profile (and don’t forget that $3+ patreons get to read the next chapter early).

Wandering Fortunes Chapter 13: Testy Wills is up!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Chapter 13 of Wandering Fortunes is now up! Alden, Top, and Ropak continue to try to join the Zhopian Guard and have to run an obstacle course in the process. However, there’s more than just the course working as obstacles in their way. They’ll have to work together to get through it… or, perhaps not?? Perhaps there will be delicious cake, though.

Don’t forget about Darmenzi, though! The ebook released just a couple weeks ago, and there’s going to be more news about it soon! Keep watching for that.

New book, Darmenzi releases tomorrow, January 17th!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Oh dang! It’s the second book release! Darmenzi is finally here, tomorrow! I’m excited, and definitely not just woke up and wanting to get all this stuff said before it’s too night and everybody normal is asleep!

It’s a sequel to my first book, Slubes, which is still available and stars an anxious pile of frayed nerves pulled into an adventure where he tries to prove himself to his love while dealing with his ridiculous world while an intergalactic invader sends destructive, sneaky, and ridiculous enemies to steal a crystal of immense powers. Darmenzi features the return of that anxious pile of frayed nerves, a little braver, a little more confident, still a flopping jitterbug, face off against the authoritative conqueror’s return and a manipulative force of chaos. It has slugs, giant crabs, robots, mechs, magic, caves, ghosts, pirates, ancient ruins, monsters, a dragon, silliness, seriousness, a library, insanity, deep-sea exploration, space exploration, a hotel, a bratty kid with a gun, jail time, a car crash, and sad magma!

The final preview chapter is here, and you can see where all three are at the Darmenzi page. The book will be available at Smashwords, and it has been pre-ordable or whatever at Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo. I hope you like the book!

Also, work on a physical copy is under way, I should have more information on that next week.

Duth Olec’s 2017 Retrospective

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

It’s cool to do this, right? Actually I might have done these sort of things in past years too. I don’t remember. But let’s take a look at what I’ve done this year, assuming I do remember!

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • Began posting the prog version of Wandering Fortunes online: on my website, on Wattpad, and for the first time on Medium. At the rate of one chapter a month, I’ve gotten twelve of these chapters up. That puts me at about a third through the story. This story is actually somewhat special to me–the first two novels were partly based off ideas I had years and years ago, but Wandering Fortunes is the first story I came up with after I decided to go into noveling (authorial term). Furthermore, the main characters, and many other characters, are based off characters I used to use in collaborative stories I wrote with some old internet friends. Were it not for those pals I would never have gotten into writing, so I thank them profusely. (Also some characters in Wandering Fortunes are inspired by some of their characters, too! Don’t worry, I got their permission.)
  • I continued the Pokecomic, which started when Pokemon Sun and Moon released last year. The first comic of this year was 39, and on the 30th I’ll post number 89, so that’s fifty comics this year. At that rate I’ll finish it in 2019, probably sometime after the 8th generation of Pokemon comes out. I’m actually rather surprised and proud I’ve been able to keep this comic up, considering these side projects involving art usually peter out for me pretty early, but this is something I’d wanted to do for over 5 years, probably since the 5th generation of Pokemon games came out.
  • In April began a new Twitter account for the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos where theoretical tweets from major CCC characters are made, using trending hashtags or responding to other tweets or simply posting about their lives. Shortly after announcing the Darmenzi release date I started posting theoretical messages from during the story. It’s been fun! I like coming up with stuff for the characters to say, such as on Thanksgiving, every character I’m using posted what they’re thankful for. Here’s a few highlights:
  • I released two pieces focusing on the premise of the character Top from Wandering Fortunes interrupting an existing story, with Lord of the Rings and Magic Banquet. (See also Wattpad here and here, and Medium here and here.) This is a premise I’d actually come up with earlier while reading a different story (which is yet to be used) and I was just like “man what if Top just showed up instead and distracted this bad guy”. I really like the idea because I really like Top and they’re basically the poster child for the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos, but it turns out I’ve had a bit of trouble coming up with more scenes to use, though that’s mostly because I don’t think about it while reading a book and then afterwards I don’t remember the book well enough to fit Top somewhere. But gaddfern it, I am GOING to find a way to shove Top into Charles Dickens one of these days!
  • I announced the ebook release date of Darmenzi, which isn’t until 2018 but still I announced it in 2017. This involved a lot of stuff that’s stressful for me. That press release? I tried to send it out to press places. I actually contacted people, trying to promote it. I still have more time to work on promoting it. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOO but I’m going to try anyway. I’m not expecting a miracle but. like. you know. a burgeoning fanbase would be nice. Whoa! This 2017 retrospective just got real…ly dumb. uh.
  • I posted a super special Christmas-themed “short story”! It’s a giant satire of religion and the bible. I could definitely being the most controversial thing I’ve posted, but I also see it as one of the best because I get to be oddtastic and write nonsense. There’s even some Seuss-esque rhymes! It’s on my website here, Wattpad, and Medium.

