Monthly Archives: November 2010

30 Days of Writing #3-4: Names for characters and places? First story?

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Questions 3 and 4 I don’t have a lot to say on, so I’ll do both in one post:

3) How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you’re writing about fictional places)?

I don’t really have any set ‘way’ for doing this. Usually, one name, either first or last, will occur to me for a particular character, and I’ll cast about for the rest of the name so as to come up with something that sounds distinctive without calling attention to itself as The Writer Being Clever. Rarely will I go hunting for a name based on its ‘meaning’ as described in various baby name books and websites, though often once I have a name I’ll take a peek at said ‘meaning,’ just to satisfy my curiosity.

4) Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Twilight Zone-ey, and someone, possibly a ghost, got impaled on a bunch of spears at some point. I remember it as having stood out from the other stories being written by my classmates–slice of life High School stuff, near as I can recall–but no more than that.

30 Days of Writing #2: Character count and gender preference?

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

2) How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

There’s no way I’m going to try to count all my characters from everything I’ve written, of course. There are about eight or nine ‘major’ characters in my novel, Brutal Light, plus a handful of minor ones and the usual hordes of the unnamed and unnamable. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what this question is intended to reveal; to me, quantity alone is meaningless, whether it has to do with word count or character count or whatever else count.

‘Preference’ is a different matter. Being a guy, I suppose I find it ‘naturally’ easier to write from the perspective of a male character, but not to a degree where I feel an actual catagorical preference. If I know enough about a character to where she or he is more than just the sum of her or his ‘categories,’ it matters less to me what those categories actually are.

(Of course, it should be noted that whether or not I can successfully write a character who occupies categories other than my own is a different question, and a different debate altogether. Which is why I’m leaving it for a different day.)

30 Days of Writing #1: Favorite Writing Project / Universe?

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

1) Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

My favorite universe is that of the Superguy shared-universe humorous superheroic fiction group. I poured a lot of work into the various series I wrote for it in the early-to-mid nineties, and made a lot of friends there along the way. Writing for it was an experience that affected me in too many ways to count, large and small. The most obvious of these, to me, is that it gave me a chance to write a lot for an audience that, while generally appreciative, did not stint on the criticism where warranted (and, let’s be honest, sometimes where not warranted–when I recall some of the things we argued about that we thought were so terribly important, I have to shake my head in disbelief). I would not be the writer I am without Superguy. It’s a part of me, and I’m still happy to write for it (though I write a lot less for it than I once did).

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The ’30 Days of Writing Questions’ are a meme set of 30 questions I originally encountered on J. Koyanagi’s site, even though the meme apparently originated on LiveJournal. Even though it says ’30 days,’ I’ve decided to take a much slower (one day a week) approach to answering these. I’d rather promise weekly content and deliver than promise daily content and renege.

still not a taco after all these years

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Welcome, one and all, to A Taste of Strange, my latest and least non-great attempt at journaling, or blogging, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. My name is Gary, and I will be your confab for tonight.

I’m not going to cover what I’ve already written on my home page or my about me page. Suffice it to say I’m a guy who likes to write speculative fiction, and have launched this site and this blog in an attempt to publicize my works.

My goal is to update this at least once a week with my thoughts on aspects of writing, genre, conventions, media, and related subjects, my upcoming appearances (when I have some to declare), where my works will be showing up (when I have some to declare), and so on. I’m going to kick things off with the first of Thirty Questions for Writers, starting next week. (Note: this blog’s RSS feed is a great way to keep up with this without having to continually revisit the site.)

A Taste of Strange was the title of a Blogger-powered weblog I had from 2000 to 2002. Though I considered other titles, in the end I had to bring this one back. I like strange things, and find fascination in the strangest of places, and expect this will come through in future posts. I also like toast, but I doubt I will write about that.

Outside of this blog and this site, I have Hypnerotomachiapet, a Dreamwidth journal (which is also mirrored on a LiveJournal journal), which is about 3% content and 97% memes, quizzes, and news links. I am also on Twitter and Facebook, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into. I’ll likely x-post some (though not many) of my blog entries here to Dreamwidth/LiveJournal, but aside from that, the streams will not cross. Unless I need to blow up a giant marshmallow man.

Thank you for your time, and (hopefully) your continued readership. Cheers!