Friday, May 15, 2009

Brass Clad Cyborgs With Guns

I started my story about Traith Harris when I was in the midst of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. So yeah, Traith and his dual revolers and his duster and boots and constant smoking is definitely channeling Roland Deschain. The fact that he is a cop could I suppose be taken as a nod at Roland as well, although Roland is technically a knight. Knight, cop, they're close enough in my book. Traith's odd speech patterns, while not a direct rip off, is definietly influenced by the way King wrote Roland's dialogue. That's where it stops though, I think. I'm sure if Tony read my Traith stuff he could point something else. Right now Traith only has a brass ribcage and spine (at some point I intend on an enemy busting his fist to pieces against Traith's chest). Eventually he ends up with a boiler in his gut powering his various mechanical bits. I know his eyes are mechanical (how I pull that off is something I am incredibly interested to see), both arms are as well, and through my writing I have implied that at least part of his legs are mechanical though I have not explicitly said so. I know a large portion of his skull is metal as is his jaw, how that happens has not been decided yet. So that is Traith at the moment and in the future. The future is only relevant because the story is written as kind of a memory, so we already know how he ends up.

I've had some trouble writing him lately. For a while I was bouncing back between Traith and Cromm (the main character of the book I finished) and I sort of kicked into overdrive with Cromm to finish it and Traith kind of fell to the wayside as I finished with Cromm, started a sequel to Cromm's story, then wandered into the realm of the ridiculous as I picked up my story about a pyrokinetic named James. While I love James' attitude and mental state and find a few bits of the story to be some of my best writing, it is an awful story that can't seem to go anywhere. Hang on a sec, this is about Traith, not James.

Traith. I've had some trouble writing him. Like I get stuck in between what I call "scenes." I'm not sure if that's an actual term for it but its how I refer to it. I start at point/scene A and have an intent to get to B, but on the way to B I kind of meander with my writing. Or I keep B in my head and think about it on a daily basis, but a week will pass before I physically write something out on my laptop or a notebook. I guess its good that I have a clear picture of the next "scene" and how it affects the plot but I sometimes wish I was back to writing four hours every day like when I was writing that Norse-themed serial (which also took place in my DnD world). But I wasn't DMing then, or painting, or working out, or watching quite so many TV shows on a weekly basis. I guess I just had more free time then.

That's part of the purpose of this blog though. To break my hobbies down and kind of talk about them to keep me focused on persuing them. Something is always rattling around in my skull as far as writing so this is a convenient place to stow the kernel of an idea until I can put the proverbial pen to paper. Proverbial pen to paper, that works, right?

Music: Nobody's Hero - Rush

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