DISASTERS

  • well most of the year for everybody and everything but ME SPECIFICALLY…
  • The beginning of the year sucked because as usual I was working at Bloom Insurance Agency, but even worse, it was customer service! For an incompetent company (not Bloom, they contract with insurance companies to do sales, it was the client who was pretty bad) in a badly-set-up system and also this is all redundant because it’s health insurance. The exception to health insurance is a company that’s not garbage in all ways. However, this wasn’t much of a disaster so much as par for the course over the past several years because I always start the year working since it’s their busy season and then after the first of the month I go on furlough when there’s not as much work and I can do good work. However…
  • I returned in mid-August and it was… weird, at first. I was put on a program without a lot of real training, but it was a program winding down, we were calling insurance agents, not customers, and again, it was winding down, so for the most part we just called answering machines, calling people who were called before, or just waited for no one to ever call. There ended up being so much downtime that people could often go home early. However, that ended, and then I went to an actual program for actually selling health insurance… and… oh Gourd, what was that company called? I’ve forgotten! Hang on… Aetna, I think? Pretty sure it was Aetna. DANG, did I get a pompous vibe from them. Anyway there was so much garbage terrible and finally I snapped at work. I described it at length here. As I say there, there was just a lot of really skeevy capitalist garbage that is totally legal and fine and okay but makes want to figgin PUKE, and I hate health insurance, I hate talking on the phones, I hate sales (making it all the harder for me to promote my book, but I’m still tryin’!), and I finally realized I could not help this rude person, and not just they were so rude, but my being there was a figgin detriment to every person who called and got me. To survive in capitalism I was having to make the world overall WORSE.
    I would rather die.
  • Continuing the theme of I Can’t Hold Down A Job Anymore, Basic Guaranteed Universal Income Or I Will Be Forced To Make The World A Worse Place To Survive And It Will Be You Stupid Conservative And Libertarians’ Fault So Good Job On That, Would You Rather I Die, at the end of November I applied to a job with my local paper as a night mailroom inserter or something or other. It was basically just placing newspapers in machines so they get sorted and ads and papers are placed in them right. Turns out because I have a garbage body I can’t do physical labor, certainly can’t do it at any decent speed, absolutely not at a decent speed needed for most jobs, and therefore just cross out physical labor with Talking to Customers on the list of jobs I can’t do. I forget how much I talked about this but basically the job was about 5 hours a night and after half of that I was nearly faint and couldn’t continue. I had to quit. After half a night. So that little experiment failed.
  • net neutrality repeal but again that’s something regarding the entire country, you don’t need me to tell you about that. Although after the repeal vote I actually called my reps about it, and note that after the calls I wanted to curl up under a chair so yeah phones suck die die die phones
  • Oh I guess the Patreon debacle was a slight disaster but Patreon walked it back so I think it’s gonna be okay.
  • Aaaand that’s really all the disasters of the year, my personal disasters totaled two, everything else was fairly fantastic, and those two disasters were both ME TRYING TO WORK A REGULAR JOB. Seriously, what do you want from me, world? But let’s move on from these sad parts and look forward to…

