The Dungeon Crawler Carl of it All….

I am 75% done with a second rewrite of my first manuscript, and I am bored. Everyone loves that quote, that “80% of the work is in the last 20% of the job?” Why does it have to be so true, though? I AM SO BORED. I sound like a toddler, but I am tired of unknotting words and picking through sludge, only to pull out one lone “the” and change it to an “a” and have that be “my great work” of the day. Barf. Or should I say, “barf.” But the positive is that IT IS HAPPENING. My singular great goal of this year is to put my book into the world. It is coming. It is. Seemingly one single article at a time, but it is coming.

That’s enough complaining. Those complaints are why I am actually writing today. I need to make something new. I need to say something new.

So what am I going to say? Get ready, it’s a confession.

I’ve been really, wholly obsessed with Dungeon Crawler Carl. At first, my devotion to this raunchy, ultraviolent, obscenity-laden series shocked me. Though I am an eclectic reader, that combination of characteristics is not normally my vibe.  A list of books I’ve read in the past year or two could be summed up as “weird girl lit fic with a smattering of sci fi and bizarre short stories in translation.” Up until my exposure to DCC, I didn’t even know LitRPG was a thing. So what is it that I love so much about these books? And, more importantly, what can I learn about the direction of my next project from my those feelings? As much as I adore my first novel (I’m not just saying that. I really do—every time I reread it, I feel like I get to know myself a little better), I am so ready to do something new. Basically, I don’t want to be a one-trick millennial auto-fic pony, as much as I love it.

Okay, so in no particular order, this is what I came up with upon reflection:

DCC employs my all-time favorite strategy: an ever-changing setting.

Without giving too much away—the setting of each book in Dungeon Crawler Carl can change because of the nature of Matt’s story. The series focuses on an alien apocalypse that also involves a televised game called “Dungeon Crawler World.” This game has the dungeon crawlers (contestants) facing trials and tribulations across multiple levels. Each level then has the ability to be completely different (think Super Mario, for example).  The structure of the story allows your reader to have no clue what is going to happen between floor nine and floor ten. Ditto as a writer. I would say that has been my favorite aspect of writing a book with a road-trip playing so heavily into the plot.  When I get bored with LA, I can make my character stop at a meteor crater in Arizona and meet an escaped convict.  What will happen next? What new information can I learn about the character when they are placed in that new environment?  To me, it is a huge experimentation in nature vs. nurture, and I just love that creative freedom, both as a reader and a writer.  As a human, too. I love spontaneous trips, I love not having super concrete plans, I love letting life take me where I am supposed to go…and I love giving that gift to my characters, too.

Carl is a character with depth.

The book is goofy, but Carl has a hard backstory.  Carl is empathetic. He curses a lot,yes, but boy does he mean well.  Ultimately, he wants to see the entire universe be a better place. Yes, he pummels innumerable creatures to death, but he also possesses this intrinsic goodness within him—he really is the perfect hero to take this particular journey.  As much as I like “unlikeable characters,” it is refreshing to have a story centered around one person that you so very badly want to see succeed.

Fantastical beasts and where to find them.

I mean, this is a holdover from my inner child, but I love weird-ass aliens. I love made up, mythical beasts. For the entirety of my third grade year, I rotated between checking out two different VHS tapes from the library: one about the “World’s Scariest Roller Coasters” and Star Wars, mostly for the Mos Eisley cantina scene. I don’t love, nor have ever held any affinity for, the Harry Potter franchise, but I loved the scene with the wild candies in Diagon Alley. I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the same reason. Matt has created a world where LITERALLY ANYTHING can exist. What a perfect world.  I live for the rich descriptions of these wacky creations, and I think I would have a blast incorporating similar creative madness into my own work.

Princess Donut is a perfect foil.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite character in the whole book.  This is only a minor spoiler (skip this point if you don’t want to know anything at all about what happens in the first 50 pages of book one), but Princess Donut is the talking cat of your dreams. She is sassy. She is super media literate. She is hysterically funny. But more importantly, she is able to add levity to Carl’s seriousness. Matt has written a perfect balance between these two characters.

A silly exterior with a profoundly important message.

An AI with a foot fetish. A cat who makes obsessive pop culture references. So many jokes about “your mom.” And yet, the sophomoric humor is balanced with some really serious messaging about capitalism, colonialism, and mass media. I cannot give Matt enough kudos for being able to create this balance.

I mean, the audiobook voice actor, Jeff Hays. Enough said.

You’ve just gotta listen to him. His voice acting is unparalleled. I have never felt so loyal to an audiobook narrator in my whole life.

So, what does this mean for me, and for what I do next? What lessons can I incorporate into my work, based on what I love so much about Carl? To be clear, I don’t want to write a DCC fanfic (though I totally am reading them).  I want to take the most salient bits of my love from above and apply them to my own work.

I’ve written a road trip book. Now what?

It is clear I chose to write a road trip book for the same reason Matt wrote DCC as a leveled game—I need to have that variation in scenery. I don’t want to write a second road trip book…at least not traditionally, anyways. So how can I incorporate such variations in time and place into my own work? I have some ideas….

Can I write sci fi?

….I think I’m going to write sci fi.

I WANT TO MAKE WEIRD SHIT.

Really though. I think my next work is mapped out. At least the beginning. And as a writer, I only ever start with a beginning in mind.

This is so funny, because I thought my next work was going to be historical fiction, set at a convent. But the siren song of aliens and outer space is really getting too strong.  I mean, maybe there is a space cult…a convent…based on the research I had already done? Hmmmm. Stop. Already the ideas are spinning.

Honestly, I might be a little bit one-trick. When I can’t sleep at night, I lay in bed and come up with story starters. What I keep landing on for the start of my next book is pretty similar to the start of my first….with a bit of a twist.

I’m glad I stopped editing for a second to write this. First, it makes the hundred(s?) of hours I have dumped into Carl feel worthwhile.  More importantly though, I feel invigorated. I feel the way I felt when I started my first book—I wrote that entire manuscript while working two other jobs. I wrote it in three months. How? I was motivated.  Thank you, Carl and Donut, for motivating me.  Thank you, Matt, for being motivated yourself and churning out such a mass-appealing body of work.