PLANS FOR 2018

  • Obviously I mentioned Darmenzi releases next year. It comes out Wednesday, January 17th. If I can get some selling I’ll be happy. I’ll pretty much take any number over zero, but I’d like double-digits. (I’d be ecstatic over triple.) Currently only the ebook is set; I don’t want to use Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon (which is why I’m reluctant to do anything related to Goodreads), so I’m going to try out other self-publish websites. I’ll keep you posted on that. I do truly believe this book is better than the first, and it begins to bring up questions about the creator and narrator with the antagonist, Darmenzi. Some closure, some sadness, and some some fantastic villain interaction. But with a few weeks left I still need to work on promoting it…
  • I want to start a new daily project in 2018. I don’t want to reveal too much yet, for some reason, but it’s totally ripped off from inspired by something KC Green is doing. It also means this blaargablog will pick up by about… Whoa wait I had at least one post a day from the 15th to the 20th! That’s pretty good. anyway lotsa %.
  • I’ve gotten a Mastodon account! I really would like to stop Twittering but whoops I need to build an online presence and using websites that have traffic is a slight requirement, sorry. I’m still not sure how I want to do this but I might just give up and post at both places equally with the same things, which would also involve making a second Mastodon account equivalent to the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Twitter.
  • Might get a Ko-Fi. A cocoa-wifi. After the Patreon thing happened I was like “huh, maybe i’d rather make my goals just flat amounts to reach towards instead of monthly givings goals.” Now, I changed that idea because most of my current Patreon goals are actually recurring things that I would want a continuing stream of income to help with (posting more chapters a month, the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmail which to be fair I mostly want to wait to do because I want a big enough fanbase to get a steady stream of questions but I’d also like to pay my artist friends for drawing the comics so yeah), but there are some that could work as an accumulation of everything donated (special stories, comic/graphic versions of short stories, that Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Online RPG idea I wanna do someday), kinda like mini-Kickstarters except there’s no guarantee and you give money even if it takes 5000 years to reach the goal, since it’s more of a “thank you!!!” than an actual end goal. Maybe. I dunno.
  • There are at least one or two short stories I will post here next year, and I’d also like to write more and maybe finish some and maybe even finish some that I could submit to publications! I’ve sent one to a few places but it hasn’t been accepted, though to be fair it’s a character-centric story that probably works as being posted here first anyway. I have an idea for a short story I’m going to begin working on soon that might work.
  • Continue Wandering Fortunes! Continue the pokecomic! The former I hope to pass the halfway point on in 2018, and the Pokecomic to, who knows, maybe get to the 3/4 point.
  • Darmenzi audiobook. Work on it is a bit slow because I’m a bit slow, but the idea has been in the making for a little while now and some recording has been done. Some more recording needs to be done and then editing will be discussed. No promises or predictions on when this will start–I can only give myself a deadline.
  • Some freelance writing/editing? Look I clearly suck at holding down a Regular Job, and selling books takes more time than society will allow for survival, so I might have to look to that to have an income.
  • Be the best Duth I can be.
  • And at least a functioning Jeremy.

I think that about wraps it up. See you in a few days for my Clichemas post, and come January 1st I should be starting that new daily project I mentioned.

Preview of Darmenzi chapter 1 and pre-orders are a go!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

The preview of the final version of the first chapter of Darmenzi is now up to read. You can see just how much three years improves! Our protagonists and their home is introduced, and a new challenger approaches.

And excellent news as well in that the pre-orders are now live, I believe! You can pre-order the book on Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or Kobo!

Though as usual if you give money to my Patreon you’ll not only get the book but you can get the book and read it before everyone else! You can also get other cool things through that. Like the warm knowledge that you’re helping a writer survive??

Tomorrow we’ll take a break from all this Darmenzi news though with the posting of a very special story. It will be special, and very, and story. See you then!

Darmenzi releases Wednesday, January 17th, 2018! In one month!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

As you can see by the press release I just posted, I finally have a release date set for Darmenzi. It’s been a long time coming… though maybe not as long as Slubes was. The ebook can be seen here and will be $1, just like Slubes, except Slubes is currently free for December on Smashwords.

Pre-ordering will be available once Smashwords approves the book and sends it to the websites that allow that; I will keep everyone informed as to when this happens as soon as it does. Keep in mind that if you pledge to my Patreon you get the book upon release, and if you pledge $3 or more you’ll get it BEFORE release!

As you may notice, the book has had a bit of a makeover, centering text and making the smaller text easier to read. To go with this is a new book description, which you can see both on the novel page of this website and the Smashwords page for the book. There is also a preview of the final book you can read here, with more chapter previews coming over the next few weeks before the book’s release.

Now then. You’ll notice I only mentioned the ebook. A physical book will be coming, but I do not know if it will come on the same day. I’m going to look into different physical book publishers from Createspace, and so that might take a bit of time to settle on one that I’ll want to use (unless the first one I try is great in which case swell!) I’ll keep you up-to-date on that as well.

In summary: Darmenzi releases January 17th, preview here, donate on Patreon to get a copy early, physical book news later.

Darmenzi Press Release

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

NEW BOOK RELEASE IN JANUARY: DARMENZI; THE HERO TO SAVE THE WORLD AN ANXIOUS BUNDLE OF NERVES

Internet Author Duth Olec Releases Novel About Nervous Hero Fighting Authoritative Conqueror and Manipulative Force of Chaos, Sequel to Previous Novel Slubes

Bloomington, IN/The Internet. December 17, 2017—Bloomington and internet author Duth Olec will release his second novel, Darmenzi, on January 17, 2018. A humorous science fiction/fantasy novel with an unusual hero—Numer, ever nervous and timid, consistently flops his way to victory with his friends by his side. Thrust into a role he’s afraid of, allied with a love he can’t work with, Numer challenges The Conqueror, an intergalactic invader, and Darmenzi, a demon who delights in destruction.

While Darmenzi releases in a month, pre-orders at Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo begin today, Sunday, December 17. The book will be available to purchase and read Wednesday, January 17, including at Smashwords, where it is published. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/769197 Darmenzi is a sequel to Duth’s first book, Slubes, which is also available at Smashwords, normally priced at $1.00 but free for December with code CX69H at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/323919

Slube, in fact, is the name of Numer’s species—you won’t find any humans here! The books take place on the planet Mintop, a world not unlike Earth but filled with a wide variety of colorful alien species, with the squishy, noodly, sluggy slubes just one of many. To go with this variety of species comes a wide variety of colorful characters, with their humorous interactions a highlight of the book. If you’re looking for a human, though, you can turn to the creator himself, Duth Olec, though he be more enigmatic than anyone else—just ask the narrator, Wally Plotch, hired by Duth to record these events into a book. If you ever get lost, don’t worry: Wally is right there lost with you.

Raised in Ellettsville and Bloomington, Indiana, Duth Olec now lives in the internet. The housing is a little cramped but the transportation services are excellent. He has been writing stories for thirteen years, and his first novel was published in March 2016. He spends his time making up worlds (like Mintop) and words (like oddtastic). He can be contacted at duth olec at gmail dot com. More writing can be found at https://dutholeccuckooland.wordpress.com/ https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DuthOlec https://www.patreon.com/dutholec Slubes and Darmenzi are/will be available on Smashwords, iBooks, Barnes & Noble (US and UK), Scribd, Kobo, Blio, Inktera, and Amazon.

Contact

Duth Olec

duth olec at gmail dot com

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Species Profile for Schalindra… How is this a species??

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There’s a new species profile up, and it’s a doozy! The Schalindra, formally introduced in the last chapter, are a set of monstrous villains who are treated as such. They’re gross and horrible, yay! They also all look so widely different that it’s like, how are these all the same species?? You know how all dogs are dogs? Imagine that, except alligators are also a dog species. No one’s ever looked into how this is though because the Schalidnra probably killed and ate anyone who did.

They’re not nice. But who in New Zhopolis is?

An update on Darmenzi: the book isn’t coming out this year. Sad, I know. Still too much to do, including more things I’m adding to the plate that I want to happen around the time the book releases. It should be coming out in January though so it’s not like it’s too far away. Other projects will be coming, as well!

I have a job interview tomorrow though so if I get a dayjob (or nightjob as the case may be) things may slow down a bit. But I’ll never stop working!

Finally, Patreon continues to be a thing with a new chapter releasing soon! Check it out if you’re cool!